Slashdot Mirror
British PC Tax to Replace TV License?
caffeination writes "Here in Britain, anything capable of receiving live or virtually live broadcasts is considered TV receiving equipment. Because the detector vans can't actually 'catch' people watching such broadcasts on their computers, the BBC is proposing a blanket tax on PCs instead. They received several thousand responses to this green paper, ranging from the insightful to the unprintable."
I don't get it, can't they just download the correct fonts to make it printable?
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
Germany is the next. the start is here in 2007
The "BBC Charter Review" consultation closed in May 2005. The consultation was far wider reaching than the methods of funding, never mind proposed taxes on computers.
The changes to the license fee will not be needed until 2017.
Who would dare to predict what a "computer" will look like in 10 years time?
The up-to-date news is the Government Response to the Lords Committee Report on Charter Review, published on the 31 January 2006.
This document states:
Also remember this - I once had to take a foreign friend (an American living in Switzerland) who was visiting me to the Accident and Emergency department of the local hospital. All they asked for was her name and my name and address: they never asked for any payment. It's just as strange for someone in the UK to hear that you might be asked to pay in advance for emergency hospital treatment as for an American to hear that you need to pay a tax on televisions.
Are they planning a tax on all PC hardware, peripherals etc too, or just on a complete system? If the latter, the geeks are laughing al the way to the BBC torrent sites :)
Stuart
It's all fun and games until a 200' robot dinosaur shows up and trashes Neo-Tokyo... Again
In this case, I doubt "the insightful" and "the unprintable" are disjoint sets.
The opinions stated herein do not necessarily represent those of anybody at all. Deal with it.
Alright, since the US always seems to get bashed when they pass any sort of even halfway stupid law . . . .
Queue Big Brother posts in 5 . . 4 . . . 3. . .
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
We pay the TV licence so fund the BBC, if they wish to develope beyond that they should raise their own funds and not charge us for it. If I buy 1 PC, 2 PCs or 10 PCs, I may never use them to watch BBC content and as such I'm paying for fresh air in effect.
If they want to licence web content why not just make a yearly subscription service and charge for it? £50 a year for BBC programs online for up to 1 week of airing and then random "classic" shows such as Only fools and Porridge. The classic shows would sell it to a lot of people and if they make it downloadable in some way which means it's portables I can't think of a single person who wouldn't DL such content for long trips and when they're out of the country (no more need to miss Eastenders or your poison of voice).
The BBC has been quite good to the online community, if they start taxing "innocent people" (AKA people who don't watch online content from the BBC), then they are more or less just a thief with government permission.
I like muppets.
Although I lean towards being economically conservative, from what I gather, most Britons have been in favor of the TV Tax over the past few years, stating that the value of the programming on the BBC that they get in return exceeds the cost of the tax to them.
Do they plan on doing the same for the internet? Personally, because I think it's very difficult to define what a 'PC' is, people should be taxed based upon connections to the internet if anything. Likewise, I think it just makes more sense for people to be able to opt-out. If I had the chance to opt out of the British TV tax, I wouldn't do so because I enjoy the programming on the BBC. However, I could easily understand being irritated by the tax if I didn't care to utilize the Tax-subsidized programming.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
RTFA:
Published Thursday 3rd March 2005 17:38 GMT
Yet another fine example of slashdot editors earning their pay.
Oh well, atleast we will keep on getting decent advert-free TV and freely downloadable TV programs. All BBC2 programs are going to be downloadable later this year apparently. Bargain.
Is this talking about how they have like an annual fee for simply owning a t.v.? Maybe it's time the government switches to something progressive for their form of taxation. Isn't this a burden on the poor? Don't the richer people pay a lot less relative to their income?
To fund the BBC, just raise everyones taxes a bit and get rid of this bureaucratic mess.
This is just the problem, they are not paid, and cant get fired for gross incompetence.
You don't need a TV licence unless your television is set up to receive broadcast programmes.
n k1 which states you need a licence "If you use a TV or any other device to receive or record TV programmes"
In my house, we don't watch any broadcast programmes, but we do watch a lot of DVD's, so we have a set hooked up to our DVD player.
Recently we were getting increasingly threatening letters from the TV Licensing people, which I ignored after checking checking on http://tvlicensing.co.uk/information/index.jsp#li
Roll on a couple of weeks and one of the TV inspectors came knocking on my door, had a quick look at my setup and agreed I don't need to pay a license as I had no aerial and no way of receiving broadcast programmes.
Result!
Philosopher (n) - a wise person who is calm and rational; someone who lives a life of reason with equanimity
Why do I not expect "choose one" to get me either content or a tax exemption?
