Lol! Ah yes, the only alternative to tv, drugs and violence. Yes, how silly of me. I didn't realise that that must have been all people did before the tv was invented.
TV licence dodgers may no longer face prosecution
- Thread starter philip2009
- Start date
Lol! Ah yes, the only alternative to tv, drugs and violence. Yes, how silly of me. I didn't realise that that must have been all people did before the tv was invented.
Soldato
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Don't think so lol
Me too, we must have the same tenant lol
I just stack mine up, I've tried contacting the number provided in the letter but have never got through so I've stopped wasting my time
Quite frankly, the quality of British made television is terrible across the board. I wouldn't lose a second of sleep if the BBC went down the tubes.
It'll be a foreign channel after September anyway.
I don't see why the BBC can't just be a news service and maybe have a channel to broadcast programs which are in the public interest but not commercially viable... Things like the BBC's news broadcasts around the world do warrant public funding and are in our national interests.
A lot of the other stuff however else has no business being publicly funded... I don't see why a tax is required to pay for EastEnders or Radio 1 or pretty much anything shown prime time on BBC1 etc...
The Public Purposes of the BBC are as follows—
(a) sustaining citizenship and civil society;
(b) promoting education and learning;
(c) stimulating creativity and cultural excellence;
Etc
I would suggest that excluding the poor from such a public service would be morally the same as excluding them from libraries, because they couldn't pay an entrance fee.
Same purpose, same proportional cost, just the delivery method is different.
Even in America they recognise that excluding people from society is wrong and the government supplied the poor with mobile phones.
If I couldn't afford Internet access I'd also be excluded from a whole bunch of state services. At some point access to information becomes a utility, just like water and electricity.
I'll be disappointed when they start charging for iPlayer, because it would stop being a British public service and just become another 'entertainment for profit' organisation.
Soldato
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I agree
Bad example as the government funded libraries are free and they do also provide internet access for those without. As always there are other means to access this information but if it isn't in your home at your fingertips then its not an option
exactly, this is what the bbc was always supposed to be - now its just a bloated organisation taking tax payers money to pay exorbitant wages for mainly crap programmes.
Soldato
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Does the BBC receive funding outside of the licence fee?
Except every single one of those things you've stated the BBC provide can be had for free elsewhere.
Associate
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My personal opinion:
I gladly pay the license fee, it's worth it for lack of endless tacky adverts, and the website and iplayer services are excellent. I use one or many of the Beeb's services on a daily basis and I have no problem with the fee. I probably watch more Beeb than any other channels.
It has to be funded somehow: taxes or otherwise. Or adverts for payday loans or betting shops/insurance etc... I know which I'd prefer!
I gladly pay the license fee, it's worth it for lack of endless tacky adverts, and the website and iplayer services are excellent. I use one or many of the Beeb's services on a daily basis and I have no problem with the fee. I probably watch more Beeb than any other channels.
It has to be funded somehow: taxes or otherwise. Or adverts for payday loans or betting shops/insurance etc... I know which I'd prefer!
I don't think there should be an uproar, there's no evidence that there would be. Everyone knows this is essentially a tax, the only way to avoid it is by not having a TV, something which many people would argue is essential.
The government cannot claim it's a luxury whilst also helping to fund people on low incomes broadband and computers use as it's considered essential for education etc.
How is that fair, i don't watch tv.. what if they take road duty out of the main pot too? I'd be happy with that, but i don't think people who don't drive would be too pleased.
Lol what?! You can perfectly legally own a tv without paying the licence fee!
They get some income from BBC:WorldWide which was originally set up to licence BBC content abroad, and now deals with some content for distribution in the UK (home video, half of the UK TV channels), but also sells content for other creators.
Conversely an increasing amount of the TVL is now taken by the government to fund other things, such as the excess from the Digital switch levy being swiped to help fund BB (the BBC argued it should have been refunded as it was added to the TVL as a very specific charge), and the TVL is being raided now to help fund BB improvements in general, whilst the BBC is also being told it has to fund functions of broadcasting that used to be paid for by the government as part of foreign policy budgets etc (things like World Service was paid for by the FO as it was seen as diplomatically good, and not of use in general to the UK listener).
IIRC the BBC collects the TVL under instruction from the government (it's contracted out to Capita as they unlike the BBC actually have experience with this sort of thing), it then goes into a fund held by the government who pay out an agreed amount every few months to the BBC.
The amount collected may or may not have any semblance to the amount paid out, as some money is taken out (the BB improvement fund etc), and some added in (the over 75's fund).
Personally I'm in a bit of two minds about this, as whilst the TVL isn't something that should land you with a criminal record, it is effectively a tax decided upon by the government, set by the government, classed as a tax when it suits the government, yet the government deliberately holds it at arms length and passes any criticism of it on to the BBC.
Despite the fact the whole process has been approved by the government and not changed materially in something like 40 years (it used to be collected by the post office with almost identical methods).