Islay leaves the AA’s fuel price predictions standing

Barely a week ago, Argyll’s MSP, Jim Mather, highlighted the substantial differential between the pump price for motor fuel in the UK as opposed to other European countries, few of which have access to a domestic oil industry.

That handicap to business and the particular problems faced by those who are dependent to a greater degree upon road transport has been further brought into focus by a report from the Automobile Association (AA) that petrol prices could reach a record high of £1.20 per litre in the next few weeks.

Well, sorry – but Islay’s there already – and beyond the AA’s prediction.

On 15th March, Petrol at one of Islay’s filling stations cost £1.263 per litre and has been over £1.20 per litre for weeks.

Jim Mather says: ‘I make no apology for once again raising the threat that sky high fuel prices brings to the economies of areas like my constituency of Argyll & Bute.

‘The AA report forecasts a pump price for petrol of £1.20 but that is already present and exceeded at various points in rural Scotland as those at the end of the supply line pay more in every instance.

‘The cost of fuel impacts on every product and service in rural Scotland and it is clear that this message does not register with the present Chancellor, Alastair Darling any more than it did with his predecessor Gordon Brown. Both continue to use the domestic motorist and the haulier as a source of revenue to pay up for their bank bail out.

‘The SNP MPs at Westminster are once again  calling  for a regime of fuel tax regulation that would acknowledge and relieve the burden being paid by those who live farthest  from the major conurbations and have little alternative other than to use their cars for transport.

This measure has considerable industry support but is opposed by Labour whenever it is raised. The Tories and LibDems at Westminster have consistently failed to support any such a move although both make noises against the impact of tax fuel when they campaign in rural areas.

‘Oil rich Scotland, like our Norwegian neighbours, should be reaping the benefits from our off shore resources – not watching as North Sea revenues pour into a black hole in Whitehall while the Scottish budget is slashed and services reduced’.

Islay’s Susan Campbell, an Ileach editor and contributor and the source of the information on current pump prices on the island puts the position sharply.

She says: ‘Public transport in Islay only runs between the villages (and doesn’t come within 6 miles of my home, nor the homes of others living off the main roads of Islay)

‘Not all of us can constantly find more money for motor fuel as its costs relentlessly rises. Even with making deliberate efforts to use cars only for unavoidable journeys and making each journey do a lot of jobs, most of us in the countryside cannot avoid car use altogether.

‘Looked at objectively, while I am making every effort not to drive an unnecessary inch, is seems pure silliness for there to be a car rally in Mull where the drivers tear around burning masses of fuel and causing pollution and aren’t even ‘going anywhere’.’

This last remark underlines the nature of our losses and coming losses. Our previously uncontrolled extravagance with fossil fuels has both depleted resources to a point nearing the critical and has damaged the planet.

Together these facts are seeing us facing living in a manner closer than is comfortable to some essential features of the way our forefathers lived.

• They used to wear heavy clothes indoors because they had no heat. We will have to move in this direction because we must conserve our energy resources.
• Without electricity, they lived with poor lights in the dark hours and ruined their eyesight by trying to read in it. We are already beset by low energy light bulbs and have had the alternatives removed from sale. We struggle with their slow response times – which are dangerous. We feel de-energised by their poor quality of light; and alienated by their unattractive tone.
• Now we are starting to question the long term viability of traditional leisure and entertainment pursuits.

We have long sung the praises of the high level skills and the adrenaline of the Tour of Mull Rally. We have compared its very real risks with the cushioned circumstances of F1 which has the profile but has not actually been a race for a long time – becoming more a matter of mechanical and technical attrition rates.

The last real racer was Britain’s Nigel Mansell who proved the point when, rejected by Williams (who discarded other Grand Prix World Championship winners with equal and premature dispatch), went off to Indy and won that utterly macho series in his first year of competition.

Now, as Susan Campbell suggests, we are reaching the point where what we do and watch in out spare time may have to change.

Think of the theatre – whose magic is carried in no small way by stage lighting – simultaneously burning high numbers of high powered specialist lamps. Will we have to curtail that too – perhaps returning to the ancient Greeks use of daylight and sunset for our performances and our atmospherics?

And what about football with winter matches and evening training lit by great banks of lights?

Wherever we’re going, it is the remote, rural places that will get there first, hit hardest by cost differentials as in fuel prices.

The introduction of a Fuel Tax Regulator, as Jim Mather argues, offers a degree of shelter to residents and businesses together keeping alive many of our historic communities.