h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've just received this email and think it's a good idea, however, upon thinking about it, I'm not sure how well it would work (too many last night to think properly ). Coming from Milton Keynes, I'm already paying the highest petrol prices in the country! (Plus it gets used up quicker going round all those roundabouts , thought I'd get that in before you lot did .)


Campaign to Reduce UK Petrol Prices

We are going to hit close to 89p a litre by the summer. Want petrol prices to come down? We need to take some intelligent, united action.

This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the "don't buy petrol on a certain day" campaign that was going around last April or May! The oil companies just laughed at that because they knew we wouldn't continue to hurt ourselves by refusing to buy petrol. It was more of an inconvenience to us than it was a problem for them.

With the price of petrol going up more each day, we consumers need to take action. The only way we are going to see the price of petrol come down is if we hit someone in the pocket by not purchasing their Petrol! And we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves. Here's the idea:

For the rest of this year, DON'T purchase ANY petrol from the two Biggest oil companies (which now are one), ESSO and BP. If they are not selling any petrol, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit.

But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of Esso and BP petrol buyers. It's really simple to do!! Now, don't wimp out on me at this point...keep reading and I'll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people!!

I am sending this note to a lot of people [30]. If each of you send it to at least ten more (30 x 10 = 300)... and those 300 send it to at least ten more (300 x 10 = 3,000) ... and so on, by the time the message reaches the sixth generation of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers!

If those three million get excited and pass this on to ten friends each, then 30 million people will have been contacted! If it goes one level further, you guessed it..... THREE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE!!! Again, all You have to do is send this to 10 people. That's all (and not buy at ESSO/BP).

How long would all that take? If each of us sends this email out to ten more people within one day of receipt, all 300 MILLION people could conceivably be contacted within the next 8 days!!! I'll bet you didn't think you and I had that much potential, did you! Acting together we can make a difference. If this makes sense to you, please pass this message on.

PLEASE HOLD OUT UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES TO THE 69p a LITRE RANGE

It's easy to make this happen. Just forward this email, and buy your petrol at Shell, Tesco, Sainsburys, Morrisons (75p), Jet etc. i.e. Boycott BP and Esso.


So what do you think? Buying at the supermarkets (cheaper than the oil companies anyway) will certainly make an impact, but how much of one? Do the supermarkets get their petrol from the big companies anyway?

actually the best way is to ride a bike. tell them to put their planet poison up the old wazzoo.

that is true, but unfortunately, getting millions of people to suddenly start riding their bikes is unlikely.

I'm sorry, I'm far more interested in not damaging the planet than in getting to work cheap and I wouldn't care if petrol cost £2 a litre. I know there are some people who absolutely HAVE to use cars to go to work/ take kids to school, people who are disabled or who live a long way away and have no public transport. But the rest of us (not of course referring to Hootooers as I'm sure you are all health conscious, enviromentally conscious and doing the best you can) who COULD walk/ take the bus/ bike/ are lazy and are making our kids lazy. Perhaps petrol should be £2 a litre but those who can prove they have no alternative could get a massive 75% discount?

no, but it gets more likely the higher the prices go.

I'd prefer to see campaigns that aim to reduce overall petrol consumption, petrol afterall being not only a finite resource, but one that people are currently killing each other for.

The idea is that as long as we are affluent enough we can keep using as much as we want. The sooner the West understands that we can't keep doing this without serious consequences the better.


"We need to take some intelligent, united action."

While the plan does include quite a good idea, it would have come across better if they had remembered that not everyone in Britain owns or has easy access to a computer/email.

That was me replying to post 3, not post 4.

Thanks kea.

The bike vs. car debate is for another thread. I'm for the bikes, but for this thread, I'd appreciate opinions on the actual question.

Yeah I would say how about legislation to prevent fuel guzzeling cars, or massive tax on thoses cars that are powerful just to massage to ego of the owners (heck with British speed limits you do not need a 3 litre car).

Then why dont people who moan about petrol prices walk more? Come on you cannot tell me you always *have* to drive it is just convenient.

The whole point of punitive taxes is to try and make it a little less convenient, the vast majority of use can walk and dont do enough exercise so come on campers lets get walking.

The point is that I do not think that cheaper petrol prices would be a good thing. It would make people use their cars more, more pollution, more congestion, less exercise.

More money in pockets mayby but I still dont think it is a good thing.

