niknak
I fear that this could go round and round ad infinitum.
I do not object to paying for services I receive. I am happy to pay a fair tax, regardless of use, as I do for the NHS, and I am happy to pay a fair usage tariff, as I do if I buy a rail ticket.
Have you seen the Council Tax riots on the TV? No? Oh yes, it was the Poll Tax riots. And why was that? Because people considered Poll Tax fundamentally unfair whereas Council Tax is seen as at least sufficiently fairer for people not to bother to riot.
What I object to is the arbritary way in which the the tax is raised and that a private company is allowed to raise taxes, as opposed to charging for services.
Don't get me wrong. Privatising ATC was a dishonest and ill-judged move, and showed Blair for the lying toad that he is. But it has happened and you are now employees of a private company. Private companies get their revenue by persuading customers to buy their products, not by raising arbitrary taxes.
So, I am perfectly happy to pay charges for a guaranteed airways service from point to point.
I would be happy to have the choice of paying an hourly rate for LARS, providing that the service was provided. That means that it has to be available during notified hours, properly manned and equipped, and that outside those hours it is not charged for. (In the current system it is mainly charged for when it is not available, at night!)
The trouble with discretionary pay as you go is that people will avoid the charges by not taking the service, thus reducing the service.
There are two solutions - pay on all Tower Log movements (or on Mode S), or pay an annual subsription.
The former is fairer, but misses a lot of GA arfields, the latter encourages people to switch off their transponders which causes everyone danger.
I would be happy to pay a reasonable subscription. Let's say that a Bronze subscription gave me VFR LARS, Silver IFR LARS and Gold airways. I then know what I am paying for. But the service must be in place.
So, please don't make me the villain of this peice. What is bust is that the system is unfair (I use the same services as a Seneca and pay, where the Seneca doesn't), makes people pay for services which are not provided, or even wanted (principally "Night VFR") and encourages people to use VFR where IFR might be more appropriate, which could be dangerous (though I still hold that it makes no difference in the case of shallow fog.)
One thing that I can assure you is that I am no happy-go-lucky idiot (I fly an Aztec because it is safe) and I am representing views, and behaving in a manner, very common among the >2T community.
Now you guys can tut and roll your eyes and say that I should just pay the charges. Or you could open your eyes a little and see that the system is flawed.
I am sticking my neck out and getting a little stick and disparagement for it, but someone's got to say if the system is wrong. It is good and loyal of you NATS employees to defend the system, but maybe someone somewhere will listen?