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Nearly every EU country has one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_Licence
quote about UK law
Anyone who uses or installs television receiving equipment to receive or record television programme services must be covered by a valid TV licence. Mobile phones capable of receiving television programme services live or virtually live would come under the definition of TV receiving equipment.
"So, if you choose to view live or virtually live programmes on emerging technology (eg mobile devices) or on a PC, in essence you are watching the programme at the same time as it is being broadcast throughout the UK, and you are required by law to be covered by a valid TV licence
TV and the internet are combining and this will probably affect far more countries by 2012-2020 heck you Americans and Canadians will probably pay for your cable TV via your ISP subscription.
It worked for the US.
...But I digress. TREMBLE PUNY HUMANS!ONE DAY MY SPECIES WILL DESTROY YOU ALL!
You know, we have the same system in Sweden, which is a tax for every TV owner which in turn pays for public access TV. Which I don't mind at all. Except that they are complicating matters way too much - and a lot of the money simply goes to administration and "catching the dodgers".
So what I don't get is why they don't simply spread it over the normal taxes and let everybody pay. Almost everyone has a TV or a PC anyways so there's little need to sort it out. It'd be a lower sum for everyone instead and no administration. And it isn't like it is the only tax that some have to pay without getting anything back, in this case the few without TV.
I don't mind paying taxes because I think we get something for it - TV, police, hospitals and the like - it's like an automatic insurance. What I don't like is when they waste it on the way.
Spine World
Submitter here. I submitted this not because it's breaking news, but because I spent a while searching slashdot for it after finding those pages, and found nothing. I wanted to see what people more intelligent than me would make of it, not how people less intelligent than me would pick holes in its worth as an article.
... when he says that if Tony Blair realises fresh air is free, he'll slap a tax on it.
I'm not kidding, there was in sensationalist article in a newspaper (so poor I'm sorry to admit having read it) today (ok, it was the Mail), saying that shops are sending the details of all purchases of phones with video capabilities on to the licensing authority!
It seems that the proper focus should be on TV tuner cards and not PCs. Almost all of the reason to have a TV tuner card involve watching televsion, but most PCs are used for other purposes (especially the ones without TV tuner cards.) Obviously, one could have a TV tuner card to record programs from a video camera, but the same could be said of a TV which needn't use its tuner, although they generally are equipped with one. In so far as the idea is to also cover live streaming video, this could cover any PC, but there have to be better ways to monitor this activity than to lump all PCs into the same category.
I don't practice what I preach because I'm not the kind of person that I'm preaching to.
As a UK TV viewer, this scares me. The BBC are funded by the TV license fees the public are forced to pay unlike other channels which rely on advertising revenue. You might think this would mean higher quality, but no - the BBC is dying a slow and horrible death with painfully bad regurgetations of dramas and terrible sitcoms. The occassional decent comedy (and they are VERY occasional) does NOT justify the £100+ we are expected to pay just now nevermind paying for a PC. Here's an idea - split current TV license fees equally between the current Free To Air channels and let's see what happens.
How do you deal with the Telly Thugs? Here's some information.
;-)
In the old days it was CRTs they detected, now all sorts of EMF/RF are under scrutiny. There is a pretty active resister community. Me? I watch only ITV!
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
How much does revenue does this tax raise for the BBC?
How much does the gov't spend to administer/collect this tax and find/prosecute offenders?
I think you will find the second amount to be enourmous. By funding the BBC out of general tax revenue, the second amount will be reduced to zero.
Why should only TV viewers have to pay? The BBC has lots of other media (web/radio/shortwave) that gets a free ride.
Frankly, this is also a good time to ask why the BBC has become such a left-wing kooky organization.
Is there still a need for public funding of the BBC?
I do in principle support the TV license, because the BBC (especially the Radio - World Service + Radio 3,4) is extremely good. However, I think that the TV license is a bad way to do it, and it ought to be included in general taxation. Reasons:
1)The license is there as a "tax of choice". So, if you don't have a TV, then you don't pay (not even if you do listen to the radio). This made sense in 1960 - but not so much now, when virtually everyone has a television.
2)The license collection is extremely inefficient. It involves hassle for the licensor, a draconian TV licensing authority (who make an enormous nuisance of themselves if you don't actually own a TV), and you cannot legally purchase any TV-capable equipment without giving a name and address to the retailer. [Yes, this is outrageous.] Enforcement and collection must cost a significant proportion of the total fee!
3)With the exception of pensioners, the TV license is the same for everyone. Yet, some can afford to pay more than others.
4)On principle: As a citizen, I have a natural right to my share of the RF spectrum - and to operate a Radio receiver!
