Brexit, for once some facts.

[oyster]

We should all have free access to Facebook, forums, YouTube, social media and Porn. I, d guess those combined constitute around 99% of Internet usage.

On the basis that a huge proportion of the actual bytes handled by the internet are advertising, shouldn't it be those advertising who pay most? With money going towards the infrastructure (implementing and running it) rather than some of mega-commercial companies who exploit it.

 

[Woosh]

On the basis that a huge proportion of the actual bytes handled by the internet are advertising, shouldn't it be those advertising who pay most? With money going towards the infrastructure (implementing and running it) rather than some of mega-commercial companies who exploit it.

access to the internet by commercial enterprises is not free. Someone (eg Alphabet) has to pay for the sub sea cables, microwave link ups, satellite links, telephone wires, underground optic fibre etc.
If you want to put your server in a colo datacentre, most of your rent is spent on bandwidth rentals, about £200/month for 50 megabits/s.

 

[oyster]

access to the internet by commercial enterprises is not free. Someone (eg Alphabet) has to pay for the sub sea cables, microwave link ups, satellite links, telephone wires, underground optic fibre etc.
If you want to put your server in a colo datacentre, most of your rent is spent on bandwidth rentals, about £200/month for 50 megabits/s.

Of course.

But if I am chatting on a forum and the messages are individually a few hundred bytes, but are served up with possibly megabytes of advertising, who should pay for that extra load on the server-to-user leg?

 

[flecc]

One way to look at it is support for green energy should be from general taxation because the rich would then share a bigger burden than the poor. You could say the same about similar things: duty on petrol, food etc. We'll quickly come back to the old saying perfect is the enemy of good.

No, this is confusing the issue with things that can be over used and even resold/exported etc.

The public good of free access to the web is overwhelming in a vast multiplicity of ways, while incurring little cost from abuse.

That certainly isn't true of free access to food and petrol, since it would encourage wasteful use at a time when we need the waste and environmental costs of both to be cut.

I don't know how up to date you keep yourself on the subject of the internet, but its going to grow enormously from now on. TV is increasingly moving online and it's confidently forecast that it will all be through the internet before long.

Already the BBC report that 15 to 20% of viewing is through the i-player and time shifting in multiple ways is commonplace on the other channels. The days of high masts exclusively for TV will end and so will the practice of wastefully using disposable rockets to launch and regularly renew TV only satellites.

And the advent of large screen TVs and soundbars in the home has put the writing on the wall for cinemas which I see eventually completely disappearing.

As you said, the internet will be at the top of the pyramid for everything, so being universal to all modern life it will make no sense to charge for its use individually with the costly infrastructure to implement that. That is why it started life completely free for the universal benefit that brought.

The logical extension to your argument is that we must be charged for the air we breath. After all we've done that with the fundamental of life giving water, so since the air also has costs that should happen too. All over this country and others there are air pollution monitors which have to be installed, maintained and monitored by staff in local authorities, governments and supranational bodies like the EU. There's legal structures with fines for exceeding pollution limits. It all costs money.

So just as with water, your argument is that we all should pay with a rating system,for the air we breath, for additional air used and polluted by our private internal combustion engines, for the air used by heat pumps in buildings and vehicles to exchange temperatures, plus charges for air conditioning which pollutes the air before expelling it.

How would you like to be the Chancellor of the Exchequer who introduces that?
.

 

[oyster]

Over a year of hard work has paid off today. The High Court has ruled that the Government’s operation of a fast-track VIP lane for awarding lucrative PPE contracts to those with political connections was unlawful.
In a challenge brought by Good Law Project and EveryDoctor to the behind closed door VIP lane worth billions of pounds, the Court found:
“the Claimants have established that operation of the High Priority Lane was in breach of the obligation of equal treatment… the illegality is marked by this judgment.”
The Judge agreed the VIP lane conferred preferential treatment on bids: it sped up the process, which meant offers were considered sooner in a process where timing was critical, and VIPs’ hands were held through the process. She said:
“offers that were introduced through the Senior Referrers received earlier consideration at the outset of the process. The High Priority Lane Team was better resourced and able to respond to such offers on the same day that they arrived”.
The Court found the Government allocated offers to the VIP lane on a “flawed basis” and did not properly prioritise bids:
“there is evidence that opportunities were treated as high priority even where there were no objectively justifiable grounds for expediting the offer.”
The Court noted that the overwhelming majority by value of the product supplied by Pestfix and Ayanda could not be used in the NHS. An independent investigation by the BBC has also revealed issues with the product supplied by Clandeboye which were not disclosed to the High Court. Good Law Project believes that the Government misled the Court and is in correspondence with lawyers for the Secretary of State.
The Judge found that, even though Pestfix and Ayanda received unlawful preferential treatment via the VIP lane, they would likely have been awarded contracts anyway. The Judge also refused to allow publication of how much money was wasted by the Government’s failure to carry out technical assurance on the PPE supplied by Pestfix and Ayanda. Good Law Project is considering the wider implications of these aspects of the ruling and next steps.
We first revealed the red carpet-to-riches VIP lane for those with political connections in October 2020. Since then, we have fought to reveal details of those who benefited, and at whose request - while the Government fought to conceal them.
Never again should any Government treat a public health crisis as an opportunity to enrich its associates and donors at public expense.
We want to thank our expert legal team who have worked tirelessly on this case. And we want to thank you for your trust in us, and your continued support of this case over 18 long months. Without you, this simply wouldn’t have been possible.
Thank you,
Jo Maugham - Good Law Project

