VHF Radio Tax

[DEANO3528]

Yes indeed people, your caring and sharing Labour(ious) government has excelled once again.
As they obviously never made any money from taxing CB'ers they dropped that and have maoved on to VHF instead.
Problem is, that a lot of voluntary not to mention charity funded organisations such as Mountain Rescue and Lowland SAR,  not forgetting the 4x4 Response groups rely on VHF for their comms.
If you feel able, then please sign the petition

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/LSAR-RF-LICENSES/

TIA

[crazymac]

This will also effect the lifeboat service a well!!

[carbore]

Whilst I dont support any taxation of this, there is some confusion around about what this means.

See this article I saw the other day. ((I have posted about half of it)

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/21/ofcom_clarification/

UK regulator Ofcom has published an update to its consultation on spectrum management for the maritime and aeronautical sectors, explaining that it has no intention to charge lifeboats a quarter of a million quid to use radios.

The clarification follows a deluge of bad publicity and vitriolic feedback received when various mountain rescue organisations and the Royal National Lifeboat Institute calculated that the proposed change in spectrum licensing would lead to a huge jump in costs - up to £260,000 for the RNLI.

The feedback was requested - this is a consultation and remains open until the end of October. But Ofcom has reiterated that no decisions have been made, and that the calculations made by the RNLI aren't accurate anyway. The regulator reckons that under the new scheme the RNLI should be paying less, not more, and that mountain-rescue organisations don't pay for their spectrum and so shouldn't be so worked up about it anyway.

[crazymac]

Thats goodnews carbore!

I'm active on another forum http://www.lifeboats24-7.co.uk/ and this was a big point of discussion a month or so back.