Fuji
They are not providing a NATIONAL air traffic service, they are providing a COMMERCIAL air traffic service, and in my opinion that should not have been permitted by government
I agree 100%.
Also the marginal cost of providing the feed is close to zero, but these people have decided to make money out of it. This sort of thing should be publicised; I'd start with letters to the media.
It would be possible for smaller GA airfields to have a radar feed too. I bet it would be handy. Easily delivered over the internet. In this case, the anally retentive rules about ATCO pay grades / qualifications prevent this being provided to a non radar qualified ATCO; of course a radar qualified ATCO gets paid more so if it was provided to one of the "lesser" grades there would likely be objections from the ATC unions.
It's difficult to say that mid-airs are rare after your experience but they are indeed rare. 4 in the last 10 years and all below 1000ft. Nowadays, a life is valued at some figure (£100k-£1M or so) and given that only about 5-10 lives have been lost in UK mid-airs in the last 10 years I can't see the powers to be in paying for anything better.
Rod1 - yes TCAS (with mandatory Mode C) is the only way to solve this and the price of TCAS is coming down all the time. You can get a top-notch system installed for the cost of a top-notch IFR GPS, and a portable (but directional and fairly effective) system is far less than that.
I'd favour mandatory Mode C/S above some level e.g. 2000ft AGL, for all powered aircraft with an electrical system.
A lookout doesn't work - much as this flies in the face of everything we have been taught since the Boer War. Assuming straight trajectories, a target on a genuine collision course will be stationary in your field of view and you will not see it until too late. Probably the only time a lookout does anything much is in the circuit, or in proximity to a gliding site, where the trajectories are rarely straight.