 

[oyster]

Do anything you like - lie, party, hand out contracts to your mates. Except vote to support your constituents:

The Conservative party has removed the whip from Anne Marie Morris, a Devon MP, after she rebelled to back a Labour move in parliament to cut VAT on energy bills.

 

[Mrs Honeyman]

No, this is confusing the issue with things that can be over used and even resold/exported etc.

The public good of free access to the web is overwhelming in a vast multiplicity of ways, while incurring little cost from abuse.

That certainly isn't true of free access to food and petrol, since it would encourage wasteful use at a time when we need the waste and environmental costs of both to be cut.

I don't know how up to date you keep yourself on the subject of the internet, but its going to grow enormously from now on. TV is increasingly moving online and it's confidently forecast that it will all be through the internet before long.

Already the BBC report that 15 to 20% of viewing is through the i-player and time shifting in multiple ways is commonplace on the other channels. The days of high masts exclusively for TV will end and so will the practice of wastefully using disposable rockets to launch and regularly renew TV only satellites.

And the advent of large screen TVs and soundbars in the home has put the writing on the wall for cinemas which I see eventually completely disappearing.

As you said, the internet will be at the top of the pyramid for everything, so being universal to all modern life it will make no sense to charge for its use individually with the costly infrastructure to implement that. That is why it started life completely free for the universal benefit that brought.

The logical extension to your argument is that we must be charged for the air we breath. After all we've done that with the fundamental of life giving water, so since the air also has costs that should happen too. All over this country and others there are air pollution monitors which have to be installed, maintained and monitored by staff in local authorities, governments and supranational bodies like the EU. There's legal structures with fines for exceeding pollution limits. It all costs money.

So just as with water, your argument is that we all should pay with a rating system,for the air we breath, for additional air used and polluted by our private internal combustion engines, for the air used by heat pumps in buildings and vehicles to exchange temperatures, plus charges for air conditioning which pollutes the air before expelling it.

How would you like to be the Chancellor of the Exchequer who introduces that?
.

I believe that Sky has launched a service called Sky Glass. The package comes with a TV set which has no aerial or satellite dish input. All content comes via the internet.

I would say that 60 - 70 % of my tv viewing is streamed. I’d buy an internet only TV if it was available.

 

[Mrs Honeyman]

The Downing Street garden must be bristling with CCTV cameras. The police must have been monitoring the cameras, watching a rule breaking party take place, and simultaneously fining members of the public for similtaking place right under their noses.

I don’t know how they have managed to keep this story secret. So many people are involved. It’s incredible.

That Jimmy Savillehood awarded to Dame Dick must be a very powerful force.

 

[oyster]

I believe that Sky has launched a service called Sky Glass. The package comes with a TV set which has no aerial or satellite dish input. All content comes via the internet.

I would say that 60 - 70 % of my tv viewing is streamed. I’d buy an internet only TV if it was available.

There are many streaming devices - some of which include speakers - which can drive many HDMI devices such as monitors.

 

[oyster]

The Downing Street garden must be bristling with CCTV cameras. The police must have been monitoring the cameras, watching a rule breaking party take place, and simultaneously fining members of the public for similtaking place right under their noses.

I don’t know how they have managed to keep this story secret. So many people are involved. It’s incredible.

That Jimmy Savillehood awarded to Dame Dick must be a very powerful force.

I think it is very difficult for an individual to put their hand up and say what they saw. Remember many years ago, there was an issue about close protection officers in a car which was being driven over the speed limit. Should they intervene? And do so at the time, or raise it later? If they do raise the issue later, and no-one acts, should they take it further?

(Some memory that it was Prince Charles, but I could well be wrong.)

 

[Mrs Honeyman]

Sue Gray, vaccine, vaccine, booster programme, Sue Gray, vaccine, vaccine, booster programme, Sue Gray, vaccine, vaccine, booster programme, Sue Gray, vaccine, vaccine booster programme.