However, the idea of a centrally funded broadcaster is a good one: it means that the quality of output need not go into freefall in the pursuit of ratings.
Future: Because the police can't actually 'catch' people breaking the law, the government is proposing that all people are criminals, including themselves.
One lesson the Brits can learn about taxes =)
Karma: a simple way of silencing those with unpopular views regardless how correct or just that view might be.
"Progressive taxation" is a technical tem meaning that the taxation rate increases as the amount taxed increases, or equivalently that the marginal rate of taxation is above the average rate of taxation. It shouldn't be interpreted as a value-judgement about the desirability of otherwise of such a system of taxation.
Financing public television through a tax on PC equipment is better than the bureaucracy built around the current fee structure.
The real question, however, is why the BBC (and other public broadcasting stations) shouldn't just be paid out of general tax revenues--why single out a population, in particular one that is likely to view less television than other people?
The people more intelligent than you actually understand what the definition of "News" is, with emphasis on the "New" part of it.
I didnt see anything about restricting the tax to home pc's.. if my company is having to pay TV tax on my workstation, i'll feel obliged to watch tv at work
--AlexC
Just because I dont agree with climate change doesnt make me a troll
Are you sure about that? Slashdot used to be an "indie" publication, then they whored themselves out to a corporation in exchange for money.
Not a troll - I'm just not British...
Isn't a TV tax kind of stupid idea in the first place? And then you have the whole infrastructure to support looking for the evaders (the signal vans). And this tax beaucracy just duplicates whatever is already in place for all of the other taxes you folks already pay. And all of this just to watch "Keeping up Appearances" (yeah, so what if that was years and years ago?).
Now I'm not saying don't fund the BBC. But why not just fund it out of the general funds or operating budget or appropriated funds or whatever pool of money your government spends from year to year?
--Jim (me)
I'm a rabbit startled by the headlights of life
Sounds like the RIAA in the US all over again. People turn off their TVs to become more interactive (e.g. computer use) and all of a sudden the media corporations get all up in arms.
Let's face it, despite how much TV people actually watch, TV in its old form (the "idiot box") is evolving and soon there won't be much distinction between TV or a PC. We're already seeing this with TiVo and media centers.
How this all gets sussed out is yet another matter. I suppose the TV license approach is as valid as any and likely better than commercial TV here in the US. The truth is that ALL media producers are going to have to consider that online distribution is the future. TV shows will be downloaded on demand and "through the air" distribution will be tremendously different, probably more useful for real-time news rather than actual entertainment (although I don't see much difference these days.
Having a hard time believing Britain uses detector vans.
Geez, at least here in the US we illegally and unconstitutionally invade your privacy at the head-end/switch - why leave the office?
(remembering the Python bit about the "cat-detector van from the Ministry of Owsinge")
Did everyone else just skim over this one?
Because the detector vans can't actually 'catch' people watching such broadcasts on their computers
The detector vans?
Quick poll: Who believes the TV "detector vans" are real? They must be real! Right? In fact, I've seen the advertising for the new hand held TV detector units. "We know what Mrs Brown from number 7 is watching!" They would never lie to us! Would they??
If they didn't have detector vans, how else would they know if you had an "unlicensed" TV?
Well perhaps they might just be suspicious of any household that didn't have a TV license. This is the 21st century after all. If you have ever lived in the UK and not had a TV license you will know that you get a nice warning letter in the mail pretty quickly. "We noticed that you don't seem to have a TV license for some reason. Unless you are some kind of anti-TV weirdo, maybe you should go get a license, and then we won't have to fine you."
Their "detective" skills don't end there:
A colleague recounted a story where the TV license at his flat was in a friend's name, but the friend no longer lived there. Somehow they got suspicous, and sent someone to the door to investigate. A man turned up claiming to be from the post office, and made some excuse as to why he should be let in. When the "post office" guy entered the lounge room he wanted to know if there was a license for the rather obvious TV sitting there.
"Wait a minute. What do you care? You're from the post office right?"
The guy brings out some kind of ID card saying "TV License Inspector", with some small print about being an agent of the post office.
Am I the only one imagining Pip's voice from Southpark reciting this letter. "Excuse me old chaps, I was just curious..."
Run and catch, run and catch, the lamb is caught in the blackberry patch.
Wasn't the original purpose of this tax to help pay for the public broadcast stations? If my computer oor DVD player doesn't require the resource that is the TV station, what basis do they have to expect me to pay for a service I am not using?
