Fuel Price in Europe

In recent months there have been a number of protests over the price of petrol and diesel. Fisherman from France, Spain and the UK have been blocking ports, motorcyclists have been taking part in "slow rides" on main motorways blocking or slowing traffic. In Spain & Portugal truckers have gone on strike and blocking roads. In Spain and Portugal, this tension has flared into violence, windscreens of truck drivers not taking part in the protest have been smashed and two people have been killed.

The price of a barrel of oil has been bouncing up and down by a few dollars each day, but each week or month it will increase at the time of writing this a barrel of oil has hit a new record high of $140 a barrel. This has been blamed on a number of factors, one been the weak dollar and a lack of supply. OPEC claim the lack of supply is because consumption is lower that before. That may be the case but clearly it is affecting the price of a barrel.

So what I the solution. One could be to reduce Fuel Duty. Europe has quite high rate of fuel duty. In the UK fuel duty is at 57p (1.135USD, 0.72EUR) a litre, the highest in Europe. However fuel duty is not profit for the government, it pays for public services like health care and education. Reducing this would result in a tax hole. Meaning less money for public services. A way round this would be to increase another tax, such as income tax, but this is unpopular with the public. Freeing up money from unpopular projects such as the I.D Card scheme would assist in allowing for a slight drop in Fuel Duty, and would also make me quite happy.

Increasing the income tax on the top 10% of earners could help raise revenue for the treasury. Yes these people would properly not vote for that party again but they would help to the overall economic affect of the country, improving living conditions for some of the less well off.

The Government in the UK at least does not want to back down on its current policy for two reasons. One been it has already had policies that have proven to be flawed, the 10p tax band been an example in which the government had to perform a rather costly U-turn in which they had to borrow money to assist the people who would be affected by abolishing of the 10p income tax band. Secondly the government does not want to appear "un-green" by reducing fuel duty and in the eyes of some green pressure groups, promoting the use of cars. Even though a reduction in Fuel Duty would most likely be popular with the voter. But it would upset green pressure groups, who appear to have more power than the voter in modern politics.

The issue with high-fuel duty is that it has a greater effect that is not sometimes obvious, high fuel duty means that it costs more to transport food, this drives up food costs. Green pressure groups will tell you that lorries need to be taken off the road and put on the rail network. A few problems one been that the rail network currently can't carry people to work, let alone a load of trucks, second how long is that going to take to implement and how expensive is it going to be, this will drive up costs further.

The Labour government in the UK should be committed to helping out the less well off, its what the Labour Party do, its often why people vote them in. However they are not making it harder for the poor to put food on the table and run a car. The wealthy will simply buy a second or new car, such as a VW Polo BlueMotion which is exempt from Tax in the UK, however this is a £8,000 and there are not many families that can afford to spend that much money currently. They will also not reduce or help out lorry firms and fishermen unlike other European nations, this will cause food prices to rise and result in fishermen been unemployed.

This is why the government should offer support to fisherman and hauler firms and not just ignore them as they currently are. Because other government has assisted when the fisherman and haulers run out of money to pay there fuel bills they will just be replaced by foreign firms, increasing unemployment in the UK.