This is going to be my 1st post, I forgot I set up this blog account to make a kinda diary of my ramblings... There was a recent article in Stornoway Gazette where the local coal supplier justified the rise in the price of coal to £15 a bag by producing an email from his suppliers showing the price he was being charged for coal and I thought it would be interesting to see an email from the oil/petrol suppliers in the western isles to justify the price of fuel. Many fishermen have and probably many more are due to go out of business this year because they can no longer make a profit as they are having to spend more and more on fuel and not getting a proper price from the buyers to make their business viable. My brother has recently set up a business Sea Harris running trips to St. Kilda and the Shiant Islands and he costed fuel at £0.65 per litre for red diesel; it was £0.55 at that time and he was accounting for it rising, but its now at £0.75 per litre. Now we know that most of this is a direct consequence of the global economy and the sheer greed of Oil Corporations fixing the price of oil to reach $135 a barrel (predicted to be $150 later in the year) to give them and their shareholder big fat bonuses but it still doesn't explain why there is such a massive difference between prices in the Hebrides and the mainland.
I used to work at a local fuel supplier and I know for a fact that 5p per litre is the profit margin at the pumps, think about it you have to shift 200 litres to make £10, so who is making the profits, who is conning the public with the classic abuse of supply vs demand to hoick up prices. I calculated once and I can't remember the exact figures but I went on holiday and coming back home I took a mental note of the price of fuel in portree and compared it with the price back home. BP deliver with tankers that can hold 38,000 litres and it would have been possible to fuel a tanker, pay its ferry fare, fuel various petrol stations in Harris, give the drive hotel accommodation, reimburse the driver/company for extra days travel etc and we could have resold the petrol at about 9p cheaper than the current price.
So the obvious question and one that should be investigated by our MP/MSP is why the massive difference, many countries offer fuel subsidies to rural communities; I think we're getting ripped off in the 1st place by the local suppliers BP. Fuel comes to the Islands by boat, they fill up massive tanks in Stornoway. Delivering by boat in large quantities is usually the most economic method of getting your product to your customer, if you buy a DVD player these days chances are its been shipped from Asia in a massive cargo boat, to put the economics into context the cost of shipping on each player is about 20p (I got this stat from a bbc documentary I watched last year). I know that obviously this is slightly out of scale for fuel deliveries within the UK but the principal must still apply. Britain is becoming more an more a rip-off country and unfortunately its those on the lowest salaries who will struggle to pay their fuel bills next winter, and by living in the Hebrides we are getting more ripped off than most and its high time something was done about it.
As a side note and as proof that you just can't trust these Corporate tossers any longer read this bbc news article. The key line in this is "British Gas did reduce customers' bills in March and April 2007, but consumer group Energywatch says energy companies did not pass on the full reduction to householders" what centrica did is as price of gas increased they passed the increase onto their customer, BUT as the price fell the didn't immediately pass the decrease to their customers. This highlights the evil ethics behind the company, the corporate greed where all that matters is the massive profits they make and as i mentioned earlier the dividends that are passed to their rich shareholders and the bonuses to their executives. Misguided Barney from Buxton is quoted as "British Gas are a private company, their goal is to earn as much money as they possibly can for their shareholders" this in my mind is incorrect, their 1st purpose is to provide a good cost effective service to the public and in turn generate profits for their shareholders.
