"Mary Fisher" wrote in message
t...

"Dave Liquorice" wrote in message
ll.net...
On Wed, 28 May 2008 10:56:57 +0100, Mary Fisher wrote:

I find the hauliers demands yesterday of an "essential user" rebate
rather strange. To me an "essential user" would be the fire, ambulance
and police services and only those hauliers involved in the food and/or
fuel supply chain. Sorry but F.Bloggs Hauliers Ltd taking a pallet of
widgets from A to B is not an "essential user".

Until your widget supplier runs out when you need one desperately ...

But F.Blogs Hauliers Ltd is complaining that they will go out of business
with out government help. Well the answer is put your prices up. If it
cost X to transport that pallet of widgets from A to B that is the
minimum
you should charge. It's called market forces and being in bussiness. It's
not as if Smiths Trucking down the road is getting fuel 20p/l cheaper
than
J.Blogs Hauliers. We are all in the same boat. They wibble about
continental truckers coming over and doing the work on their cheap fuel,
er, once a forgien truck has done a few hundred miles it will need to
fill
up at our prices...

Um, what's that to do with your point about being an essential user?

Since almost every kind of productive economic activity relies on moving
either things or people (or both) and almost always by road (because our
rail freight system is not fit for purpose), it seems to me that high fuel
taxes
(especially on the haulage industry) are nothing more than an increasing
drain on our economy.

Businesses, in most cases, have no option other than to move stuff by
road. Increasing the cost of that (for spurious environmental reasons)
helps nobody and hurts everbody because there is no viable alternative.

I'm sure it's a not insignificant part of the reason why everything is so
expensive in this country, as compared with US or most of the rest
of Europe.

Chris