Or do they just want to maintain their revenue stream?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
.... i don't watch TV over the net..
the TV license is there to support the BBC because the BBC has no adverts (supposedly, but that's another issue).
so instead of assuming that everyone with a PC will be busy downloading BBC shows, why not just offer all the BBC shows for download, at a price.
seriously.. why?
At least you HAVE decent programmes. Here in the US we're stuck with crap for morons like Survivor, American Idol, Desperate Housewives, and a ton of ultra-right "news" programs. TV sucks here in the states. At least you've got options on regular over the air broadcasts like Green Wing, The Mighty Boosh, Murder in Mind, Waking the Dead, Midsomer Murders, and Doctor Who (the new series). Say what you want about your own programmes, if you had to live with what we are stuck with in the US, your brain would bleed at just how stupid television can be.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Bark bark!
What's that girl?
Ruff bark bark grrrr
Oh dear! Timmy's not paying for television?
Grrrr ruff ruff
And he fell down the well!!!
Run and catch, run and catch, the lamb is caught in the blackberry patch.
I hate and despise the TV tax, but it had at least some theoretical justification. Here was a service, supposedly according to its friends a worthy service that couldn't be duplicated by the market, broadcast free for the taking. The BBC was to inform the nation and produce worthy and fair programming, without commercial bias. Vital for the nation and yet lacking an income - I can see how a levy on televisions could make sense. I disagree with the assumptions, but that was the argument.
!!! BUT !!!
WHAT do the BBC bring to the internet that isn't already there? Dead air there certainly isn't! Nor is there any lack of worthy content.
WHAT marks them out as special, that they ought to receive handouts, when other voluntarily free services (eg: Wikipedia) do not?
WHO do they think they are, treating a mutual medium as if it was broadcast? If any Joe can publish, why privilege the BBC?
Even their original argument falters in the online context. Even by their own standards, they have no reason to be here. Why are they, then? I doubt they could answer in any terms except "we can, so we shall". Fair enough, but without your justifications, who are you? You're nobody special. You get to continue, but you get to pay your own way! Not as if you can't, either. BBC may call itself non-commercial, but it makes money hand-over-fist on DVDs and syndication.
I'm amazed at how governments create a ridiculous number of taxes in a ridiculous number of places. Almost every one with a separate authority, usually inefficiently collecting.
Even with the rising costs of energy and the public good of well maintained highways, the US has passed a new law to add up to 25% more tolls. So they can tax your income, then the vehicle you buy, then the gas to power it, and then tax you for the roads as well. Not to mention the additional fuel that will be wasted at backups.
Why can't we just pay one Federal Tax, one State Tax, and one Local Tax? (I imagine it's varied outside the US.) Why do we need to be nickeled and dimed to death?
What is the average effective tax rate in the UK when you add up all of the taxes that the average citizen pays?
Finally, a government that listens to its people!
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
In English - there's a subtle difference between the spellings
:-)
The document you hold is a licence.
License means 'permission to do something'.
A licence grants you license.
Of course in American....
Still this IS an article about Britain
Public Television (and radio) in the USA is funded minimally through general tax revenue and primarily through voluntary contributions from businesses and viewers. Like most of the BBC, Public Television in the USA is commercial free and provides content slightly more cerebral than the common fare on for-profit TV. There are annoying "pledge drives" where viewers are beseeched to contribute and there are "funding provided by..." announcements at the start of shows.
However, Public Television seldom draws more than 5% viewer-ship (even though it is practically al I watch and hear). Viewer-ship ratings are arguably a metric of "quality" as judged by the masses.
Any form of taxation includes the threat of force for failure to pay. In theory, if you don't pay your British TV license, you will be fined. If you refuse to pay the fine, your assets may be confiscated and you may be imprisoned. Such licenses/taxes and accompanying threats of force are very harsh in exchange for mere entertainment. I much prefer voluntary funding systems whether directly from viewers or through advertisements.
I don't have children, but they steal money from me to pay for schools. I don't drive, but they steal from me to build roads. I don't read, but they steal from me to build libraries.
The value of the BBC to the nation (indeed the world) is somewhat more than the sum of Eastenders and Porridge.
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
A friend of mine from Australia lived in Cambridge for five years. She never once had a TV nor a TV licence. However, every six months she got a letter from the TV Licencing buffoons telling her that she was on a list and that it was a criminal offence to watch TV without having a TV licence. The letters finished with a suggestion that this was probably due to moving house recently and if she just paid up then there would be no prison for her. Suffice it to say that at no point did anyone knock on the door even though the house was a Victorian terrace and there were at least three TVs in neighbouring houses.
It is all a load of rubbish that they have vans roaming the streets trying to find the licence-less houses. They just have a mailmerge routine set to print letter to The Occupier, $HOUSE_NO, $ROAD_NAME trying to imply that the Police will be round if you don't pay now.
