Thursday 27 August 2009

Seeing red about Diesel

Seeing red about diesel
27th August 2009

You don't read much about the Red Diesel issue since the self certification arrangement came into force last Autumn, but I am not sure that silence really is golden.

In recent months I have been out and about on the system, filling up with diesel from a number of suppliers and have been surprised by the diversity of propulsion / heating and generation declarations recorded on the vendors sales sheets. I recently purchased diesel form one very well known and high profile boatyard and was amazed to see that of the 20 names on the list, 19 had declared 0% propulsion!


Now we all know that the Government didn't really want to implement this European driven change, and were all relieved that the self declaration process introduced a measure of sanity into the situation, but now I am concerned.

If the self declarations I have seen are typical, I think that the boating community could stand accused of not playing the game. And if we can't be trusted to take a reasonable approach self declaration, the option may be removed and we will all end up paying full duty on all our diesel.

I fear that this may be a classic case of having an elephant in the house - we all know that there is an issue, but no one wants to talk about it.

We should all take care in our declarations as this is probably a case of "if you abuse it you lose it".

1 comment:

D Baynham said...

I vary my declaration depending on time of the year. Winter I dn't move and stay in the marina and declare 100% heating, Easter time I may declare 40-60% heating then in the summer 80-20% I haven't yet declared 100% propulsion though.