During the oil crisis in the 70s, in NZ we had 'carless days' where you had to have a sticker on your car which said you weren't allowed to drive on that day (I think you could choose which day).

This was legislated for and policed, and was an attempt to cut down on our petrol usage because the oil supply was being squeezed.

I was a kid then, so it seems normal to me for those sort of interventions to happen.

i've got my idea about public action to influence petrol prices: we get bill gates or keanu reaves or someone to bankroll us and we buy up gas like there's no tomorrow (truer than you think) until the oil companies jack the price up to 10 quid. the problem... how to dispose of the stuff. any ideas?

Will it work? No.

The petrol companies know that the vast majority of people are idle, and want to take the easy option. Blaming the Government for taxing petrol is far easier than putting prices down. As long as the majority of consumers continue to buy into the 'it's all the fault of the government and their taxes' line which is pushed by the petro-chemical giants and their allies, then this has no hope of working.

it's not boycotts you need, but conceryted education about oil prices, taxation and its aims and a little bit of people using their cars less.

having said all that, I'm with Agapanthus. Couldn't care less how much petrol costs. Driving is a luxury for the majority of those on the roads (though of course government policies ranging from thatchers 'love the road' tories to prescott's moronic 'out of town superstore developments' have made life increasingly difficult for those of us without cars).

An alternative is to look at the portugese plan, where all the price of petrol is tax. The petrol companies literally give away petrol over there and write it off against tax...

I do have to use my small Fiat sometimes , but always use it as little as possible , and do not drive as though I am on a race track . Petrol is far too cheap judging by the way some men in huge cars use more in trying to drive into my boot than I use in my bi-weekly trip to Waitrose . Well we all know what their problem is , and damaging the planet will not cure it .

Do not send it to me, if you want to protest fine but don't advocate a massice spam assault on everyone's email (along with it being a chain letter).

Buying petrol from smaller/independent outlets is a waste of time because they buy their petrol from... you guessed it - the big oil companies.

And remember, those petrol tax revenues don't just disappear, they're a major source of government revenue, and if it disappears they'll just tax something else instead. Of course, they could make all the collateral costs of motoring (pollution, police time, hospital and court costs) payable through insurance. Shouldn't add more than a couple of grand to the average annual insurance premium.

Noggin

I just don't think this idea will work as people will continue to fill their cars wherever is most convenient, if it will take extra effort to go to a different petrol station I think most won't bother.

If this idea were workable then people would *already* be filling their cars solely at the cheapest places. Then Sainsburys etc would put the price up!

Cycling/walking/skating/horse drawn carriages/solar powered karts are the way forward!

QB

Forget petrol - support the proposed environmentally friendly fuel made out of chip fat - does the same job as petrol/diesel and is a fraction of the cost

I'm with Orcus about the spam.

As for petrol, don't care how much it costs, it's a luxury that I'm prepared to pay for. Maybe when the big petrol companies price most of the car drivers out of the market, somebody will make an effort to improve public transport outside of the big cities. Every now and then I try to give up my car, and manage without one for a few months. Having no buses in the evenings, none on saturday from late afternoon, and none at all on a Sunday kind of makes it too difficult, and I have to go out and buy a car again. So I'm all for forcing the price of petrol up so high that people start using public transport and someone invents cars that run on cow poo.

In the meantime, lets all stop drinking beer and smoking fags to bring the prices down.

No?

Didn't think so...

Hey, lets get over this one.

Fossil fuels cost. We can't have something for nothing. If anything fuel is probably too cheap.

If we want to use fossil fuels we have to pay to do so.

I'm not a bicycle, sandle wearing, tree hugger. I run a 1600 cc car and do about 10 - 13,000 miles a year.

Responsible governments need to get tough and not crumble when faced with popular revolt over self interested (and short sighted) pressure groups. (no offence intended folks)

PP

The same (virtually) email has made the rounds here in Canada at least five times in the last 10 years by my count (and I suspect in the US as well). And our fuel is much cheaper than yours, even though it recently went up 25%- roughly 55p a litre now. First of all we can all have a laugh here since there is a little *pie chart* at the pumps here showing how little of the cost is profits (1%) and how much more is refining and taxes. If there's a business out there that can survive on 1% I'd like to see it since you could get a better return from a savings account at the bank. Secondly, if you look at specific statistics you'll see that in most countries *casual* use of automobiles is a very small percentage. Talk to the truck (lorry) drivers, the delivery people, the bus drivers, the salesmen. Get them to sign on and there would be a huge change.