Pete - if we really don't have any choice in which "water, electricity, gas, airlines, newspapers" we decide to use what are all the price comparison web-sites all about ?
you are correct. Apologies for my terrible use of grammar... I will ave to practises speaking proper England!...:biggrin:
So you have a choice whether to use water or not, do you? Or electricity - candle-light, anybody? The fact is in reality we are obliged to use lots of services or face a very restricted lifestyle, and we have been deprived of the opportunity of using non-profit national public service providers. The only "choice" left is between pouring our money into the pockets of one profit-driven corporation or another, which is no choice at all. In broadcasting, health, and education universal public services free at point of use are the norm, supported out of taxation, although fee-charging private services for profit are also available; that's a real choice, and what's wrong with that?
Amen to that. If you've ever lived abroad and been subjected to endless commercials you have a better appreciation of the jewel (OK flawed jewel) that the BBC is. And for just 40p a day we get all the TV, radio and free websites, etc. It's a bargain. As is the Royal family....oh no, we better not get started on that one :biggrin:
If you ever watched American TV the ad breaks are relentless, they have a break after the open credits for Christ sake.
there fact is you can choose a green electricity company or a dirty company. you can choose to use a little or a lot. just like fuel in your big or small car I could be johnny foreigner from botswana. I could buy a tv and watch only my native tv beamed via satellite. sadly the bbc doesnt have a botsawana channel and i cant understand a word of bbc. but Im still expected to pay the bbc for nothing because of a legacy agreement made many years ago to help kick start the whole thing. well just look at all the tv companies / channels now. 100s - all self sufficient and self funding and sustainable or pay tv - lifes choices.. the bbc should be sold off like the old british gas and become a private entity where they fund themselves and compete on a level playing field with other big players and if people want to subscribe to the bbc via pay tv then fine. but for those that dont want or have enough with sky tv. then they should have the oprion not to receive the bbc and not pay for it whilst still using a tv to watch programmes created by others on other channels but then the bbc use capita and pay millions to a private company they distance themselves from very well to go about threatening people and using menaces for something they may not or do not need. and they wont stop until some muppet from a private company wants to search ones house.
and you pay more to the bbc that you probably do to your local fire and police authorities per year on your council tax. somethings not right. .. id rather they funded themselves and id gladly give the 144 to the police and splash n dash
Pete - being able to decide for myself which utility company I use actually is choice ( limited, admittedly ). Being told that if I want to own a television I have to pay for one company's output, despite the fact that I don't want to watch 99% of what they produce, that is "no choice at all".
So I reiterate: Do you use your local library and do you think you should be contributing to its upkeep? The other thing I find astonishing is that the BBC haters say that the BBC is so crappy (there is nothing they want to watch) but that commercial TV is brilliant (because it is 99% of what they watch). I'd be intrigued to know what they do look at that is so marvellous. I seem to be missing out. I'll also take it as read that all the BAFTAs won by BBC programmes are the result of some network of cronyism.
A simplification, but what is so brilliant about having everything in private hands to make money? Do you think you should pay to go to the beach? After all, think of the cash a company could make if they could corner the best beaches. What about a walk in the park? Perhaps they should all be private and you should pay to use them. I don't know about Guardianistas but what has merit in my eyes is not having my whole bloody life monetarised and making someone a profit. The 50m Olympic swimming pools here in Switzerland (lidos, I guess you'd call them - although that sounds a bit old whereas they are thoroughly modern facilities) are clearly subsidised. You can spend all day there for CHF 5 (about £3.50), or swim in the evening or lunchtime for CHF 2.50. But with your logic, you'd like them to be run by private companies so that the people who use them pay full price and enough to generate a profit. I imagine, therefore that the real price for a swim in such a place would be about £20 a time. No one would pay this (it would be exorbitant for families with children), so consequently there would be no swimming pools. But at least all the non-swimmers would be winners as their taxes could be spent on something else. Result. I remember a time (and you sound old enough to remember too) when all sorts of things were free. For a start, it was quite easy to find non-metered parking and even if you did have to pay, it didn't cost you an arm and a leg. But in the market economy, you charge what you can get away with, hence NCP carparks in central London, unmanned, stinking of piss and which cost about £35 to put the car in for the working day. This is clearly progress. Or you can install speed cameras everywhere to squeeze more money out of people for minor misdemeanours. You guys don't want a free society. You just want one where profit is attached to everything.
Absolutely we want a free society, free of the unnecessary dead hand of the state thinking we are chattel to do with as they please but at the same time recognising that yes there are some social needs that can only be met by the state through taxation. The issue Glidd is where you draw the line between the two and I think bootsam has correctly identified we will probably never agree where that line should be. The sad fact is that there is very little in this life that is free or can be taken for granted. Libraries, swimming pools and car parks all need to be paid for so the question is who pays for them and how. If that decision is taken by locally elected bodies then great that is democracy in action. The BBC is not like that. It is monster, which admittedly does produce some great programs, run by unaccountable individuals lining their own pockets and is yet another sacred cow that governments dare not touch, a bit that that other great British institution that is the envy of the world the NHS. There is much more to the right than simply making a profit.
maybe its just me but some are overcomplicating this simple matter with so far.... airplanes electricity companies water companies council parking going to the beach libraries a walk in the bloody park please feel free to add the ones I've been missed. the next time the bbc pay off another fat cat old schoolboy chum of the heirachy with a multimillion pay out for doing diddly squat we can all clap out hands and rejoice at good old auntie doing what it does best with this brilliant service. cant wait for this years rebate through the post from this not for profit organisation because they underspent last year and are handing the surplus back to customers...
