Finding out it was real was a mixture of hilarious and sobering.
Finding out it was real was a mixture of hilarious and sobering.
There is plenty to criticise but the weird ring fenced tax that we pay is incredible value for money (films, tv, web, journalism for the price of Netflix
There is no money being wasted. Although it might certainly be a case of paper being wasted.
This is unlikely - partly any news media is biased against government as they do the actual decisions, but mostly the BBC is middle class britain incarnate, whereas the tories represent - well whatever the right wing is becoming these days.
As for licence fee - it’s basically a historical accident that became a ring fenced tax. Governments have strong views about people not paying taxes.
[0] https://www.capita.com/news/capita-announces-five-year-exten...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_Un...
[1] https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one/topics/t...
So yes, of course there is absolutely money being wasted in this comparison.
That's kinda assuming that everybody would continue to pay the license fee if the enforcement was stopped.
I have no clue how much revenue the TV licenses generate, or whether 100 million for administration and enforcement is a reasonable number. It feels unlikely to me?
Google google google:
In 2021, there were 24.8 million households in England
The TV licence fee is currently £159 a year
So there'd be 4,000 million or so in revenue if every household paid for the license (more including the rest of the UK). I _guess_ maybe 2.5% isn't a unreasoable number for administration and enforcementment? It's better that, say, Apple taking 30%...There are people going door-to-door to check TV licenses? Are they cops, what kind of power do they have? Seems extremely annoying and dystopian.
My jurisdiction finally got rid of annual/biannual car registration fees and stickers. Was a rather pointless process other than collecting money.
Was hoping they'd raise gas taxes by 0.1cents/litre or something, but I guess they buried it in with other taxes.
Unfortunately, we still require driver's license renewals every 5 years for CAD$90. And they don't bother taking a picture with every renewal because that was too much bureaucracy for them. I think it's only once I'm 80 they'll haul me in for a cognitive test.
Meanwhile the Canadian CBC is buried in taxes and has as many ads as any other station.
It would be easy to say they don't make anything like Kenneth Clarke programs anymore but even late Blair era documentaries seem to be fading away. Nature stuff is still good though but that's just cinematography.
This will probably kill it.
They rely on a uniform and vague threatening language to trick people into thinking they have any authority.
> There are people going door-to-door to check TV licenses?
yes
> Are they cops?
no
> what kind of power do they have?
none. I mean write you a fine if you admit to illegally watching TV I guess. But as far as I've been told you can have the TV on and visible to the guy and go "nah that's an aquarium" and be fine.
And BBC politics is awful. Question Time is full of planted audience members. BBC journos give softball interviews to their friends in the Conservative party.
Personally I'd split the BBC into National Archive (all the material before 2000) and BBC Ongoing, and make the latter into a normal private company which sells streaming subscriptions. And abolish the absurdity of the TV license and its often oppressive enforcement against the very poor.
In the case of Satellite TV, in the 1990s there were companies that sold decoder boxes so you could use a dish antenna without paying the Satellite TV company. You'd pay the pirating company instead. Lots of cat-and-mouse games involving changing encryption methods.
In addition many articles focus on individuals which offer a skewed perspective. I stopped using the bbc news app after noticing I was only occasionally enjoying the long reads, and even then I don’t want woke politics snuck in