That’s saved anyone contemplating watching PMQs 30 minutes of their lives.

 

[Danidl]

I believe that Sky has launched a service called Sky Glass. The package comes with a TV set which has no aerial or satellite dish input. All content comes via the internet.

I would say that 60 - 70 % of my tv viewing is streamed. I’d buy an internet only TV if it was available.

Well it is .. any device TV or Monitor or projector with a DVI or HDMI fed via an Android box or a Roku or Firestick or PC meets that criteria...

 

[oyster]

"I regret..." Not half as much as the rest of us.

 

[flecc]

I believe that Sky has launched a service called Sky Glass. The package comes with a TV set which has no aerial or satellite dish input. All content comes via the internet.

I would say that 60 - 70 % of my tv viewing is streamed. I’d buy an internet only TV if it was available.

Yes they have, yet another sign of an inevitable trend. I can see the word broadcasting becoming obsolete or diverted to another meaning.

A huge amount of my viewing is also time shifted. There's the use of the TV players like i-player. I also record for viewing when convenient. Then there's the time shifting of the +1 services from channels 3, 4 and 5 that I exploit. Finally my current TV gives me the option to view from the start if I've switched on part way through a program.

It's all a far cry from TV as it once was, locked to the clock.
.

 

[Mrs Honeyman]

Well it is .. any device TV or Monitor or projector with a DVI or HDMI fed via an Android box or a Roku or Firestick or PC meets that criteria...

I use an Android box. Not as seamless as something like a dedicated TV such as Sky Glass.

 

[Woosh]

The public good of free access to the web is overwhelming in a vast multiplicity of ways, while incurring little cost from abuse.

I thought we were discussing whether internet access should be provided free of charge by our government as a principle. As I have already pointed out, it's free from lots of places, schools, libraries, public transports etc in addition to coffee shops, restaurants, banks etc.
Students already get free laptop with internet access. The issue is of principle. Should internet be freely provided by government.
My contention is anything run by government will lead to extra cost and possible corruption, as seen in PPE, Covid tests etc.

 

[oldgroaner]

Conservative policy committee at work

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1480902701181513728

I love it when a plan comes together!

 

[oldgroaner]

 

[flecc]

]The issue is of principle. Should internet be freely provided by government.
My contention is anything run by government will lead to extra cost and possible corruption, as seen in PPE, Covid tests etc.

I agree that as a general rule, governments are the last bodies who should run anything. But there are some things that should be run by them for the public good since the private sector does as least as badly and often much worse in terms of costs and inefficiency.

Rail is the first and obvious one, since no private company has succeeded in running it anywhere in the world, breaking even and without going bankrupt.

Water is another, since it is so fundamantal to life so should no more be a means of profit making than charging for the air we breathe.

And for me the internet is included since communication is so fundamental to human life and the environmental benefits of everyone, regardless of their means, using the internet for every type of communication are overwhelming.

In a reply to someone else you mentioned being fair to business where taxation is concerned, but I see that as a very outdated view. Even Harold Wilson back in the 1960's saw that ultimately only business will pay all taxes when he forecast the age of leisure when machines do it all for us and none of us will earn to pay taxes.

Of course like all futurists he grossly overestimated our cleverness in assuming that would be by year 2000, probably at least a hundred years out, but that doesn't change the future.

Just look at how small a proportion of our lives are now spent in work compared to the distant past when we often worked from dawn to dusk from 10 years old or earlier to when we died. Now many only start work after university in their 20s and enjoy 20 years or more of retirement at the other end.

That means 40 years and often much more of being unable to pay any taxes while being a burden on the state paid for solely by business. So taxation fairness to business is already a long gone concept. One day you'll be paying it all.

The other indicator of the future is the increasing seriousness of the discussion about having a Universal Basic Income. We already have the Universal Basic Benefit and the income equivalent is the logical progression.

I don't see us ever able to never work, but I do see a future of so little human work necessary that it will be done by a form of national service for everyone, for example 5 years in the mid 20s, the years before in education for humanity's benefit, the maturer years after in leisure and personal research, all with state incomes for life.

So that is my position, anticipating the future and preparing for it now.

One thing could make me very wrong, the demands of climate change virtually halting our progress to that future
.

 

[Mrs Honeyman]

Now Prince Andrew has had his appeal to dismiss the childfucking case against him, thrown out. I can’t see him having any trouble defending himself. He’s never met the woman, he can’t sweat and he was eating a stuffed crust with all the trimmings when he was supposedly shafting her.

Is there anyone left in public life who has a scintilla of integrity and commands any admiration or respect? It seems like the entire country is rotten at the moment.