Sadly it isn't restricted to picking on foreigners as there are a number of sites with similar stories to tell. I could go on but I won't.
1. Make all internet-connected PC's liable for the TV license.
2. Make all internet-connected PC's liable for a TV tax.
These sound the same to you? Well they're not. The first is pretty sneaky, in that whilst it doesn't really make any difference to most households (cos most already have a TV license) it screws almost all businesses, cos they don't have TV's but now have to pay the license.
The second option gets 10 out of 10 for subtle, cos it succesfully screws BOTH home and business (everyone pays, regardless of having a TV license or not). Of course they could sort it so that you get a "tax rebate" on production of a valid TV license, but i can't see that happening.
I get the impression that the BBC are attempting to tax the whole of Britian 'blindly'; after all it fits with their "Public Service" ethos. The fact that they haven't thought of a broadband tax, but rather one on televisions is indicative of this.
A computer could after all be disconnected, just as a telly could be from the aerial. I think that those at the BBC consider individuals with such televisions to be exploiting a loophole, and so they're trying to close the "computer without an internet connection" loophole now, by lobbying for a tax on computers themselves.
The rest of us should call the BBC on this. The non-receiving television "loophole" exists because it would appear unreasonable to MPs and the courts that the "loophole" should be "closed". So we should make sure that unconnected computers receive a similar "loophole", perhaps by putting forward a broadband tax in its place before the BBC get their way.
Wikileaks, no DNS
The people more intelligent than you actually understand what the definition of "News" is, with emphasis on the "New" part of it.
Weak. Check CmdrTaco's many many attempts to explain this. You're not on a breaking news website. You're on a "whatever the hell we decide seems cool enough" website. We as users don't define what's News for Nerds or Stuff that Matters through our bitching, the editors define it in the very articles they choose to publish.
There was a time when I wouldn't have posted this story as it is not breaking news. I have grown to understand slashdot better since that time, to the point where when I stumbled upon this today, I thought it would be a cool thing to submit to Slashdot.
The fact that the story was accepted reaffirms my belief that I have reached a greater understanding of what Slashdot is about.
You may now return to taking cheap shots at people anonymously.
There are no detector vans, and there never were.
Bring me someone who's ever seen one other than in an advert and I might change my mind. But I'll bet you can't.
You can take your PC Tax bill, carefully roll it up, bend over, and with the greatest of respect but with force of purpose: SHOVE IT UP YOUR ARSE!
Aunty beeb must be having a laugh! What the hell is she playing at. What use is there in to turn the rest of Britain against her? Sooner rather than later she'll lose the license fee and, lets face it that'll be a dammed good thing for all concerned. This kind of crap will only hasten things.
In terms of news broadcasting, the absence of commercial constraints has meant precious little in relation to what these clowns broadcast. I'm a bigger fan of Blackadder than most, but really these parasites have turned resting on their laurels into a national sport.
If you already pay a TV tax then it should cover all devices since you are only likely to watch one at a time. The tax is meant for the service not the item itself. It's completely rediculous at best since most aren't going to watch TV progams on their computer. You're telling me if I have a render farm I have to pay a TV tax on ten or twenty machines just in case I happen to watch Python reruns on one? Are the businesses going to get hit as well? Imagine some of the CG companies. When I was in New Zealand they dropped the TV tax. If they still had it could you imagine Weta getting hit with a tax on over 1,000 machines. There are plenty of British companies with hundreds of systems. What about them? Are servers excluded? Hey you can drop a TV tuner in one so why not? Sounds really poorly thought out and should cause a fair amount of chaos. Imagine if you are taxed per machine. How many old computer do you have laying around? I'm picturing a tidal wave of old hardware headed for British dumps.
The greedy bastards at the BBC should keep their mits off a great thechnology they have done NOTHING to create or improve.
Geeze, talk about taxing some totally random item to grab some revenues.
Detector vans don't need to be admissible in court to be useful; I would imagine that they'd use them outside houses that supposedly don't watch TV, and if they detected a TV in that house, they could go in and harass the occupants and get their admissible evidence. The detector vans mean that they don't have to harass households that don't have a TV.
They will get our money one way or another.. Eventually they will just take it all from your job, then give you what they feel you should get. Then redistribute the rest.
The natural progression of society. its a cycle.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Here in the states, I pay a $180/year TV tax. In exchange, I get advertising free TV that I want to watch. The tax collector goes by the name of Netflix and is quite flexible in terms of providing interesting content.
