Serenity:
They are getting good at this sort of thing.
See how meak/mild we all are at paying around £5.45 for a gallon of petrol. 2 years ago that would have been cause for civil war!
Be good!
Serenity
Far be it from me to get political, but they were also pretty good at introducing the minimum wage, the Northern Ireland Peace Agreement, the New Deal for Families, Working Tax Credits, but we don't tend to hear much about that from the malcontents.
And oil is governed by the Middle East for much of our supply and they hold the purse strings both on price and supply. We produce our own, but due to too few refineries and oil storage depots (a failing going back many governments), we ship out to holding places in Europe who then charge a premium to send it back to us!
As for the high tax rate on fuel, the protests of a few years back made me laugh. Yes, let's all have cheap unleaded and diesel and use up fossil fuels with nary a backward glance. Once it's gone it's gone but no-one seems to have registered that who runs a 4x4, BMW, or does the school run. Ho hum; my sympathies grind to a halt I'm afraid and we have seven month old twins and rely on a car, so I'm not speaking out of some hippy "wholegrain rice" view of the world.
It's this kind of limited, short-termist thinking that leaves me stone cold. Better it's taxed, the revenues go to fund the public purse and therefore US (in case that nugget was overlooked as well) and we encourage private enterprise to really look at developing alternatives. I would be in favour of limiting the tax burden to levels of 12 months ago for business (hauliers, etc) but otherwise, we use it, we pay for it. If it makes us reappraise what we take for granted, that's a good thing IMO.
Totally agree with Gordon Brown's statement the other day that Britain has an opportunity to develop and lead electric car production, both in terms of cell development and vehicle design and production. We might even get a manufacturing base back in this country long after a blue-rinse wiped it all out 25 years ago.
[/rant over folks!]