Today’s protest and go-slow at Stanlow fuel refinery was billed as the “mother of all fuel protests” (well by this site anyway). Estimates of up to 3000 people had been suggested causing traffic chaos on the roads.
In reality the turn out has been much less than many expected. Our sources put numbers in the low hundreds as many chose to stay away from today’s action.
Further problems came as police at Stanlow fuel refinery blockaded the protesters leaving them unable to access the site, with small scuffles breaking out between protesters and police.
Despite this, interest in the protest has been huge. Vast numbers of visitors have been flooding to the site keen for updates. Media coverage at the event itself was substantial with the national and local press in attendance.
The organisers recently confirmed that a small band of around 40 “hardcore” protesters still remain at Stanlow, claiming that tanker movements have been stopped for the past hour.
Personally I am quite taken back by the lack of support this protest has seen, I had expected huge number of protesters “give it to the man”. However, the media storm that surrounded today’s protest was enough to highlight the anguish motorists and businesses are faced with as we try and cope with record fuel prices.
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I beleive in this strike action / protesting. Fuel prices soar, yet prices in Kuwait are 16p a litre. We are a fuel producing nation and these prices are raising the prices of all other items that we buy. I drive hgv on weekends to supplement my wage as a teacher, but when a truck is taking £200-300 a trip how can this be progress. I understand we have to make progress with alternative fuels. The only problem is that alternative fuel prices are the same if not higher. My local garage uses bio-diesel which I would gladly use, but it is 4 or 5 pence dearer than the one up the road. Tesco have a local large store, but because its a rural location they put their prices up at that one compared to their other stores, despite it being easier to get to and probably not as many miles away from main routes as other inner city sites, that charge lower prices – no competition. I was in a taxi the other week and the driver was talking about having to jack in when the prices hit £1.45 (much as I don’t believe his plight) I can understand his anger at government duty and oil company greed. Back in the Gulf War 1 the US flooded the market with reserve oil and lowered the market price – where is that effort from the US or indeed our government! China is demanding more fuel now, but as industrialised nation, we are stepping backwards as far as progress is made. We will become a third world country if we do not start producing goods, stop paying out money to bone idle scavengers and start investing in business and infrastructure and get away from high priced employees with the main aim to avoid work as much as possible. In Tokyo it took 6 days to rebuild 100km of road after the disaster, in North Yorkshire 40miles of motoway restructure 5-6 years, with machinery stood around idle and, traffic lights on side roads making cars and lorries wait for non-existant truck movement and traffic jams that use up extra fuel.
Wayne, the UK may be a “fuel producing nation” but not nearly enough. UK oil production is HALF what it was a decade ago and the UK is now a net importer of oil, coal and gas… not to mention uranium and electricity.
The situation we face is one of fundamentals – global oil production has been on a plateau for some five years now. Some analysts make compelling arguments for this to be a geologically limited flow rate before production actually starts decreasing later this decade.
High fuel prices are here to stay – I’ve come to accept that fact. I also think in some ways, the relatively high taxation is a blessing in disguise. It is allowing us to become adapted to the inevitably high prices earlier than the rest of the world (the US, Canada, Australia, they’re really going to have problems!) with the extra we are paying staying in this country (lowering other taxes) rather than going to the MidEast, Russia etc.
I don’t want to see lower taxes on fuel. It would increase demand and therefore increase our trade deficit as we’re forced to import more. It would decrease tax revenue meaning even more spending cuts or tax rises in other parts of the economy.
i think we should target one oil company and boycott all there petrol stations its the only way to turn the pressure up everybody needs to stick together.