Expect away Gideon. The only way the government can actively reduce the price of fuel is to reduce the duty and VAT on it and that hardly seems likely to happen.

And I think the BBC needs to maybe go out and take (or maybe buy) some more recent stock photos. The one in the article looks suspiciously like it's a 2nd generation Renault 5 being filled up.

A government that believes in unregulated markets is hardly in a position to demand that prices are brought down. The only way he can effectively enforce this is to regulate the industry, or legislate to ensure that fuel prices are pegged to the prices of crude oil. I doubt very much that he’ll do this.

Remember the 80p a litre moment? Gordon Brown (then chancellor) tried (and IIRC failed) to convince the oil companies to lower their prices. We had go slows on the road, and refineries blocked.

As expected, as soon as the Beeb made a deliberate policy of making their headlines 'edgier', everything else got dragged down with it - articles where it's not clear who said what, multiple spelling mistakes and other typos, terrible Getty Images everywhere...

Prices have dropped over 10c a liter over the last 2 months.

As Dav points out, the government are very capable of bringing the price of petrol down, as most of the price is actually tax. IIRC the price at the pump sans tax is something like 35p. If Gideon dropped the tax load by say 5% that would knock roughly 5P off the price of a litre. Course that would mean losing £2bn, so he's not going to.


I remember it well, that and the horror when petrol went over £1 a litre. Seems a bit crazy now...

I get a thing that emails me the price of petrol at a station near me every Tuesday (why then I don't know). looking at that email history the price is down 6p a litre or so from the level it was at the beginning of June. It's now 15P a litre cheaper than it was when I started getting the emails in September 2012!

I'm paying 10p a litre less than I was earlier in the year.

Just seen a comparison on the beeb. The UK is the fourth most expensive place to buy petrol. The Netherlands, Greece and Italy are more expensive but only by a couple of pennies at most. The cheapest average price the BBC could find was in Venezuela, where petrol is £0.02 a litre .

It is the sort of country that can't sort out bog roll though

Another reason I should try and live in the USA.

Last road-trip in Sept and the price of unleaded there was just $3.64 a gallon so someone somewhere in the UK is making a fat profit.

When I went to the States, the colleagues I visited were complaining that fuel was going up to a dollar a gallon! I told the to quit whining, we were paying over a dollar a litre.

Indeed I went in 2006 when it was $2.15 a gallon. I converted our price from £/litre to $/US gallon. None of them would believe we paid just under $8 a gallon.

but when i was in the US a couple of years back my mate out there said that given the high price of fuel he was glad he went for the more fuel efficent pick-up as it got 18 miles to the gallon (the one he wanted to get got 12 )

It appears that while the petrol may run out, the stupid never will

The hire car I had did about 36 miles/gallon so not too bad.

Next road trip over there I might go silly and hire a Mustang