If this new tax comes in I will be giving very serious consideration to moving to a mobile broadband provider if I can find one that actually provides any kind of fast, stable or reliable service with a decent download limit.

A landline is already the most outrageously over-priced utility in the home in terms of fixed standing charge by far and now the bloated BT expects even more of our hard earned money to keep their grotesquely inefficient empire in business.

Without getting involved in the detail of this debate too deeply, particularly where there seems to be some convoluted attempt to justify the never justifiable use of 084X nos by the public sector, I would make the following comments.

Firstly, I think this 50p tax is very unfair, as the original post said, there are many people who cannot have, would not benefit from or just do not want broadband, eg the very elderly (who will be dead before superfast broadband is a reality!), those suffering from certain disabilities etc, those who can't afford a computer.  As someone said, you don't pay road tax is you don't have a car, also you don't pay a TV licence is you don't have a television.  It would be far fairer to levy the tax on the broadband connection, as for the argument about people benefitting in future from payments now, well, doesn't that apply to everything provided eg roads, we all benefit from roads that may have been built before we were born, same with hospitals and schools?

Finally, the point about not paying tax towards education and child benefit if you don't have children - this arguments really bugs me (sorry guys!) because, if people don't have children, where are the doctors, nurses, carers, plumbers, electricians etc etc etc going to come from in the future to look after teh childless???!!!

As another poster said, this is just another tax and it won't be used for its declared purpose.

I think a lot of you forget that taxes do not pay for the things they appear to.  All taxation goes into one big central pot, from which the spending is allocated.

Barbara wrote on Dec 13^th, 2009 at 10:36am:


With regard to Road Taxes,and the NHS, from a post in another forum:  "According to Transport Statistics Great Britain, central government in the UK collects £30 billion in motoring taxes, of which £25 billion is fuel tax while £5 billion is VED, and of this amount about £8 billion is spent on roads in England (add a further £2 billion to cover expenditures in Scotland, Wales, and NI). This means there is around £20 billion in motoring-related tax revenues available for other uses, including defraying the NHS."

So, yes, non-drivers don't pay road taxes - instead all of us drivers are already supporting other government activities, including the NHS, that are used by them..

Barbara wrote on Dec 13^th, 2009 at 10:36am:



If people had to pay for their children's education and not receive handouts for having children the human race would indeed die out.

Having delivered the answer to life the universe and everything (the human race only exists because of state funded education!), there are a number of separate questions to be addressed in considering this issue.

- Should the state spend money to ensure delivery of "NGA" to the portion of the population which the industry has said that it cannot afford to serve?

- Should additional taxation be introduced to provide revenue essentially equivalent to that spending?

- Should the longstanding refusal to engage in formal hypothecation of taxation revenue be reversed?

The government has said Yes, Yes and No. Posted comments have suggested No, No and Yes.


What nobody has addressed is the relevance of the broader themes of Carter. Delivery of public services is to be increasingly moved onto the internet as this is much more efficient and could therefore be a way of saving a lot of overhead cost, thereby helping the attack on the deficit. The government is set on this course and is therefore concerned about the fact that a significant proportion of the population, other than the wealthy, could be excluded from the best access to public services unless broadband is more widely available.

I share the concern that there will always be some who remain excluded, and something effective must be done to address this (other than euthanasia for a large part of the pre-computer generation). I also have other reasons for opposing this approach, however I cannot deny the fact that it will most likely help with cost efficiency and I acknowledge the priority that must be given to this issue at present.

One could foresee the situation where, with services being delivered over the internet, those who wish to use the far more costly means of accessing services by telephone could be made subject to a charge. Use of a premium rate telephone number could provide a most effective means of recovering the fee and encouraging use of the online service. Those who are be content for taxation to rise can feel free to oppose such a move, as may those who can identify sufficient spending cuts or are content for the deficit to remain.


All politicians are very keen to advance the principle behind hypothecation and governments are often happy to show the link between specific items of revenue and spending. In this case the connection is strongly promoted and would be very clear to see, so it is hard to imagine effective evasion of a challenge to show it in effect.

