And from The Times:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-2265939,00.html

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AT LAST: something at which Britain leads the world. According to Icstis, the quango that regulates — or theoretically regulates — premium-rate phone numbers, Britons spend more money calling premium lines than any other nation. Last year, we spent £1.6 billion in this way; twice as much as was spent in the US, a country with four times our population.

It would be easy to portray us as a nation of gullible fools, forever dialling up to throw someone out of the Big Brother house or to download a new ringtone for our mobile. But there is a lot more behind our heavy use of premium-rate lines. We are being forced to pay through the nose simply to ring our own Government or to dial our way through the labyrinth of bureaucracy that is our public services.

For every sad figure dialling up the Big Brother house I suspect there are many more running up a large phone bill trying to contact the Passport Agency or TV Licensing. Both organisations use 0870 numbers, which cost the caller up to eight pence a minute: four times what it typically costs to ring fixed, geographical numbers beginning with the prefix 01 or 02. Moreover, although few callers are aware of it, some of the money we spend calling 0870 numbers goes to the organisation we are calling. Make us sit in a queue listening to piped Greensleeves for ten minutes and running a government “helpline” can be a very nice little earner.

Not content with the licence fee, the BBC, which last week announced record pay rises for its directors, refers viewers with reception problems to an 0870 number. Most outrageously of all, the Metropolitan Police set up an 0870 emergency helpline after last year’s Tube bombings. Anyone who called from a public call box — as many had to — was charged up to 20 pence a minute.

No wonder our public services are so awful when the Government can actually earn money by provoking us into ringing up to complain.

Ofcom, the communications regulator, announced in April that it is to prohibit users of 0870 numbers making money from our calls. Yet the changes will not take effect until 2008 — leaving the Government another 18 months to rip us off. I would suggest that readers ring their MPs to demand an end to this stealth tax. But on second thoughts, maybe it would be a better idea if you wrote instead.
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