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No iPhone Apps, Please — We're British
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.'"
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
The license fee is controversial. The only argument ever used to defend it is that it allows the BBC to make 'niche' programmes that couldn't be made by an advertising-funded broadcaster.
Money from the license fee should be used solely to produce content, whether that be TV and radio shows, or web sites. In my opinion the BBC shouldn't use the license fee for anything else.
It's also a bad idea to support proprietary formats/platforms such as the iPhone and Real audio/video. (I pay my license fee, but there is some BBC web content I can't view because it is only provided in Real format, and I refuse to harm my computer by installing any Real software.)
The BBC may argue that the money for the iPhone app isn't coming from the license fee. They may say that it comes from selling BBC shows abroad, or from adverts on BBC America. But none of the BBC's content would exist if it wasn't for the license fee, so all resulting revenue from overseas sales should be ploughed back in to making quality TV, radio and web sites for British citizens.
If a TV viewer in Britain doesn't pay their license fee then they can be fined heavily and, ultimately, sent to prison. In that light, license fee payers have a very strong right to demand that our money is used responsibly.
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.
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Once again we see the BBC playing about in the commercial sector using revenue which I am forced to pay from the mandatory license fee to provide services that are of no use whatsoever to me.
Quite simply the BBC should be broken up and privatised, the licence fee should be abolished, and the various services provided by the BBC should be provided by smaller specialised businesses which are funded by subscription - just like other media providers like Sky or Virgin.
Personally I would be quite happy to pay a subscription fee for Radio 4, Radio 6 and a single channel providing high quality programmes (such as Blue Planet etc.) but I have quite simply had enough of all the complete crap that I am forced to pay for. e.g. Celebutard "Do Your House Up" crap, shitty documentaries, truly appalling patronising, biased, "news" etc. etc. As for the BBCs internet operations that should never have been allowed to be funded from the public purse.
And anyone who thinks that the BBC being publically funded allows then to provide an unbiased news service really to wake up and do their own investigation. It spews out the same biased propaganda as all other mainstream media outlets. Anyone seen any mention of the "Collateral Damage" video on the BBC news ? See many pictures of childrens corpses from badly planned American drone strikes ? Funnily enough neither have I.
The BBC should be broken up and the licence fee should go the way of the window tax.
I am sick of being forced to pay for crap I do not want.