There are many arguments against hypothecation being applied formally through statue. Some of this is to do with issues of timing, as actual revenues may not be known until long after spending has to be committed. There is also the fact that it may tie the hands of Ministers and Departments in exercising discretion over specific detailed spending decisions, as their capacity to do so would be limited by statue and thereby subject to legal challenge. HM Treasury stands firmly opposed to the idea, so practical minded people know that it is therefore not worth bothering to think of trying to bring it in. Political pressure to show a connection can withstand the need to deal with revenues being less or greater than necessary and to be seen to have spent as wisely as possible. A purely statutory imperative could lead to highly undesirable consequence in the event of revenue falling short, or unnecessary waste in the event of excess, furthermore it would provide a bulwark against political criticism.

On balance, I am content for the status quo to remain, given that expectations are not set wrongly. The link between National Insurance contributions and the supposedly related benefits was knowingly broken not long after its introduction. All the other cases (e.g. VED) provide a good basis for political knockabout, but I hope that nobody is actually confused.


It is somewhat distressing to read how far Thatcherism is alive and well in this forum, as in most political discourse. If public education needs to be defended by reference to personal benefit for the individuals who pay for it, then there is no such thing as society and I feel that my attempts to campaign for the principles of the NHS have no place in this forum.

Perhaps someone would like to explain how the principle of using revenue sharing numbers for public services is incompatible with the idea that each of us pays for what we get. To remove the inevitable consumerist argument ("I have already paid my taxes") please consider the case of a school leaver who has been brought up in a local authority children's home, earning less than the individual personal allowance and NI threshold, who has therefore never paid a penny of tax, other than the VAT which we can disregard as being a subscription fee for the EU.

Here is one saving that could be made, from today's Daily Mail

Single mother receives more than £90,000 a year in housing allowance to meet the rent on the five-bedroom villa, plus other payouts of £15,000.

I wonder how much tax she has ever paid.

Anyway as Barbara rightly says we are going off topic, so like her I will end.

SilentCallsVictim wrote on Dec 14^th, 2009 at 3:53pm:


Sadly you appear to have failed dismally.

NGMsGhost wrote on Dec 14^th, 2009 at 4:26pm:

Fair point, lets see if I can do better this time.

bbb_uk wrote on Dec 14^th, 2009 at 4:54pm:

No. My guess is that it will use it initially for some further investment in "Digital Britain", but in time hope that everyone will have forgotten how it was first justified.

bbb_uk wrote on Dec 14^th, 2009 at 4:54pm:

The "money" used in the bail out will be returned, however the question is when, and what value will the shares in the banks have when they are sold. For the time being the money loaned forms part of the national debt (along with the historic and continuing annual deficits), the level of which could threaten credit ratings. Furthermore the debt has to be financed by selling bonds on which interest has to be paid, thereby adding to the deficit.

bbb_uk wrote on Dec 14^th, 2009 at 4:54pm:
The high court of parliament cannot answer to any higher authority, other than through the ballot box. Its members are deemed "honourable" and therefore able to exercise judgement about many matters, the amount of money due to them in expenses being relatively trivial. When it was thought inexpedient for them to receive a salary rise they were encouraged to set aside their honour and grab whatever they thought they could get away with in expenses. Nobody in a position to do so took the trouble to correct this disgraceful mistake until it was exposed as a scandal. Like the banker's bonuses, the amounts of money involved are not actually significant, however the principle is of sufficient public concern to require action.

bbb_uk wrote on Dec 14^th, 2009 at 4:54pm:

It is fair to make the point that those who will provide the NGA could well have exploited the government's desire to see it rolled out universally by perhaps falsely claiming to be unable to finish the job without financial support. I am not sure if the government has effectively got its own back by forcing them to risk losing business through increased cost by imposing the tax on their landline operations. I suggested previously that this could be a roundabout way of forcing companies to raise the money for investment themselves. This will probably be from their existing customers, although they are free to pay the tax in any way they wish.
Will enforced price increases damage landline providers?
Are those who will actually pay the tax (covered by increasing their prices) the same companies as will benefit from the funding?
Perhaps someone who understands the industry better than I could let us know.


I am not sure if anyone has pointed out that this tax will come into effect in November 2010, by which time we will have a new parliament from which a new government will have been formed. It is generally assumed that taxes will have been reviewed by that new government (of whatever composition) so there can be no assurance that this measure will remain in its present form up to implementation. Those with an expressed preference for lower levels of borrowing and less interference in business may well be inclined to double the rate and withdraw the offer of government funding for NGA roll out. Anything could happen!