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Please do not write below the line

(www.bbctvlicence.com)
312 points dcminter | 5 comments | 21 Oct 24 18:42 UTC | HN request time: 0.42s | source
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cooper_ganglia ◴[21 Oct 24 19:34 UTC] No.41907633[source]▶
A "TV License" is one of those things I alway assumed people were making up to satirize the claims of over-regulation & bureaucracy in the UK.

Finding out it was real was a mixture of hilarious and sobering.

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kamaitachi ◴[21 Oct 24 19:43 UTC] No.41907726[source]▶
It’s not just a U.K. thing. Many European countries have something similar, although it might be called something else.

It’s a form of tax that pays for public service broadcasting, including radio stations.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licence#

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1. Rendello ◴[21 Oct 24 20:01 UTC] No.41907932[source]▶
In Japan there was an infamous political party focused on getting rid of the hated TV licence system:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZG95grO-vc

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2. busterarm ◴[21 Oct 24 20:07 UTC] No.41907993[source]▶
In Japan the vast majority of people stopped paying their TV license after a string of NHK scandals and there's no penalty for failing to pay either.

It's just not enforced. Also the party platform wasn't to get rid of the license system but to encrypt the broadcast signal so that only willing NHK viewers would pay for the license.

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3. squidsoup ◴[21 Oct 24 20:13 UTC] No.41908042[source]▶
There's a great, and somewhat terrifying character relating to this, the "NHK Fee Collector" in Haruki Murakami's 1Q84.
4. DrillShopper ◴[21 Oct 24 20:19 UTC] No.41908131[source]▶
The penalty for not paying the TV license is dealing with their harassment specialists (aka fee collectors)
5. bigmadden ◴[21 Oct 24 21:04 UTC] No.41908513[source]▶
Some people actually voted them into office as a joke and they turned out to be a bunch of racists with some really awful views and were overall absolute shite politicians. Who could have imagined?