Response

BBC's licence fee deal The BBC is one of the greatest cultural assets the UK has in the modern world ( "It strengthens BBC independence" , 25 October), and quite frankly a precious resource for every anglophone – a relatively independent, relatively unbiased source of information not tainted by the profit motive. To a lesser extent, that goes for intellectually ambitious entertainment, too. Do you really prefer a completely unchallenged Murdochracy? Incidentally, New Labour hated the Beeb almost as much as the Tories do. Emberplume online • I am amazed that nobody has realised that this "settlement" means that the World Service and S4C (Welsh language channel) are not being paid for by a regressive tax (the licence fee) as opposed to out of the FCO budget previously, which comes from general taxation (which is broadly progressive). This is an enormous con. zavaell online • Why has Thompson not voluntarily offered to halve his own £800k salary? One small gesture, that wouldn't materially affect his living standards at all, would go a long way to calming the antagonism towards executive pay in the BBC. Such salaries are an insult to those who are going to lose their jobs. Cognicus online Indy's i needs better vision I think the Independent has totally missed a trick here (Tomorrow's launch marks the creation of a more populist Indy , 25 October). As a commuter with a 25 minute journey each way, I'd love a newspaper to read: it's about the only time I don't have access to the net. My problem is I've tended to check the news online before I set off. And that's news that was updated within the last hour, and not yesterday before it went to print. If I want a roundup of stories then I could grab the Metro. But I don't. The problem with a quality daily is that you get so much of it that I'd only read about 10%. So why not have a cut-down version which is 12 pages of the best long-form articles from your daily newspaper? Stuff that I can't get easily from the web. The sort of stuff that I'd actually want to spend the time reading. ollybenson online Google's virtual bunfight Surely the biggest challenge for Google ( The buzz around online advertising , 25 October) is how it will acquire Facebook user data and integrate it into its search results – cue a Microsoft, Facebook, Google bunfight in 2011 of epic proportions. Ralfsz online