Downing Street denies need to ration fuel

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Tawney
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Post by Tawney »

DominicJ wrote:
Consider who might be “priced out”:

- Hospitals
- Fire Services
- Police
- Councils (e.g. school buses, street cleaners etc)
- Little old ladies in tower blocks
- Low paid key workers
- Young unemployed
- Small business workers (UKs largest employment sector)
- Specific regions in Britain (as some regions – like the SE – will be able to afford the highest prices)
The first four are government.
Governments dont get priced out by their own populace, they simply take what they need.
If the hospitals run out of fuel, you'll have been buying road fuel in jerry cans from the back of a lorry for months with foreign currency.
Perhaps you’re assuming the rich care that much about services for ordinary people? Why would they? What they’ll care about will be access to premier, privatised services. When times get tougher they’d be looking after their own interests (like most people).

I believe we’re heading for a privatised minimal state. It’s what you get in a lot of the third world. This isn’t some wild-eyed dystopian vision of the future, it’s how things are in much of the world and spreading to the west sometime soon. The cosy, western liberal welfare state is an aberration in history.

You can see it in parts of the US and I'd argue it’s beginning to happen here; impoverished local administration, largely privatised fire service, police in some areas so broke they’re selling their cop cars and privatised hospitals where costs get passed on to the patients. Thatcher loved General Pinochet’s shock economic reforms and we now know from the wikileaks that every member of the Tory cabinet is one of Thatcher’s children. The will is there, it’s a question of opportunity.
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DominicJ
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Post by DominicJ »

Perhaps you’re assuming the rich care that much about services for ordinary people? Why would they? What they’ll care about will be access to premier, privatised services. When times get tougher they’d be looking after their own interests (like most people).
Thats opretty much what I said, the rich will buy it on the black market with foreign currency, the rest of us will be robbed blind by the government.
every member of the Tory cabinet is one of Thatcher’s children
:roll:
Do you have any idea how stupid that sounds?
Cameron is a Thatcherite?
How?
Because Government spending is going to increase every year for the next 5? Seriously, check yourself.
Because Government is back in the business of picking winners in the private sector?

Pull the other one.
Camerons a Wilson, possibly a Heath, definatly not a Thatcher.
I'm a realist, not a hippie
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nexus
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Post by nexus »

Cameron is a Blairite, all spin and no substance.

Osbourne is a Thatcherite, as are most of the rest of the party and if they had had a popular mandate the cuts would be even deeper. As it is they are cutting faster than Thatcher did.
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Frederick Douglass
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biffvernon
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Post by biffvernon »

Tawney wrote: Perhaps you’re assuming the rich care that much about services for ordinary people? Why would they?
An interesting question and the answer may not be obvious.

The rich may be rich because they are evil, grasping selfish people, or because they are clever people, (or lots of other reasons but we'l ignore them for the moment).

Let's look at the rich = clever possibility.

Clever people, being clever, realise that there is a social good in services that makes life in the society worth living and so worth promoting for the benefit of all including themselves. If this view predominates over the grasping greedy then we have a reason why the rich care more about services than 'ordinary' people.

A scan through the history of the development of the welfare state shows that it was largely promoted by the well-off intelligentsia.
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DominicJ
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Post by DominicJ »

nexus wrote:As it is they are cutting faster than Thatcher did.
Government spending in the year 10/11 will be higher than in the year 09/10.
11/12 will be higher than 10/11 and so on and so forth.

http://ukpublicspending.co.uk/downchart ... r=c&title=
I cant see any cuts in total spending.

http://ukpublicspending.co.uk/downchart ... r=c&title=
Or Health

http://ukpublicspending.co.uk/downchart ... r=c&title=
Or Pensions

http://ukpublicspending.co.uk/downchart ... r=c&title=
Or Welfare

http://ukpublicspending.co.uk/downchart ... r=c&title=
Or even defence.
I'm a realist, not a hippie
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Tawney
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Post by Tawney »

DominicJ wrote:
every member of the Tory cabinet is one of Thatcher’s children
:roll:
Do you have any idea how stupid that sounds?
Cameron is a Thatcherite?
How?
I'm not in a position to argue whether it's true or not. Perhaps I should have put it in speechmarks, it's a wikileak quote from William Hague .. along with the bit about his sister living in the US and how he takes all his holidays there.
Conservative party politicians lined up before the general election to promise that they would run a "pro-American regime" and buy more arms from the US if they came to power this year, the leaked American embassy cables show …

William Hague, offered the ambassador a "pro-American" government. Hague also said the entire Conservative leadership were, like him, "staunchly Atlanticist" and "children of Thatcher".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010 ... lationship
For what it’s worth, my impression of Cameron is that his position is quite weak within the party, because he didn’t deliver a clear win and because he never had a strong support base in the Tory party. I see Cameron as a puppet of others and of events.
Camerons a Wilson, possibly a Heath, definatly not a Thatcher.
I can’t see any connection between Wilson and Cameron, but Edward Heath would have liked to have pursued many of the policies that Mrs Thatcher became known for, alas for him trades union power and high fuel stocks made it impossible. It didn’t stop him moaning about her for years afterwards, of course.
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Mr. Fox
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Post by Mr. Fox »

biffvernon wrote:Let's look at the rich = clever possibility.
Another interesting question to which the answer may not be obvious (they rarely are where networks and complex systems are concerned).

So, erm... let me stop you right there... ;)

[scratch one more 'free-market' myth!]
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biffvernon
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Post by biffvernon »

Oh yes, the Pareto principle dominates all economic systems (and a lot of other systems that involve things that move chaotically), but my point was about the much narrower question of why the rich might care.

And in my ridiculously simplified rich = clever case there's probably a lot of feedback that makes rich folk become 'clever', part of the Pareto principle in itself.
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adam2
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Post by adam2 »

To return to the issue of fuel rationing, I dont see how rationing of heating oil will help in the present situation.
There appears to be plenty of heating oil at refineries, the problem is poor road conditions impeding deliveries to end users, many of whom are in remote areas.
If a tanker cant get down a narrow ice covered lane with 1,000L then rationing the delivery to 250L wont help.

It would appear that many heating oil users have relied on being able to obtain supplies at short notice, rather then filling the tank before winter starts.
"Installers and owners of emergency diesels must assume that they will have to run for a week or more"
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RenewableCandy
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Post by RenewableCandy »

They're also predominantly rural places (where the gas main hasn't reached) making it all the more likely.
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peaceful_life
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Post by peaceful_life »

I was listening to an interview on Radio 4 the other day & the oil supplier was saying they aren't taking on any new customers.
Strange business model that,unless............
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