Monday 29th April 2002

Taking the Pi$$

Red diesel to become yellow to prevent tax evasion

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[Farmer]

bet this will be an all time high response topic ......not

[nonegreen]

quote:bet this will be an all time high response topic ......not

Just illustrates how much the thieving bastards are getting from us. OOOOh it makes me sooooo mad, I just want to get Blair in a headlock and squease the last drop of life out of him..... Rant over.

[gnomesmith]

But it does put the Farmers protests about fuel costs in proportion.

[Fatboy]

I nearly bought a diesel when I lived with my parent's as I could have used their red diesel from the central heating boiler - much cheaper

Out of interest, how does plod notice if you're using red diesel?

[ap_smith]

'Cos it's red?

[GregE240]

Exactly. The red dye stains the innards of your engine and there's no getting rid of it.

[Fatboy]

So they have to take your engine to bits to find out? What I meant is can a traffic plod tell by looking at the car?

[CarZee]

And just how far down the list of 'Stuff Plod gives a crap about' is what colour your diesel is? Bloody burocracy for it's own sake..

[JMGS4]

It's not the plod you want to worry about here, its the Excisemen (those buggers who can do a search in a house/car/tent etc purely on suspicion without even a search warrant!) They're the real enemy............

[DIGGA]

We run commercial vehicles, and every now and then, they'll get pulled over for a routine check by the M.O.T.. You see them in lay-bys on roads all over the country.

They often have someone from the DSS to check the driver is not claiming dole etc., they check the overall condition of the truck and the security of it's load, AND they take a sample from the tank.

They analyse the fuel using a mass spectrometer (basically shining polarised light into the fuel) and are able to detect the red dye with great accuracy. They reckon even if it was 50 tank-fulls back that you used red, they can tell. Fines can be extremely hefty - well over £10K for fleet operators.

The Irish (according to the media) have set about filtering out the red dye by running the diesel through cat litter (true, honest) but I guess perhaps yellow dye is harder to remove!

[marki]

quote:
And just how far down the list of 'Stuff Plod gives a crap about' is what colour your diesel is? Bloody burocracy for it's own sake..

It would probably be number 1 on the list of must do today , after all it would be worth a few bob

[phil hill]

As pointed out it's not Police who care, it's Customs & Execise.

A major problem with being "done" for running on Red is that Customs & Execise will give you a criminal conviction for defrauding the treasury rather than a minor traffic offence. Think about that on your record.

Good place to spot them used to be any agricultural show up and down the land, bright yellow jackets, little squeezy bottle with tube on top in hand. They "dip" the tank by sucking some fuel into the bottle and check out the colour. They have tests that can detect minute residule amounts of Red in regular fuel, but it has to go to the lab for that.

Last trick I'd heard was mixing diesel from Eire with Red. Eire diesel is kind of yellow colour so dilutes the Red to kind of the colour of UK pump diesel...... but the Execise know about that too, so it's no escape boys and girls.

>> Edited by phil hill on Tuesday 30th April 13:59

[plotloss]

It also smokes a lot more than white diesel because it hasnt been treated in the same way.

Its a bit of a dead giveaway really.

Matt.

[relaxitscool]

As stated its the department of transport who check the fuel and prosecute. Its actually quite a serious problem, with the majority of red diesel coming from Ireland and the money then filtering back into the coffers of the IRA. Not a word of a lie.

Regards

Rob

[mel]

quote:
The Irish (according to the media) have set about filtering out the red dye by running the diesel through cat litter (true, honest) but I guess perhaps yellow dye is harder to remove!

Fullers Earth is what it's filtered through, it's the base material for Talcom Powder, Chemical Decontamination powder and I guess cat litter. It actually draws out the die from the diesel.
All apparently of course.

[Fatboy]

Bugger. Another damn fine plan scuppered then Don't suppose a diesel engine would run OK on Kerosene then? (What my mum's boiler now burns, still a buggerload cheaper than petrol)

[Leadfoot]

That'll work with a bit of oil mixed in to lubricate the fuel system. Wouldn't want to use it long term in anything you cared about.

[gnomesmith]

Years ago I ran a TR2 on parafin with a touch of Castrol R. Being closely related to a tractor the engine thrived on it but you needed to start it from cold on petrol. You could use the old Castrol R tin as an auxillary petrol tank with an SU petrol pump wired into the map light switch.

All very illegal but a TR2 was sufficiently fast to outrun local plod on an LE Velocette.

[Farmer]

quote:
But it does put the Farmers protests about fuel costs in proportion.

How do you think all your food gets to Sainsburys . with a tonne of wheat worth currently around £60-65 what proportion does the fuel then cost to cart it from the farm to the mill or the port , a 40 tonne truck does what 8-10 mpg ? who actually ends up paying for the fuel ? the mug at the bottom of the food chain , thats who .

Fuel duty is suposedly levied to pay for the road system we tractor drivers try to keep off the roads as you all know !!!!!

[mondeoman]

How about Eco-diesel?? made from "used" vegetable oil, it apparently has a higher fuel rating (like 98 RON as compared to 95 RON) so it makes ya go faster and its taxed at a much lower rate as its an "enviromental" fuel. Buy it in 1000 litre containers. www.ebony-solutions.co.uk if you're interested..

>> Edited by mondeoman on Wednesday 1st May 18:47