Petition for Lower Fuel Prices
Posted by keithfisherking on May 26, 2008
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There’s a group on Facebook called "Lower Fuel Price Petition..please sign..(its a real government petition)" on which an amusing discussion has arisen.
It was started by a fella called Marcus Powell who asserts that because of economics, the OPEC cartel and something called "demand elasticity" (this gets mentioned A LOT) "this is not only going to fail, but fuck you all over"
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Marcus has his detractors in the discussion; My favourite of whom is Hamish Dorethy-Jones Robertson, who has this to say:
"although i vaguely, understand all the cartel buisness etc. for one I do understand the idea of supply and demand. It simple guy. lets say and ice cream man pulls up in ur street. 30 kids (those guys in the trading centers) run up to him. they all want a double cone £1. He has 40 but decides to tell them he only has 15. He says the highest bidders (countries/companies/traders, whatever) can have them! so they start bidding and cos theres 30 of them and only 15 cones, the price rises until it reaches £1.50!! The pay their price. The ice cream guy goes home, and then the kids sell it to their rents. But the rents have to pay a fixed rate of VAT/tax 10p. The parents complain about the VAT not the price, I dont understand. If the government used all the 10ps and paid for a giant ice cream machine, and all the parents shared it. The price of ice cream(travel) wud fall for all them, plus there wud be less cones(cars) on the road, and wud free up the road for magnums(bicycles) and also giant triple layered chocolate smothered ice cream sundaes(trains buses etc), and the ice cream man wud be pissed off!!"
I hope Hamish is taking the piss: If he is, he is a genius; If not, I don’t want to meet him!