Saturday 19 March 2011

ARE WE BEING CONNED WHEN WE BUY DIESEL IN THIS COUNTRY?



We've decided to got to Spain for the month of May for a holiday.  On researching the best way to go, I came to the conclusion that we diesel drivers are being conned big time in this country.


Diesel in my area is £0.09/ liter more expensive than unleaded petrol.  Why is that?  It used to be £0.04 cheaper!  Diesel on the Continent can be 25% cheaper than petrol.  In fact apart from in Britain, it's only more expensive in Latvia, Switzerland and Sweden.
Diesel cars, I'm told are 40% more efficient and are less polluting than petrol cars.  So why the difference?  Well, as far as I can see the only reason can be down to the Government and the oil companies in collusion.  
 How else could you explain it?

21 comments:

subrosa said...

You've got a new blog. Congratulations!

Diesel is the same here and it infuriates me. We were conned back in the 90s when we were told diesel was the fuel to use.

Anonymous said...

DUTY!

The Government levies FAR too much duty on fuel (and booze, in my opinion!), penalising the sensible diesel user (I totally agree with Subrosa!).

We're moving to France...

William said...

Collusion indeed what an accusation. My diesel engined vehicle actually runs on virgin veg oil, rapeseed oil, olive oil, pomace oil, sunflower oil in other words whatever is cheapest at Twatco or Bookers and the price of these oils exactly mirrors the rises and falls in diesel.

Currently the cheapest diesel round my way, just off the Isle Of Walney, is £1.34 a litre. The cheapest plant oil is £1.20 a litre. Still considerably cheaper than diesel but this time last year the cheapest plant oil was 85p a litre!

It's ridiculously easy to show clear evidence that there is collusion amongst business and government but devilishly hard to to convince other people that it is actually happening.

Now if only we could get that HAARP thing to come over here and blast the telly transmitters.

Dark Lochnagar said...

Rosie, A new blog?

You're right about diesel. They conned the industry and the consumers into buying 'green' cars, encouraging us with a bit of the fuel and now when we've all got them we're hammered. How particularly galling is it if you are running a truck or a van for your business?

Dark Lochnagar said...

Emptyseas, Welcome to the blog. The duty is ridiculous. We don't have any ties now and we are seriously considering moving to Spain. In Spain it doesn't matter where you buy fuel because the Spanish Government regulates it so that it is the same price everywhere, so none of this buying it on the motorway at a exorbitant price when it's available elsewhere for £.10 less.

Dark Lochnagar said...

William, Hi. You're fucking lucky you can get diesel at £1.34 it's over £1.40 here and I stay in central Scotland! It's interesting the price of oil rising as well, maybe it's demand? That HAARP thing is interesting, obvious fertile ground for us conspiracy theorists.

Billy Carlin said...

What are we not being conned about? Then again most of the population deserve it because they are more interested in crap on the tv or fitba than to what is really going on.

banned said...

As others say DL, we were conned into getting deisel cars (which, to be fair, are easier to maintain)with cheaper fuel but then once most of us had them the pimping cunts of State whaked up the fuel duty.
Not my problem though since I maintain good relations with cousin Giles Farmer, he of the red deisel, allegedly.

Dark Lochnagar said...

Billy true we are just sheeple put here to serve our lord and masters' neeeds. The only thing they haven't discovered how to do yet is to live for ever, well at least unless you believe the films.

Dark Lochnagar said...

Banned< i wish to fuck I knew where there was some. I remember when I was in the fish trade the customs men appearing down the fish market to test the trucks for red diesel. Fucking joke. I'll be heading down your way when I'm driving to Spain on holiday, any chance of getting your cousin to allegedly fill my tank too?

Down in the smoke said...

This is the UK! We're used to being fleeced by corporate scamsters doing us a favour. You want fuel, power, gas or water? Take your pick of cartel operations giving you real choice. Building Societies? Bribe the investors to back the plans to turn them into banks with bonuses all round. Politics? Give them the choice of three totally independent parties, or in your case four, all with the same ultimate goal of one nation under the EU sun.
But if you get bored, there's always film of the latest cruise missile launches on Libya.

Dark Lochnagar said...

Smokers, all that will do is bring down more Islamic martyrs, we should have let them get on with it and hit the cunt with a single cruise missile and that would have sorted him out!

Gordo said...

I wouldn't even do that, I would just let them get on with it.

Dark Lochnagar said...

Gordo, like you, I don't believe in interfering in other countries. Let them get on with it, we've got enough problems here.