I pay another TV tax to the Federal government. The folks in Washington think I should watch PBS so they use some of my income tax payments to chip in for public broadcasting's operating costs. Since the folks at public broadcasting can't manage to keep their politics to themselves, I don't watch or listen to their shows much.
Even though my share of Federal Taxes that underwrite public broadcasting only amounts to ten or twenty bucks a year, I get a much better deal from Netflix since I get to choose what I see.
"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." - Ronald Reagan
Circumcision is child abuse.
I bought an Acer T140 PC last year and it came with an analogue TV tuner card that I've never hooked up to any aerial or bothered to run any software against (the room I have the PC in doesn't even have an analogue aerial). So the idea of taxing TV tuner cards doesn't work in all scenarios either, particularly when it's bundled with a PC (if you bought it separately then, yes, you're far more likely to use it).
Good idea, so long as emergency broadcasts and the news come through unscrambled.
It doesn't address the whole moving-to-IPTV thing, but that's long term anyway.
p.s. I like the BBC, but it has to be said that their actual entertainment programming is really crap IMO. They haven't had a good comedy show in several years, they don't even have The Simpsons any more... it's pretty sad that an ad-infested commercial channel is better to watch than one that gets a huge subsidy.
And whatever it is, I don't think it's good. I went on holiday last year for three weeks to Australia and television there is wall to wall crap. Adverts every couple of minutes
:-)
You are confusing two thing:
- federally tax-funded television, ABC and SBS, which can be very good, and programs are never interrupted by adverts.
- advertising funded commercial TV which has descended from bad to utter crap.
Fortunately all the good programs from commercial networks are available on DVD or bit-torrent. (both of them?
And all the good topical doco / current affairs programs are on non-commercial stations. (Except Nine's "Sunday" program.) So you need never watch adverts, not even on fast-forward.
I'd just like to make it clear that not everyone in the UK thinks that the license fee is such a marvellous idea.
Even if the programmes were value for money, it would still be a draconian and compulsory >taxgood exports. And did I mention chat shows?
OK, rant over.
Leading in what way? They have a news site, whoop-de-do. No shortage of those!
Wikipedia is leading. Blogs are leading. Google video is leading. BBC is just copying.
I'd just like to make it clear that not everyone in the UK thinks that the license fee is such a marvellous idea.
Even if the programmes were value for money, it would still be a draconian and compulsory >tax< for a product I actively dislike and have not chosen to consume. How about a bit of slashdotter libertarian solidarity here?
I did a quick calcualtion, and the BBC costs me approximate 4x as many pounds per viewing hour as my subscription cable channels. It's a ridiculous throwback to the days of a national broadcaster; when one-size fit all. When you subtract kids programmes, daytime tv, light entertainement, bad comedy, religion, soap opera, cookery programmes (oh yeah, all the rage at the moment), bloody 18th century costume drama, home-makeoevers, crime drame, and "Suppernanny" shows, there's nothing left. Good grief, I'm an educated 30-something scientist with an IQ on the sunny side of 130, and there's entire days with nothing on.
Science? Literarture and books? Engineering and architecture? Art and philosophy? Documentaries that don't have you tearing your hair out? Informed comment and civil debate? Nawh, must be some other channel....
And don't get me started on the news and current affairs output; politically correct, superficial, full of factual error, and glibly patronising. I nearly went insane before discovering the blogosphere. It's like being FORCED to buy a newspaper whose opinions I hate.
Basically, you Americans only see the >good< exports. And did I mention chat shows?
OK, rant over.
I've been to the ER a couple times in the last 6 years, never had to pre-pay, only forms I filled out were medical background forms until later, after treatment that they asked about insurance.
Never pre-pay for treatment or appointments either, and I've been to a number of organizations, Kaiser Permenante, Mayo Clinic, Oregon Health Sciences University and private practices among others.
http://www.tvlicensing.biz/detection/
Pretty straight forward really.
"Religion is the most malevolent of all mind viruses." - Arthur C. Clarke.
I got refused treatment at a public hospital (as in not private) emergency room when I had wood splinters in one eye and didn't have enough cash on me (they wanted 360$ just to have someone look at it, anything extra would have been extra), and no insurance. I washed it out best as I could later at home, and driving there and back was certainly an adventure. As far as I know some are still in there, and yes, that eye is partially blind now, I only have roughly half normal vision in it. THANKS GOVERNMENT. Funny how all the people who COULDN'T SPEAK ENGLISH got waltzed right to the front of the line and got free treatment though. I noticed that quite a bit as I sat there for three hours to find out I wouldn't get any help. When I asked the helpful BITCH at the receptionist desk why all these obvious illegal aliens were getting free treatment she threatened to "call security on me". My crime was I asked why when these folks didn't have insurance they got to see a doctor, yet I couldn't. Didn't matter I had been taxes like forever, nope.
