When the Duty Escalator came in here in the early 90s, Oil was rolling out at around $10 a barrel. The Government capitalised on a low oil price to raise revenue, fair enough you could say. But when oil prices were rising in the 00s and Mr Brown was just lumping on duty left and right whenever he felt like it, it got ridiculous. And if his (or Blair's at the time) Government wasnt wasting so much they wouldnt of needed to charge us so much.

But Collos has a good point (shockingly) about investment. In the mid 90s, the UK were among the cheapest in Europe for petrol and diesel, now we're in the top five most expensive but roads are still largely the same, there hasnt been much development or improvement of the road network (if anything they've done their best to make it worse) and public transport is still as tragic as it was 20 years ago.

There are specialist groups of frankly heroic people in the military who can go into war zones and build a hospital inside a week or a whole highway in one day. Yet we cant fill in potholes back home?

Dont get me started on 2 Jags Prescott, a laugh he may be, an embarassment to Britain he also is. Much worse than his M4 Bus Lane was his regulation that new housing cannot be built with anymore than 1.5 parking spaces meaning that housing developments of say 20 homes could have no more than 30 parking spaces (and that was an upper maximum, typically you're looking at 1 space each or even less than that) in an attempt to enforce his view of one-car-per-family. This is a man who also thought two car families would double congestion overnight, ignoring the fact the frequency of both cars on the same road at the same time is extremely rare. The reality is with people doing different hours and women going out to work these days (something the Labour Party rightly championed for a long time) alot of families require two cars. Those cars ended up parked on the streets, filling up our roads and turning them into car parks. This not only was inconvenient, but causes hazards for pedestrians, cyclists, limited bus access, limited emergency access etc at the same time the Government then let private parking vultures essentially do whatever they like and at the same time council parking wardens were given bigger incentives to give out tickets. Co-incidence? I dont think so. Estate Agents have been struggling to shift 5 bedroomed houses because they only have one parking space, development blocks where half have a space and half dont see the half with spaces sold first (obviously).

There's one well documented case of a development in Reading of around 45 apartments, under the guidance of PPG13 only 26 spaces were approved. Guess which 26 apartments sold first? You got it, the ones with spaces.

Then they come out with new taxes to get cars off of our roads and enforce higher parking charges due to the problems created by on street parking. Problems they caused in the first place to invent a new revenue stream and on and on and on and on it goes. Within just 7 years of Prescott, Government revenue from parking charges rose 50% compared to before Labour came to power and parking fines raise 7 times more than Speed Camera's.

Thankfully the Government scrapped Prescott's pathetic ruling known as PPG13 which prevented housing developments having enough parking spaces on purpose. It was scrapped this year but the fact is they've been built now and we now have to live with the trouble caused by it for generations until we can raise the money to go and rebuild it all again.

God the man annoys me, i'd best shut up now i'll just type for hours about his policies....

Edited by jamie745 on 04/10/2011 at 17:28

Last night I filled up in France.60 litres of premium excellium diesel at €1.33/litre. Normal diesel is 1.29 at the same total garage in "Bretagne".

When I arrive in the UK tomorrow there will still be 40 litres in the tank.

I call that a saving.