To Archive List PageOne of our regular correspondents forwarded this piece to us. We thought the best think to do with it would be to post it on an 'as is' basis and see if anyone salutes it.

The price of petrol is hitting 95p a litre in some areas now, soon we will be faced with paying £1 a litre. What can the ordinary consumer do about it?

Philip Hollsworth offered this good idea:

This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the "don't buy petrol on a certain day" campaign that was going around last April or May! The oil companies just laughed at that because they knew we wouldn't continue to hurt ourselves by refusing to buy petrol. It was more of an inconvenience to us than it was a problem for them.
   BUT, whoever thought of this idea, has come up with a plan that can really work. Please read it and join in!

Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of a litre is CHEAP, we need to take aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the marketplace not sellers. With the price of petrol going up more each day, we consumers need to take action.
   The only way we are going to see the price of petrol come down is if we hit someone in the pocket by not purchasing their Petrol! And we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves. Here's the idea:

For the rest of this year, DON'T purchase ANY petrol from the two biggest oil companies (which now are one), ESSO and BP. If they are not selling any petrol, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit. But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of Esso and BP petrol buyers.
   It's really simple to do!! Now, don't whimp out on me at this point... keep reading and I'll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people!! I am sending this note to a lot of people.
   If each of you send it to at least ten more (30 x 10 = 300)... and those 300 send it to at least ten more (300 x 10 = 3,000) ... and so on, by the time the message reaches the sixth generation of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers! If those three million get excited and pass this on to ten friends each, then 30 million people will have been contacted!
   If it goes one level further, you guessed it... .. THREE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE!!! Again, all You have to do is send this to 10 people.
   That's all.(and not buy at ESSO/BP)

How long would all that take? If each of us sends this email out to ten more people within one day of receipt, all 300 MILLION people could conceivably be contacted within the next 8 days!!! I'll bet you didn't think you and I had that much potential, did you! Acting together we can make a difference. If this makes sense to you, please pass this message on.

PLEASE HOLD OUT UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES
TO THE 69p a LITRE RANGE.

It's easy to make this happen. Just forward this email, and buy your petrol at Shell, Asda, Tesco, Sainsburys, Morrisons, Jet, Total, etc.

  i.e. boycott BP and Esso  

Another good company to boycott is British Gas, which is noted for its dishonest business practices, which include cancelling payment plans without consulting the customer and demanding with menaces, money which has already been paid to the company after the company has acknowledge receipt of the payment.

  also boycott British Gas  

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