The Royal Mail attempted to cancel my local PostBus this summer. There was a major email, letter-writing, and telephoning campaign, and they kept it, but made the times extremely inconvenient - this way, of course, if ridership numbers go down, they can say the service obviously isn't needed. They've already reduced capacity from 11 passengers to 4. Well, they _claim_ 4, but three of them would need to be very skinny to fit in the back seat without squishing. People have been left standing at the stop when the 'bus' comes by, already full. It's NOT a bus, it's a dinky little car. But for many people, this is the ONLY available means of transportation.
I was around in 1955, although not working yet. And I can assure you the way how badly many firms now treat staff hadn't even been thought of. There were phrases like the 'dignity of labour' and a 'fair days pay for a fair day's work'. All gone for ever in this grab it now society. Luckily I won't be around when the present lot of 30 somethings - both UK born and EU immigrants - get to the point when they can no longer work. Leaving those still working to support them or starve. Dickensian conditions will seem a luxury.
But you and others like you don't matter. The idea of any form of public service is an anathema to many. You are supposed to just go out and buy a car.
They have to go to the letter box as it is, so that's still taking an action, and proof of delivery always costs more anyway.
That's fine. If they believe that they can build a business on it, good luck to them. However it is a different issue from any kind of universal service commitment.
I think that that's true and will come to pass eventually.
There isn't a need for a "public service". If there is a need for something, people are willing to pay for it. If there isn't, then there is no point in doing it. The discussion is then only about the mechanism to pay. Clearly the users of a postal delivery service should pay according to the true cost to provide it.
I'm sure. Hence my point that if something isn't commercially interesting to offer because people are not willin g to pay then it shouldn't be offered.
Yes they can, or they can charge the economic rate for the service. People would then consider whether paper delivery really is necessary in comparison with electronic delivery.
This is not a justification for continuing to operate a non-viable business. If that's going to happen, then we might as well return to the days of state run subsidised industries, a model which has already failed in every country in which it has been operated.
Pension provision would be in a far better position had it not been for Brown stealing from pension funds and essentially wrecking the pensions industry.
I'm sure that there are plenty of other means, and utility bills are a pretty weak one
... and, for its time, very good it was too. I can remember going with a French colleague, must have been 20 years ago, to visit is grandmother who had an apartment in 8eme in Paris. She was in her late 80s and very proud of demonstrating the Minitel to us.
For the relatively small proportion of people actually needing such a service, it would make sense to subsidise it out of taxation (a comment I don't make lightly) because it would be cheaper than running a universal system that is no longer needed.
It's hardly elitist to suggest that when around 60% of the population has internet access.
There is certainly an income factor with over 50% of adults earning less than £10,400 never having used the internet. There's no reason to believe that this is because they don't *want* to do so any more than people in any other income group.
As to the factor of trust - technology moves on. When trains were first introduced, there was a fear that people wouldn't be able to survive a speed of more than a few miles per hour
However, people do buy these devices and services because it does eliminate the need to deal with "a computer".
99% of households have a TV set and 98% a telephone, according to ONS. When one then considers the migration to digital television and introduction of flat screen HDTVs, it would be reasonable to say that a very high proportion of households will be equipped with the means to access such services and that they can be provided with better quality than today.
Several retailers specifically mention TV sales figures in their results as saving their bacon across the summer - even Argos managed that - so there is certainly a substantial uptake.
A lot of them are probably pensioners on the state pension, so many of them probably have no idea what this internet thing is and aren't interested. Some of them will have yet to master push-button telephones.
Some probably have gas lighting or candles as well. More realistically, some probably have analogue only TV setups. Ways will be found for them to have a dgital TV solution because analogue services will have been tturned off over the next five years. It wasn't going to be a realistic prospect not to do this in order to safeguard a small part of the population. Instead, there are reasonable means to migrate. If this can be achieved for this technology, it can be achieved for others, so I don't really buy the little old lady argument.
How did he do that, then? Pension funds collapsed due to the collapse of shares after the .com boom and 9/11. The removal of dividend tax credits can easily be compensated for by a small increase in contributions, which employees or employers have had plenty of opportunity to do.
Brown may have changed the way tax is applied to pension funds but no one stole from the funds. It suits some people and sections of the media to use very emotive language.
You mean actually *put even more money in than the regular contribution* to the fund as the bottom is dropping out of the market and Gordon Brown increasing his tax take, whilst the Financial Services "Industry" keeps on collecting their charges unabated as the funds go down and down?
No thank you. We might be E.S.N. in here but were not bloody daft.
In the sense that the government took the money and the government writes the laws ...
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