http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8312999.stm



It makes sense, but I never realised the MOD owned the Met Office



How do you do that if you aren't in power?



I really did LOL at that - first of all it completely goes against what the Tories are suggesting, secondly, the ministers have got a fcuking brass neck

Anyway, what do we think about selling off the Met Office?

Bad idea.

It's just not right. It's a publicly owned and funded entity. It makes an income by selling its services to third parties. I would rather have a centrally-governed department providing the weather forecasting for the UK, than rely on the private sector.

We've got to stop selling everything we already own. Let's look at other ways to cut costs, like halving the number of MPs, scrapping the Olympics, telling BoJo that an airport in the Thames Estuary is not required, and getting rid of unnecessary expenses like an "independent nuclear deterrent".

Well its one instance that the private sector couldn't make a worse job of it


Sounds good to me.

Wait, IIRC the Met office and the Hydrographic office are both either self-funding or actually make a profit for the taxpayer?

If they want to raise money, tax football - there's billions on tap there - they pay a nominal amount for policing games despite the constant troubles and the number of police required for each game, plus their contracts run into the millions!

The met office should be left as it is. The last thing you want is the army having to call a call centre in India to get the latest forecast before a mission!

Oh do shut up about things you patently don't know the facts of. There is vastly less trouble at football games these days than there is in any city centre on a Friday night. And in any case, the police get to decide how much they bill the football clubs. the clubs get no degree of negotiation and would be unable to stage games if they didn't pay. So any shortfall is down to the police's incompetence, not the clubs refusing to pay their share.

The clubs meet 100% of the cost of policing on their 'footprint' (i.e. within the grounds and their immediate surroundings). There is currently debate about how much of the policing that is peripherally related to football matches (called 'consequential policing') should be met by the clubs and how much by the taxpaper. There is a very comprehensive government report on the subject here. According to it, the football clubs of Britain paid £1 billion into the exchequer in 2008 and £13m for policing and the consequential policing costs were £3.2million. So it doesn't look to me like football grounds are getting their policing for free, does it? Oh, and to quote the report



If you want to go down the punitive taxation route, put a massive price on late licences. Or massively increase alcohol duty. Alcohol causes vastly more disruption to society than football does and most of the violence in our society happens after chucking out time, not at 5PM on a Saturday afternoon.

Or, alternatively, just stop making stuff up.

Jon

How about a massive tax on refined sugar and sweet foods? Make sugar cost £10/kg and folk'll stop abusing it, reducing heart disease and diabetes in one swift stroke.

By complete chance, I was talking to myself about that just yesterday.

Alcohol and Tobacco are already taxed. I don't know the figures, but it's often said that our diet is about the next biggest drain on the NHS. If a McDonald's Fatty Meal was thrice the price of healthier alternatives, then maybe people might switch.

lets tax breathing as we all have too breath
you only get a tax rebate if you don't breath for 66 minutes …

i think that we should sell parliament with all its 'honourable' members intact
to some overseas company as it seems we have or are selling everything else …

Yes another idea that the Tories have not though through. It is way too important to leave solely to private interests. All that will happen is that the costs to third parties will rise immensely and the BBC will have to pay a lot more for it.

Well, with all due respect, that's exactly what you'd expect ACPO to say. They're hardly likely to turn down money are they? And let's be honest, ACPO is about the most politicised police organisation that's ever been in existence in the UK. I wouldn't trust them as far as I could throw a police horse. The document I posted was at least ostensibly impartial and it did advocate a degree of payment for consequential policing, just the level hasn't been decided yet.

The bald fact is if you pass a rule that anything that might be football related should be paid by the clubs then the clubs would end up financing pretty much all policing on a match day. Having police patrolling a train station in the same city on match day? Well it might be football fans, charge it. Trouble in a pub the night after the game? Could be football fans, charge it. Crash on the motorway within 60 miles of the ground? Fans travelling to or from the game, charge it.

What will happen eventually is eventually the police will try to charge a big club that can afford good lawyers for policing that cannot realistically be justified as being the club's responsibility. At that point it will go to court and the big club's expensive lawyers will win. As a consequence, every club in the UK will launch a claim against the police force they are in the jurisdiction of and we will find police budgets hit, probably for more than they would have gained from the extra charges.

You can't sustain a police force by inappropriate and discriminate charging and legislation. It simply isn't sustainable when the people being discriminated against can afford better lawyers than the police have. I don't say football clubs shouldn't pay for policing on their premises and for the policing of things like 'football specials' trains and any train/bus/tram/underground station/pub near the stadium. However, the police have no right to ask for payment for things that they don't deserve and should they do so, eventually it will come back and bite them.

If you want to tax football for the common good (and I really don't object to that as long as it's vaguely fair) introduce a very high income tax rate for people earning more than £3million a year. That's about where a lot of premiership footballers are and reading the Deloitte reports about where the money flow around football is, the vast majority of it ends up in the player's pockets, so they're the ones who should pay. The average for UK businesses is to spend roughly 33% of their income on wages; most Premiership clubs spend over 66% and some spend over 100%, which is frankly mental. The players are the ones siphoning most of the money out of the game and if you want to divert some of that into government coffers, the player are the ones to get it from.

Jon