Why petrol prices are so high (2)

Nothing like a bit of scaremongering to sell newspapers...

I was horrified the other day in the supermarket to see this headline on the front page of the Daily Mail : "£70 to fill up with petrol: Families hit by yet another stealth tax and soaring oil prices."

Apparently this is due to the escalating price of oil (True - it hit a 27 month high of $98 a barrel this week) and George Osbourne's forthcoming budget increases.

This latter is patently untrue. Nobody, except perhaps the government's innermost circle, knows what's going to be in the budget. But this doesn't stop the Daily Mail. Oh, no! "Petrol retailers have written to George Osborne urging the Chancellor to abandon the next automatic ‘escalator’ rise in fuel duty in his Budget, which will see up to 5p a litre added to the cost of fuel."

At this point I would like to point out that the Fuel Price Escalator in question was actually abandoned in 1999. It is true to say that increases have been applied in sucessive budgets, but it is patently untrue to say that it is 'automatic'.

And the claim of 'up to 5p added'? Well, I take that with the same pinch of salt that I take when I look at adverts offering 'up to 50% off' because, let's be honest, bugger all is 'up to' whatever figure you want to highlight!

But this doesn't seem to matter to the Mail. "The cost of filling a saloon with a 50-litre tank will soar to about £70" Frankly, I don't think that will worry anyone who can afford a car with a 50 litre tank. I filled both my cars this week and neither of them took more than 36 litres. Still, it makes a nice soundbite.

But the thing that irritated me most about this piece of scaremongering non-news is the headline that describes this as a "stealth tax". I find it hard to understand how something that hasn't happened - much less been proposed - can be described as stealth, especially when it is trumpetted two months in advance on the front page of a national newspaper.

My conclusion must therefore be : If you want real news, then don't buy the Daily Mail on a slow news day...