Whats in it for me, eh?! Today BBC, tomorrow NHS, day after education and on the 4th day god said 'let there be a privatised police force'
we all benefit directly or indirectly from the bbc an impartial (relatively) broadcaster. not pumping the masses with propaganda or other. that's all i can manage right now. knackered.:Yawn:
It is not easy to understand what point you are trying to make here, but let's have a go. We all legally have to pay Income tax if and only if we receive any income. We have to pay VAT and duties if and only to the extent that we buy goods and services which are vatable. We have to pay Council tax if and only if we occupy a taxable dwelling. We have to pay Vehicle Excise Duty if and only if we keep a vehicle on the highway. We have to pay for a TV licence if and only if we operate an apparatus for receiving TV broadcasts. Parliament has passed laws making it obligatory on everyone who meets the criteria to pay. Payment is not directly connected to receiving any benefits in return. In ordinary language, this is what we mean by taxes. If you want to say that the TV Licence is 'not a tax', perhaps you are using the word 'tax' in a different and specialised sense ...?
Tax is payable not through choice bit obligation. You can choose to have a tv or not. You cannot choose to buy food and clothes, as even if you were self sufficient its unlikely you could deliver all your needs without entering a shop environment at some point and thus. Unless its VAT exempt (but means only for now) you pay tax. I'm amazed you're labouring that old chestnut of it being tax, when you must clearly understand its not
Its just a thread for the freeloaders to whinge about having to pay for a fantastic service. Some people want the earth and yet pay feck all for the privilege. I'd happily pay more for the BBC. Its a brilliant service. But it is the right of brits to moan about stuff. Thats what we do. Thus this thread exists to stroke the disgruntled brit folks danders. If you watch the BBC, yet do not pay, then you were once a thief. Now its decriminalised, you are a jolly bad sort instead.
That was not my intention in starting the tread, although I should have realised that it would be used in that way. I agree that the BBC is a great service and has many good points to what it provides. However, as things stand there is the ability to opt out and not pay for the service and this will be lost if this proposal goes ahead. Also the reasonng being put forward for the change is that because it is put on the internet it is available to all so everyone should pay for it. What nonsense. If I put something on the internet I realise that everyone has access to it and if I want viewers to pay for it I must put some mechanism in place to collect the revenue. I'd look a little stupid if I asked the government to put some form of taxation in place to recover the payment that I would like for viewing my content just because everyone can see it!
My understanding is that you only have to have a licence to watch any live BBC broadcast and not from any other source i.e. ITV etc
No, you have to have a licence if you have a television/ device capable of live viewing and it is used as such. You do not require a licence if you have a tv and it is used solely for watching recorded media. The onus is on them to prove that you have been watching live tv if they try to fine you.
Lots of bleating ln about how great the bbc is. Well if I had a business with a guaranteed 2 billion plus coming through the door regardless of how well I ran it. Id think it was pretty great too. Fact is the bbc is outdated with regard to how it is sustained imho. If I buy a tin of beans from asda I dont expect to pay tesco a fee. Likewise if I don't bother with the bbc or any of their content and watch sky or itv - I dont expect to pay their bbc wages either.
Most of the broadcasters in the world are financed and controlled according to one of two models. Either (A) they are paid for by the government directly, and thus must follow the government line; they can only broadcast what the government approves in its interests. Or (B) they are owned by wealthy private owners (like R Murdoch) who dictate the line; they can only broadcast what the owner approves in his own interests. And most of them rely on attracting advertisers, thus have to censor what is broadcast so as not to offend those advertisers. The BBC unusually follows a different model. It has no controlling owner, no censoring advertisers, and is not directly dependent on the government. Deriving its funding from a hypothecated tax and controlled by an independent trust, the BBC is more free from manipulation and self-serving control than virtually any other media source in the world. This extraordinary level of freedom and independence has miraculously survived down to the present day. It is now under threat from both commercial and political interests who would like to destroy it; their motives are not at all obscure.
Sadly that is not really a viable option. There is no simple answer, so we are looking for the lesser of the evils. As we all know technological change is meaning that more and more BBC content is received not from broadcasts on the airwaves, and not via televisions, but via the internet and on various other devices. More and more users of BBC content either are not receiving broadcasts, or are avoiding payment of the licence as currently organised. A revised model needs to be found soon, and how that should be done is the topic under debate. Destroying the independence of the BBC, and subjugating it the to the interests, control, and opinions of advertisers, of wealthy owners, or of the government of the day, is an option being strongly promoted in some quarters. Maintaining the independence but making the licence payable by all households (instead of nearly all), is a simpler option but one to which some people seem to object on principle. On balance I think the latter option is a lesser evil than the former. There would have to be a means of applying for exemption on grounds of financial hardship, obviously.
So the BBC could be paid for (by taking a slice from the general pot) via income tax which is itself an existing institution, already funded and means-tested, or at least, graduated by reference to income - not quite the same, but cheaper than introducing means-testing for a specific licence fee. Which means we can abolish the licence fee as a separate entity, and funding/expenditure for the BBC could receive oversight from the PAC - another existing institution already funded. Sounds too simple. Best have a general licence that is means-tested. Yay, another department for the Civil Service!
