"One has to establish the value of a saved life. Whether that's in terms of ambulances, boats or radio spectrum we have to decide, as a society, how much we're prepared to spend."

What the hell is all that about? This isnt about the Govt: providing something at zero cost and thus making a loss on the provision, its about how much the Governement TAXES a service that is supported by chariitable donations. Radio spectrum costs The Government nothing. the licence fees are just another revenue stream for it to squander. Money donated to such services should not be pouring into Government coffers for licences to use radio equipment to perform a function that benefits all people who go on the water - we are after all an island nation, and still rely on the water to some extent for both tourism and commerce. This is just another oppertunistic raid on the income of charities by a government happy to abdicate responsibility for the nuts and bolts of coastal (and mountain) rescue to voluntary groups to save itself some money, but at the same time greedy Govt cant resist the chance to grab some more income.

Its the same as public bodies having to pay govt for spectrum, its a paper way of inflating the cost of the service to US, the already over taxed and under-represented public.

I used to work for a large UK based public transport operator. Our staff were informed that a human life was valued at £8m. This was apparently based on a figure provided by our insurers as the average cost to the economy of a life lost. (Financial settlement, lost employee, spending power, taxes and many others) Pretty cold, but financially sound.

However, I don't believe you can put a price on human life, and these core organisations, such as the RNLI, Mountain Rescue, Cave Rescue should be gifted their spectrum. Ofcom can keep control of the spectrum, and if this wonderous new technology which uses half the bandwidth comes along, then they can work with the RNLI and others to implement it, with the ultimate threat of being made to pay for the excess bandwidth they are consuming, which they otherwise wouldn't. Seems reasonable to me. Ofcom are supposed to be regulating the industry after all, not merely selling it off.

You are quite right that society needs to be willing to stump up for lifesaving services, however your article misses an important point: the RNLI and Mountain Rescue Teams are voluntary bodies who provide their services free of charge to those rescued. Most of their funding comes from charitable donations etc., and they are rightly arguing for an exemption (or massive discount) given the fact there is no cost to the taxpayer for their services. I don't see why that's unreasonable!

I should also point out that Mountain Rescue conforms to a "UK SAR band plan" which is imposed on them - why should they have to pay for a huge number of channels that the government decided was necessary. Most teams only need one simplex channel, and perhaps one repeater channel, and would only use more in a major incident.

"there is an ideological point too: if one imagines that the RNLI or similar is given its spectrum for free, and someone comes along with an improved radio that provides the same quality of service but using half the spectrum"

Can we just put this into context? The RNLI is a group of charity funded volunteers. They merrily sail out into the kind of seas that have most navies in the world running for shelter. Are you by any chance an ex-civil servant? By the way mountain rescue do exactly the same but in the most inhospitable areas of the country. This is the kind of unworldly argument they seem so fond of. It is utterly removed from what expect public servants to do

I'm sure that next time someone is being rescued from a stricken ship or carried down a mountain in a blizzard the first thing they will worry about is whether their rescuers are correctly incentivesed.

£2.5M for a life boat these numbers seem cheap. Yes it would be nice if the RNLI had more money, but things do cost. We will just have to see how it all plays out.

Not sure if its worth bothering arguing any more. Ofcom, bastard son of BSC, ITC, RCA, Oftel.

Postwatch and energy watch have now become 'Consumer focus'. Soon all of the old consumer reps will have merged into one massive profit supervising control machine, merged with the governments new consumer monitoring program.

A bit like the Stasi, but probably called something fluffier like 'Cloudlite'. Forget capitalism, Parliamentary Democracy has stopped working in this shite hole we call "Great" Britain. (+NI).

Who is going to be using the other radio that the RNLI needs?

>>"Individual cases aside, there is an ideological point too:

if one imagines that the RNLI or similar is given its spectrum for free, and someone comes along with an improved radio that provides the same quality of service but using half the spectrum, there is no incentive to switch to the new system.

Ofcom's argument that those who pay for spectrum are more likely to use it wisely has some basis in fact, and has been effective in getting the Ministry of Defence to give up great swathes of spectrum after finding out how much it was worth."<<

Obviously if you stopped Liberian and Panamanian ships entering British waters, you wouldn't need the old kit but if you did that and boosted the national economy in the process, then you wouldn't need the RNLI in the first place, would you?

I would just like to thank Wayne for making me roll round in fits of laughter. Alas my education to date has never come across "catamites". Now that I have, I am determined to use the word at every possible opportunity. My only disagreement with Wayne is that I would extend his description to encompass the politicians as well as the bureaucracy.

Would seem OFCOM has changed into an extra arm for the government to gain more backdoor taxes this time for voluntary rescue team..

Has OFCOM become redundant since they seem to have changed from looking after the UK civilians to looking after the government.. What happened to the independant body since they seem to only be looking out for ways to increase the money going into the governments pockets.

How much can we save then if this independant body was all made redundant and we started to find a group to take over the role and defend, look after the UK civilians against UK government scaremongering, backdoor taxes and invaision of UK citizens privacy.