William said...

Good old Twatco.
Diesel has now risen to DL's £1.40 a litre level round here but Twatco Extra have veg oil 'on offer' at 99p per litre!

Result.

Do Twatco execs read this blog?

Dark Lochnagar said...

William, are you trying to tell me that if I pour Vegetable oil into my tank, my diesel car will run on it?

William said...

Hi DL
No what I am saying is my 1997 vintage diesel engined Japanese import a Toyota Hilux Surf will run perfectly well on virgin veg oil without any modifications.

All I have to do is remember is when the thermometer approaches freezing I switch to 50-50 diesel and if it goes below freezing run on diesel only.
Had 40 litres of veg oil yoghurt in the back of the car during the run up to Christmas due to the cold. That won't power anything.

The older the car the more likely it will run on veg oil the diesel engine was designed to run on plant oils, peanut oil if memory serves. Up till it's invention diesel (the heavy oil part of petrol production) was being thrown away as the oil companies had no use for it

Ferdinand Diesel was about to sell his invention to the Royal Navy and he disappeared overboard a la Maxwell and diesel gave his name to the fuel we use today, posthumously of course.

Much more info here
http://hiluxsurf.co.uk/

Mr Diesel here
http://www.dieselveg.com/rudolf_diesel.htm

Veg oil stuff here inc power generation. Off grid is looking like a strong possibility!
http://www.dieselveg.com/

Dark Lochnagar said...

William, I'm shocked and stunned. I woulkd have thought that some modification would have been required. I wonder if I poured some chip oil into my Nissan, If it would work as well?

William said...

That should be Rudolf Diesel obviously.

If it's an old Nissan (pre 2000) then try a litre or two in with the diesel and see what happens. Even if you only dare go to a 50-50 mix the savings are now considerable, much better than the non existent 1p off that Georgie boy is offering.

As long as it's virgin oil there are no 'fines' in suspension to worry about.
The fuel filter and the injectors are the two bits of kit which are affected if at all.
I guess that the Hilux Surf being a proper offroader and not a plastic one (think anything Korean in origin) and being used throughout the world (especially the Asian and African parts of the world) for this purpose, alongside its bigger sister the Land Cruiser, I presume that as Toyota are very good at understanding their markets they fitted the Hilux Surf with a filter and injectors that are suited to plant oils and mineral oils.

I frankly baulked at the £600 conversion cost and I don't do enough miles to justify the cost of buying a fractionation gadget (around £1000 although it would pay me back in around five years at today's diesel price) and getting my fuel for almost nothing from the local chippies but I did want to become as independent as possible of the control mechanisms namely petrol and diesel so I just tried it to see what would happen after reading the posts on the Hilux Surf forum.

Nothing ventured nothing gained.

Word of warning though a stupid friend tried it on his brand new £35K motorhome fitted with an up to the minute diesel and it choked mainly because the fuel filter is so ridiculously fine and it cost him £1500 to have the system drained and restored. Bloody Fiats!

Dark Lochnagar said...

William, No it is only 2 years old, so I think I would be unwise to try it, tempting although it is. It's the principle of using it instead of diesel that fascinates me and how that works in a combustion engine.

William said...

DL
I'm nor mechanic and have no idea how a diesel engine works other than compression is enough to cause an explosion of the fuel injected.

Rudolf designed his 'compression engine' to use 'bio fuel' only the term bio-fuel hadn't been invented so he couldn't use the politically correct term.

His reasoning was to help farmers get away from their dependence of 'expensive petrol' (now hows that for progressive thinking) and having to store quantities of the incendiary on their premises or face a long journey to the nearest pump.

He was a genius because he knew that farmers grew crops that are turned into oil so if he could design an engine to run off this readily available fuel source he would sell loads of diesel engines to tractor manufacturers and make himself a wealthy man.

There is no noticeable difference in the performance of my car. I have no idea how many mpg I get out of veg as opposed to diesel because I don't measure my fuel consumption in mpg. I measure it in £'s. On that measure I am currently using 75 litres or so every month so
At the today's diesel price that is £105
At today's veg oil price that is £74.25

So it's around 25% cheaper to use veg than diesel.

However my loyal mechanic says that in his experience veg oils treat the engine better but they do not deliver the same 'grunt' per litre as diesel does. Grunt being a trade term I am not familiar with I presume he means raw power.
He said more and more people are buying older 4X4's simply because they will run on veg oil without any problems. Some days his garage smells more like a chip shop than a garage.