Posts Tagged ‘Free trade’
The BBC’s Golden Age
Posted by: Gav in Gavin Ayling's blog on October 7th, 2008
It was not that long ago that the BBC appeared to be heading for trouble. For the first time since the BBC was created the renewal of its right to levy the license fee appeared to be under threat. With the Andrew Gilligan affair in 2003 the BBC appeared to have reached an all-time low. And even with the relatively recent issues surrounding fairness of phone-in competitions, the BBC is having a renaissance.
I recently checked my Virgin Media’s hard drive to see which channels I had recorded television from. There was one programme not from the BBC — and that was a football match on Setanta. The hard disk shines a light on the quality of the BBC’s programming at the moment and shows, actually, that its content is great while that of its competitors is apalling.
To be fair, my opinion is not enough to justify the tone of what I have said. But a completely unscientific straw-poll shows that the only non-BBC viewing of anyone I know has been of football — Sky Sports during the weekend and on Thursday last week for domestic and European football and Setanta Sports.
The BBC has excellent programmes including Eggheads, The Tudors, Only Connect, The Story of Mathematics, Bruce Parry’s Amazon, Harry and Paul, Mock the Week, Live at the Apollo, Heroes. And that’s to ignore the improving output of BBC Radio 4. This with BBC HD (the only HD channel on Virgin at the moment) and, most importantly, BBC iPlayer (which I am now smugly using on my Nokia N96) make the BBC a force to be reckoned with.
In 2003/2004 when the BBC was preparing for the renewal, things needed to change and many people questioned the value for money of the license fee. In fact, I carried a link on this blog to a campaign to remove the privileged position of the BBC. But it’s done good. It is now amazing value for money.
The reviews have worked and the BBC deserves praise. I still hate the bias of the BBC’s news and reporting, but the bias appears to be in favour of the party I support now, rather than in favour of the party I do not, so it’s difficult to summon quite so much concern… how terrible of me to think that!
One final thought for Robert Peston: Tonight’s BBC Four programme, The Greed Game was an excellent piece of work. It explained, clearly, how and why the credit crunch came about. It was, if you’ll excuse the gushing, the sort of programme that the BBC was made to make. Robert Peston’s name has become synonymous with the Credit Crunch as his excellent reporting has clarified the whole issue for the masses; this programme made sense of an extraordinarily complex subject. My only question is why, with his clearly great grasp of finance, he works as a relatively low-paid journalist!
Kiva
Posted by: Gav in Uncategorized on December 22nd, 2007
I know I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s Christmas and you may be feeling some guilt for spending so much money while those in other countries do not have the same opportunities. Or, and I think this is more likely, you’re just a nice person like me 
Either way, Kiva’s what you need.
Kiva is a way of giving charitably but not giving away your money. Once the person who used it has profited from using their entrepreneurial spirit, the money is returned to you to invest in someone else. All you lose is a small amount of interest!
So loan some hard-working people some money and see what they can do with it to improve their lot and the lot of their home country’s economy!
Sign up at Kiva.org
The New Party
Posted by: Gav in Gavin Ayling's blog on October 12th, 2006
As probably many other Councillors have, I today received a manifesto from The New Party.
The UK has a major problem with new political parties. Inertia amongst the membership of the other parties (and those who are not members of a party) means that new parties must have some major backing to make any headway at all. UKIP is the only recent new party to have gained any sort of significant political power and the last party to start and gain power from the incumbent two is the Labour Party.
So it is interesting that The New Party is offering free membership; it is interesting that The New Party introduction letter is written by a former Labour Councillor; and when you read the detail you can see a bizarre mix of Labour’s social ideals alongside genuine free market economics to reform, positively, the NHS, welfare, pensions and education. In truth, the economic section shines.
But there are problems:
1) Their policy on drugs is out of date and will, inevitably, fail as badly as the other parties’ policies have. Cameron’s hinted at a more relaxed drugs policy and this is right.
2) The Party notes the ideological and practical problems that Planning regulations introduce. But their solution is odd — very odd. They would allow local Councils to set up Planning-free zones. I don’t think I can say anything helpful about this policy but it strikes me as a half-measure. It would be better to limit planning authorities’ powers in some areas (and strengthen in others)? Actually, in my opinion, the single most important area of planning reform needed is a reduction in the number of appeals processes available to people — it should be simpler and much, much quicker.
3) The lovely glossy manifesto completely ignores devolution and the fundamental constitutional problems that it has created.
Don’t get me wrong, there are some great policies in there — some that Cameron would do well to incorporate into a radical first term’s manifesto — but there doesn’t seem to be a single message. I may be wrong here, but I suspect each section was written by different people completely independently of the other sections. The “wills” and “woulds” are particularly jarring.
