UK broadband tax

[knobby109]

Originally Posted by snape

What you "snivellers" need to be aware of is the destruction of the NHS, by starving it of resources and introducing payments.

Then come back and complain about less than two pence a day to give everyone fair access that is not governed by profit.

No government has ever cut expenditure on the NHS since its inception except in 1976 at the insistence of the IMF.That was a Labour government by the way.It would be political suicide.

[Aubrey]

Be careful what you wish for - the Tories might get in.

Didn't BT want to replace all their old copper wires with fibre optic in the 80s? And the Tories wouldn't let them as they said it would have been unfair competition?

Wouldn't it have been wonderful now if they'd been allowed to, though?

(I like the way the IMF think of health and education as Luxuries a country can do without.)

[VicFlange]

Originally Posted by tamsmith

Starving it of resources. This is a recession pal but the Government are still putting more money into the NHS.

Finally, I am not sure what a "sniveller" is but you might want to get your facts right before submitting your opinions here.

Unless I misread it, I think that the stuff about the NHS funding was about what the Tories will do if they get in, rather than what Labour are currently doing.

[whiskymick]

Labour, Tories they make the same promises until they get into office , then they feather thier own nests and promises made are forgotten, i'm just so glad Kenneth Clark was never PM and as for Queen Maggie T i can never forgive her

[knobby109]

Originally Posted by whiskymick

Labour, Tories they make the same promises until they get into office , then they feather thier own nests and promises made are forgotten, i'm just so glad Kenneth Clark was never PM and as for Queen Maggie T i can never forgive her

Had it not been for Maggie this country would never have entered the period of prosperity squandered by Gordon Brown.The british economy was in such a dire situation in 1979 that many observers felt it was a lost cause.You may have forgotten but it was widely predicted that Britain would become a banana republic.Industry was horrendously overmanned and so uncompetitive that we were stockpiling goods that nobody would buy.Unemployment was skyrocketing and of course continued after the election.But she inherited what was considered to be an impossible situation.As with all drastic surgery it was painful but the patient not only survived , it thrived again.Kenneth Clarke passed on to G.Brown the strongest economy in Europe.
Maggie is often credited with wrecking communities but in truth they were doomed anyway. Heavy industry was moving to cheap labour markets and coal couldn't compete with cheap gas.Whole communities depended on these things but they had little if any future.Nobody wanted what they made any more.
One thing which was never touched despite the horrendous economic situation was NHS spending which actually rose in real terms faster than before.

[dhream]

There is some truth in the fact that the Baroness did have to take stern measures to save bits of post Callaghan Britain, but some other ideas were disastrous, like selling off British Rail to all sorts of profiteers, and the subsequent farce of everyone owning 'bits' of the network and the whole '...Sorry, not our bit of the railway, Guv' farce...

[Lurkio]

to pick up a few points here:

Originally Posted by tamsmith

...
Seems like the haves have to pay the have nots so that the have nots can get what the haves already have.

However our Broadband is well behind certain other parts of the world and vastly overpriced compared with those countries.

Maybe the have nots are better off as they pay nothing.......

I find the whole argument a little difficult to follow: to the best of my knowledge, everywhere else in Europe, if you live off the beaten track, you pay the extra if you want facilities connected, not have the costs subsidised by everyone else in the county (I know this lack of subsidy may come as a surprise when talking about Europe ).

Some of those living in the countryside (though not all) are fairly rich, or as rich as their city equivalents, and have a better quality of life. So they could afford to pay a higher monthly fee. After all, have something delivered to your home in the Orkneys, and it costs an arm and a leg, so having broadband delivered ...

You pay a much higher rate if you want a business package, so why not for a 'county package'?

Maybe the reason for living so far out it to stay disconnected!

Surely this tax is just a way of getting votes in the out-lying countryside, where voters are possibly more likely to be floating Tories?

And we are seriously to believe that after bailing out the banks to £600 billion or thereabouts, £80million/ year in bb tax is going to make a difference?

In real terms, the only companies that have the infrastructure to reach out that far is cable. BT chose to use ADSL, it has to accept the inherent limitations, and lump it. BT may build more exchanges to bring small villages within range, infrastructure paid for by us, but will not be doing long runs of fibre to the home, with FO terminators at £1000 a pop.

And, rant final, the g*vt's bb policy for 2012 is based on bb being provided not by BT, but via the mobile phone networks, so no cables at all. And no BT.

(I'm estimating/ approximating the £ figures, so please forgive me)
Note, I am all for living in the countryside, in fact I used to, and would happily go back again. Its just a fact of life, like only having one bus a day, or a 30 minute drive to the nearest big supermarket.

Originally Posted by Aubrey

...
Didn't BT want to replace all their old copper wires with fibre optic in the 80s? And the Tories wouldn't let them as they said it would have been unfair competition?

isn't part of the problem BT replacing the expensive copper cables with aluminum ones, that dont transmit the ADSL signal as far?

[penfold007]

Presently, if you have a BT line the line rental just about covers the upkeep of the network. The local loop is a mixture of aluminium and copper, aluminium was mostly used before data over the voice network was ever considered a possibility.

As it stands at the moment, people living outside of the limit for ADSL are faced with paying dialup call charges for internet access simply because of where they live. It's easy to say "move then" but not so easy to do - I'm looking at moving for a different reason and estimate it's going to cost me over £15k once I take into account everything (stamp duty, removals, solicitors, estate agents fees etc). That's a lot just to get decent internet access.

[slaphead]

Where I live in Cyprus,virually all internet services are wireless with base stations sited around the island. This is because hard wired adsl lines are like gold dust,a telephone line takes years to get if at all. We get 1mb most of the time,more than that is unheard of unless you pay a large premium for the bandwidth to come from Turkey.

Why the UK doesn't do this I don't know...

[vo1v0d]

There is a tax on broadband; they deduct 90% of the speed at source.