Yet more petrol and diesel price cuts from UK's supermarkets

I have to say, in our area this has actually meant a cut of at least 6 - 8 p a litre on local prices.

Forecourts actually make their money selling non fuel products. I worked for P&H for ten years, distributing sandwiches for Shell Forecourt Services, and I can tell you that the mark up for sandwiches is stupid money. Each day, a large number of chilled vehicles deliver milk, bread and sandwiches to Shell forecourts, then the following day, unsold sandwiches are picked up and disposed of. The waste is horrendous. Some drivers actually told me that some stations may receive five totes full of sandwiches, of which they will open two, leaving the other three to bake in the summer sun. At the Fareham chilled and frozen depot, we typically used to chuck around three industrial bins worth of sandwiches a day, and P&H have three main chilled and frozen hubs, with the big one being based in Coventry. I would imagine they would chuck in the region of about five or six industrial bins per day. And this is a seven day operation. What a waste. So, next time you buy a sandwich from Shell, priced at around £2.99, remember that half that price has to cover returns. So, they will profit from selling fuel, but their biggest profit is from non fuel related sales, such as sandwiches. Our governments keep telling us that we have to save money, to save the planet, but the biggest waste will always be industry. They waste more than the entire domestic waste combined, yet no government is going to challenge the very organisations that keep the population in work, and able to pay taxes.

Like the rest of the energy “market” road fuel prices have a cloak of secrecy and confusion. Oil companies will be making profits at every stage of the process from crude production through refining and distribution to the forecourt with each stage being handled by a separate company within the same group each with its own healthy profit. So the crude oil production company sells its product to the refining company, making a healthy profit, who then sells the refined product to the distribution company, making a healthy profit, who then sells the product to the retailer, making a healthy profit, who then sells it to us making a profit and remember the retailer is often part of the same Oil Company group. When we, long-suffering consumers, complain about the price we are always told about the small margins made by the retailing company thereby ignoring and keeping secret the profits made by the other companies along the supply chain. Whenever there is deliberate secrecy and confusion generated by complicated financial structures you can rely on the fact that there is a good going rip-off going on. However any rip-off by the Oil Industry pales to insignificance when we come to the major part of road fuel prices and that is extorted by HMG. They levy duty on every litre of road fuel and then VAT on the total price. We are in the privileged position of not only paying a large amount of duty on the fuel but paying Value Added Tax on that excise duty. I struggle to see what “value” is “added” by fuel duty but maybe I'm just short-sighted. TAX is by far the largest component of the pump price of road fuel and is typically between 150-300% (I have known it to be as high as 400% where, for every £1 of fuel purchased, the price charged by the total supply chain was 20p and the TAX element going to HMG was 80p). Now I am not an advocate for the oil industry but do remember that any reduction we do see should be set against a pump price before TAX considerably lower than the price you see at the forecourt. At 128p per litre TAX is 78p (57p Duty and 21p VAT including 11p on the duty) and the fuel is 50p. Politicians at all levels are “hooked” on the revenue drug that is motoring taxes, VED (road Tax) with large “Global Warming” levies that have no hope of changing the climate, fuel tax, Insurance premium duty, “Congestion” Charges, VAT on everything we need for our vehicles, parking “fines”, speeding fines (that are supposed to be to aid road safety but have presided over huge damage to our once excellent road safety record) and the latest wizzo idea that the car driver is automatically responsible for any accident involving a cyclist regardless of what happened (this is purely about money). So why does government, central and local, punish road users in this way? Because we are seen as convenient but captive “piggy banks” they can raid whenever and we have no realistic choice but to pay up. Vote them out? Yes sure but with so many pressing issues and with only one vote every 5 years and nothing to choose between the parties, what we have in reality is an elected dictatorship. Yes we could have a fuel strike as happened a few yeas ago. What did the then New Bliar Labour Government do? Did they listen to our legitimate complaints? Did they try to create a fairer situation? No! They made the Oil Companies legally responsible to ensure that fuel supplies got through. Cynical? You bet! END of Rant.