That's the only time in my life I have actually gone to any governmental agency or office and asked for help. Everything else to do with government is always something to do with complying with their edicts and paying them cash for the privelege of complying. It's a racket, a scam. I wouldn't piss on a government worker if they were on fire. I'm sorry for the half a dozen left who are truly innocent and honest and actually enter government in order to "be of service", but they are in a minority and are just going to have to accept guilt by association with the entire criminal aspects of it.. The only thing government means to me is they take your money and give it some big corporation or to illegals and give themselves pay raises and full benefits and pensions all the time, then they tell you you are no good because you can't "compete" with 50 cent an hour labor overseas someplace, so they give TAX BREAKS to the same big corporations to ship the jobs over there, where they DON'T have to offer insurance or even a living wage. Anything left over that they have stolen at gunpoint they go to fight a war and "secure the borders" in some foreign nation, while ours stay slammed wide open.
Why did you let them in? Let them get a warrant instead.
The Raven
how do they tell the TV is inside your house and not next to the wall inside your neighbor's?
how do they tell its receiving the BBC and not the output from your DVD player or PS2?
the false positives and negatives for so called "detector vans" is so mind bogglingly huge as to be completely useless.
which is why they use databases of addresses instead.
Basicly, anyone with a TV set or TV tuner card or whatever and a capable arial or cable or dish gets hit with the licence fee (like it is now).
People with normal PCs do not.
That way, anyone capable of watching BBC content coming over the air (i.e. normal TV programming) is paying for it.
As for people moving to the internet, people who want to watch BBC internet programming would either need a TV licence (which would give them access) or a subscription to the BBC content. Problem solved and only those people who are capable of accessing BBC content (i.e. those with over-the-air capabilities to recieve it or those with access to the BBC web content) would be paying for it (which is the whole point of the licence system).
People who dont have a TV or pay the TV licence and who have a normal PC/mobile phone/whatever wouldnt be charged for content they are unable to access.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=EMTALA+violat ion
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I believe it is my duty to say, "Ah-ha-ha-ha."
No taxation without innovation.
Just a point about the BBC World Service - this is not funded by the BBC License Fee, it is actually funded by the Foriegn Office, which is in turn funded by general taxation of the populace.
Oh, and regarding point two, the License Fee is quite possible the simplest tax in Britain to collect. It is (for >80% of the taxed) a single yearly flat payment based on premesis not person, plus every retail purchaser of receiving equipment - and this is true too for a tuner card bought at PC World - has their name and address submitted to the collectors *by law*.
Compare that to the several hundred income tax codes, plus exceptions and allowances... or VAT and the incredible paperwork that entails for everyone except the consumer.
This sig left unintentionally blank.
"Here in Britain, anything capable..." of being taxed, is.
Governments have zero justification in a monopoly on communications. That is characteristic of dictatorship (think: the Chinese firewall) and Britain deserves better. Eliminating the BBC would remove the barricades to competition from around the world that would love to provide hundreds of channels of communication to Brits. Proposing a tax on internet connected PCs is a logical extension of the irrational powers of the BBC and it will only get worse over time.
There is no such thing as a "TV detector van". So quit blindly perpetuating this myth.
It's just a scheme that uses Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt to scare citizens into compliance, as "we visit all addresses without a TV license" was not scary enough. Since it's a $1000+ fine to be caught without one if you have a TV, they have some serious incentives to do the checking.
Here's proof for you: get rid of your TV and license: Within 12 months, you'll receive a visit from a rather hostile inspector. Their desperate search will slowly turn into awe when they discover that there is no television on the property. Why the predictable false positive? Because the only "detector" is a database lookup.
Clerk: There's no such thing as a bloody PC license.
Customer: I bleeding got one, look! What's that then?
Clerk: This is a TV license with the word 'TV' crossed out and 'PC' written in in crayon.
Customer: The man didn't have the right form.
Clerk: What man?
Customer: The man from the PC detector van.
Clerk: The loony detector van you mean.
Customer: Look, it's people like you what cause unrest.
I've had the misfortune to have to take my son (now 7 months) in to hospital twice since he was born. This is the hospital he was born at in a city in South Wales. The hospital that my wife has been treated at twice (one failure to diagnose, one mis-diagnosis!).
...
... I interrupt and say something along the line of "we just rushed here with a suspected inguinal hernia, I gather it's extremely serious - we need to see a doctor now!"
