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No iPhone Apps, Please — We're British

Posted by samzenpus on from the none-for-us-thank-you dept.

GMGruman writes "The BBC has stirred up quite a row in Britain about a shocking use of taxpayer funds: creating iPhone apps to provide citizens services. As InfoWorld blogger Galen Gruman notes, it's apparently bad in Britain for the government to use modern technology during a recession, a mentality he likens as a shift from 'cool Britannia' to 'fool Britannia.'"

2 of 393 comments (clear)

  1. Effective spending. by RyanFenton · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Cutting spending in a depression is rarely a good strategy. The rich will of course continue to do just about as well - because they just go into crisis mode and order more folks fired to cut spending. That means all the non-rich are left competing for fewer positions with many, many times the number of other potential job seekers.

    Cutting overall government spending doubles this effect by denying more public jobs, while at the same time cutting services that would have helped them make ends meet while there is no practical access to jobs.

    Ideally, what you'd do is tax actual non-business wealth where possible to fight hoarding, so the super-wealthy will be pressured to push money into the market and infrastructure more actively, and less into 'bonuses'. You use that money to help keep the lower and middle classes afloat - where that money will go immediately back into the marketplace, redoubling its effect. You also use that money to fund the development of more small businesses, while cracking down more monopolies, freeing up legal and anti-competitive hurdles that these companies face currently in the current marketplace.

    The conservative "austerity" arguments are cruel - meant to deny the downtrodden any meager assistance in order to solve a problem they seem unwilling to solve when they have power. Conservatives tend to run up debt while in power, to promote the idea that they can make the nation strong, then complain about debt AND weakness while out of power, as the nation attempts to rebuild after their spending orgy (usually funneled to private interests).

    Ryan Fenton

  2. Re:iphone by SJ · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Are you all serious?

    How long did Mac users have to wait to get a version of BBC iPlayer that even remotely came close to working?

    BBC finally shows Apple some love after years of neglect, and they get pounded.

    This is EXACTLY what governments should be doing in hard times. Get the money flowing to places it hasn't gone before.