Real world rides, real world riders

£1.22... a litre... are... you... sure?

And so it is that as members of the UK, this sceptred isle, this earth of majesty, we are now paying more for petrol than ever before. And what have we as a nation done about this? Little more than nothing.

Which is weird, don’t you think? Just think back a few years to 2000 when petrol prices topped a pound a litre and lorry drivers took it upon themselves to blockade refineries in the UK as a protest. The whole of the UK virtually ground to a halt for two days as people stayed off the roads to conserve whatever fuel they could.

It might have been a bit of a problem at the time but it showed unity in thought. Very few of us blamed the lorry drivers about their actions. We all fully understood and the majority of those polled at the time said they agreed with the protest and thought that petrol prices were ridiculous.

Now, just a few years later, prices have gone above £1.20 a litre on average across the country. Where I live in Lincolnshire you’d be hard pressed to find petrol at less than £1.22 a litre and I’ll bet it’s the same where you are too.

Ah yes, some of you might say, but the price of oil must be rocketing up. That’s mostly why we have to pay this much for our fuel. And you know what? You’d be wrong.

We have had a neat little system in this country brought in by the Conservatives called the Fuel Escalator. This was essentially a swirling maths equation that hiked up on an annual basis the amount of tax we pay on petrol.

When it was first added in 1993, fuel prices rose by three pence a litre and tax contributed to 72.8% of the total cost. By 1997 the escalator had added 11.1p to the cost of unleaded petrol and was at 75%. It didn't get any better when the Conservatives left as the escalator increased and three pence was added per litre. This took tax up to 81.5% of the total price of fuel.

In 1995 we paid 39.4p in tax per litre of unleaded petrol, in 2007 we paid 63.7p in tax, despite the Fuel Escalator being dropped in 1999 prices have continued to rocket.

And it sounds as though the pain is going to continue further with some experts saying that fuel prices could reach as high a price as £1.50 a litre over this summer.

Which, quite frankly, is ridiculous.

Yes, there has been a rise in the wholesale price of fuel and the pound is weak so affecting the trading prices we pay for oil, but there’s still that monster tax that Alastair Darling has whacked on top of basic cost of petrol which is most galling.

But it’s the apathy about it which we all seem to display that does, I think, show just how clever these spoilt-brat politicians are. We’ve accepted the rise. Oh sure, we might moan a bit but so what? What do they care? They’re still getting the cash out of your pockets every time you go to the pumps.

Ah yes, chirp up some quarters, but using cars and bikes so much is bad for the environment. We should all cut down on usage. We have to accept this rise because of the impact on the planet.

Oh please. If that was really the thoughts behind the Government raiding us at the pumps then they’d make train travel 20p to go anywhere and buses would be lovely, full, fragrant places upon which we could hop safe in the knowledge that doing so would stop another baby polar bear bursting into flames each time we fired up our Triumph. There are far, far better ways to encourage people to use alternative forms of transport than beating them over the head day after day for more money.

Consider this, methane is a far more destructive global warming agent than anything which comes out of the back of your motorcycle’s exhaust. The prime producer of methane in this country is? Cows. In fact, you could take a petrol chomping car like a Range Rover and drive it for 10,000 miles a year and you’d be producing less pollution per day than a cow farting does. So imagine how green your current bike is!

But where’s the cow slaughter? Where’s the makeover team for the number 22? Where’s the cheap train tickets that you don’t have to book 17 months in advance and travel at 2am one way in a luggage rack to qualify for? Nowhere, and why is this? Because the Government’s spin doctors have persuaded the majority that cars and bikes are bad.

They have set about a long-term plan of propaganda that has us believing that we’re the bad ones. By riding to work or to see some friends you are killing the planet.

And the penalty for that? Money from your pocket. No viable alternative to persuade you from your car, just cash creamed from you in a cloud of guilt. As long as you can pay the Government will let you destroy the planet, if you believe what they claim.

Let’s face it, if the Government and all its advisers are right then this is a big, big deal. I mean, it’s the planet, baby. We’re gone. No coming back. Hasta la vista.

Unless it IS all about money from our pockets and the past decade has been a carefully worded and colluded effort to mob us and get us accepting these hikes.

So you’d think that they’d be offering the alternatives, wouldn’t you? Never mind smashing us in the face and mugging us whenever we visit the pumps. Get us into something nicer and easier.

After all, the stone age didn’t stop because we ran out of stones. It stopped because we found something better. We found bronze. Then we found iron. And we made motorcycles from there.

Tony Carter