If you agree with the Manifesto of The New Party you should join it — inertia is a result of people not doing what they should. But you may want to wait for Cameron’s policies to know whether that party reflects your opinions more closely than do the Conservatives. I strongly suspect the Conservatives policies will be excellent with only a very few mistakes (like the Barnet formula’s continuation etc).
Why doesn’t my party support flat tax?
Posted by: Gav in Gavin Ayling's blog on October 4th, 2006
This post was not written for the blog.
It is criminal that the arguments of the high-tax left have been allowed to gain credence. Taxation should be about funding services that must be provided by the state. Most people in the UK agree upon the minimum that should be provided by the state and agree that it should be funded through taxation.
But what proportion of a UK citizen’s salary is spent on tax? If you’re a shop worker, office administrator or security guard your wages are taxed and then the Chancellor hands some back. The very act of taxing and refunding wastes money that could better be spent on services or tax relief.
Another argument that surrounds taxation — though perhaps not enough — is the use of tax as an incentive for citizens to behave in a certain way. A government adviser recently suggested to me that the Conservatives should support congestion charging as a use of the market to resolve demand on a limited resource. This sounds, on the face of it, like a reasonable suggestion, but what about those people who have no choice but to use a road for a particular purpose? Not only has the tax incentive failed but that person now has less money to spend on their business or on goods and services: The economy has been shrunk by a tax intended to affect someone’s behaviour.
It would be infinitely preferable if taxation were used solely as a method of funding government actions. The simplest way to do that is quite clearly with one tax that everyone pays. Should those more successful in society pay more than those who are struggling to get by? Absolutely. Should they pay less if they’re rich enough to afford the best financial advisers? No.
The simplest and fairest way of raising revenue to provide services to all in society is to take money from all those who contribute to the country’s economy. If you remove VAT, alcohol duty and fuel duty you have instantly provided significant and beneficial tax relief to those on the lowest wages. If you then levy a flat tax at 25% you provide an up-front tax cut to the vast majority of tax payers. Without wasting money on levying VAT, death tax, congestion charges, road tax and National Insurance and with the added income available from those who would normally avoid almost all these taxes, the UK would have a fairer, more flexible and more robust taxation system that absolutely everyone in the country could understand and judge.
Nearly 1 in 60
Posted by: Gav in Gavin Ayling's blog on August 22nd, 2006
According to the figures available, those who immigrated to the UK since 2004 make up nearly 1 in 60 of the population.
The imminent EU accession of Romania and Bulgaria represents a new source of immigrants to the UK. There are voices, not least Frank Field, who are calling foul, but there’s really no justification for restricting immigration from these new members.
The EU is about free movement of people and free trade. Now anyone with even a small idea of the EU’s working will know that we are not getting anything similar to free trade in many, many areas. So the only tenet of the EU that Britons signed up for under Heath and that is actually functioning is free movement of people.
If we turn around now and say “Sorry Romanians, sorry Bulgarians, you cannot come to the UK because, though we want access to your markets, we don’t want your people.” then we are removing that final part of the EU that we all agreed to.
I agree that the UK is suffering a change in culture… A sort of negative zionism by multiple cultures. And I agree that the time has come for a serious look at our immigration policy… But I don’t think that should mean double-standards on the EU. Let’s leave the EU and say what we really think! Let’s join schengen, let’s sign a free trade agreement with the EU and remain a country in our own right.
At the same time, let’s let English culture redefine itself to include our newest members. Let’s prepare our schools to cope with the children of our mostly young immigrants when they are born. And let’s not confuse immigrants (those who come here) with the legislators that we think are getting the policies wrong.
According to the BBC’s The World programme on BBC Four this evening, Italy, Spain and Malta are struggling with the number of illegal immigrants coming from Africa to work here (where “here” is the EU). As Leanne said earlier on this blog, the people who manage to leave Africa are probably the very people who could reverse the problems Africa so evidently has.
Let’s work harder and more seriously at improving the economies of Africa so that there’s no reason to jump on that ship in the first place. The EU’s Common Agricultural Policy’s abolition would be a good starting place.
Net neutrality
Posted by: Gav in Gavin Ayling's blog on August 18th, 2006
If you use the internet you will undoubtedly use the services of large companies’ sites. Most users use the BBC, eBay, Amazon, Play.com, uTube and others… And almost everyone also visits smaller sites. Sites which either have no income or very little. Blogs, particularly, are non-profit making and unable to pay more for hosting etc.
So it is really important that the internet does not become subject to the non-neutral pricing plans that the AT&Ts, Verizons and Comcasts of this world are keen on. Traffic moving over the internet is currently routed on a first come, first serve basis. Visit SaveTheInternet.org to find out more.
