Furball, the tax component of the pump price of petrol was 60% under the Tories. Under Labour, that has risen to 77%.
What does the asterisk mean against certain countries in the above table?
I'd be interested to see a similar table comparing the cost of diesel fuel. In many European countries (eg France, Spain, Portugal and (Lazs informs me) the USA, diesel is priced at about two thirds the cost of gasoline/petrol to reflect its lower production cost. In Britain, it's actually more expensive - by about 1p per litre. One of Labour's first 60 stealth taxes was "additional duty on diesel" in 1998. Presumably the thinking was that as diesel cars consume only about half the volume of fuel of their petrol counterparts, the motorist could afford to pay more tax.
The cost of road fuel in Britain has got bugger all to do with the environment. It's regulated by what the government feels the motorist should be paying in tax. I could design an engine that ran on rainwater. It wouldn't do any good. The govt. would simply find a way of taxing rainwater, or would introduce another tax.
BTW Furb - diesel at BP is now about 83p/litre. Price of non-road "red" diesel at the local boatyard - 40p/litre.