... I expected at least to be asked what the problem was. No-one would have know for those 5 minutes or so whether our son had a bleeding wound, a crush injury, been blacked out or anything ... but at least they took his parents work details and home contact info - WHICH THEY HAD ALREADY!! He'd been born there 3 months or so earlier.
... he'd been coughing so hard for the last 24 hours that he'd coughed up all his food; turns out he had a viral infection that required an overnight stay in hospital (due to low blood oxygen saturation), was close to needing a drip, and required xrays to be sure there wasn't any pneumonia.
... was manned by a cleaning lady who told us to go to the other reception. On arrival, we're asked our bloody life history ... again I had to interrupt and say something like we're here for an emergency appointment, any chance of seeing the triage nurse (who sent us immediately to see a doctor!).
... age ... dob ... address ... current occupation ... doctors name ... surgery address ...".
The first occassion was a suspected inguinal hernia; the medical books state this to be a huge emergency as the intestine can get pinched leading to extreme shock and death in minutes
On arrival at the hospital ER we were sent to a different childrens reception where we had to wait for the _one_ receptionist to finish on the phone. She starts take name and address details, dates of birth of the family, where we work, occupation
she says: "you'll be seen shortly",
I say: "are there any doctors?"
she says: "you'll have to wait"
Now, I've done quite a lot of first aid; and feel I wasn't being completely irrational. The doctor did say it could well have been the suspected hernia (common in children of his age). But, thankfully the elasticity of the intestine can allow the problem to fix itself. The thing that got me was pulling up at the front of the ER where the ambulances are and rushing into the hospital
Right, move up to about 5 months. Christmas day morning
Same sort of thing - childrens ER reception, Christmas morning
Now, bear in mind we've prepaid via our taxes and National Insurance so it's not like they have to squeeze some money out of us first.
It still amazes me that the first question on arriving at the _A&E_ is not "what appears to be the problem" but instead is "what's your name
Whoops I think I went off on one then!
I'd have to retire a few machines from my home network.
My momma gave birth to a winner, I gotta win.
Social workers, acting on an anonymous tip, will normally demand to search the home. They do this even if the condition of the home is entirely unrelated to what was reported. Example reason: They want to look for moldy food in your refrigerator, then write up a report suggesting that you feed moldy food to your kids. They have a quota to meet you know!
Every state in the US has a law that purports to allow this.
The social worker will tell you about the law. What they won't tell you is that courts throw this out. For example, the 9th District Circuit Court of Appeals (covering the west coast) gave a very strong ruling about this. They ruled that: entry permitted under threat of having the door broken down is not voluntary, the 4th ammendment must prohibit warantless search of the home if the ammendment is to have any purpose at all, because of their occupation the social workers knew or should have known that entry was illegal.
Every day though, social workers bullshit their way into the homes of rightly-terrified (or naive) parents. Every day, social workers find excuses to meet their quotas.
inefficient. The public broadcaster in Canada, the CBC, is funded partly by the Federal Government and partly from advertising revenues, no license. What is odd is CBC Television has ads, but CBC Radio does not. CBC TV does a very good job over all in areas like Olympics coverage, Hockey Night in Canada, news, public affairs and some CBC only television series given the budget slashing from the 90s to today. CBC Radio, on the other hand is hit and miss with great public affairs programs like As it Happens and Country Canada, but some real snore fests like their arts programs that really only appeal to the wine and smoking jacket set.
I am not going to hold up the financing model for the CBC as ideal, they do have to deal with constant budget crunches from a stingy Federal Government, but it does seem a lot better than detector vans, demand letters and license fees on one hand and the pitiful pleas and annoying telethons that American public broadcasters have to go through on the other.
People who complain about the licence fee don't realise how good they've got it. Why they constantly need to look for alternatives is beyond me. What they should do is give the Brits a diet of Australian or American TV output for a month (including all the ads, but without any BBC/British content at all), then ask them what they'd prefer. It's not until you've lived with an alternative system for a while that you realise just how bloody good British TV is, and the BBC in particular. Sure, it's not perfect, but it is the best there is. The funding system has worked for years, the result is the world's best TV, so stop trying to find ways to fuck it up!
Asking the BBC, MI5, MI6, and the GCHQ to start paying TV taxes on the computers. I'm sure they won't mind even though the last 3 agencies have plenty of computer power to spread around.
"televisions" should read "computers".
Wikileaks, no DNS
Poor coward. If you made the same bitch from a European perspective, you'd be +5, Insightful. Such is the way of the self-loathing intellectual elite, I suppose.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Lets suppose that you watch 10 hours of TV per week and half of that is spent watching BBC channels. If the BBC was commercially funded then 25% of that time would be taken up by adverts. So that's 63 hours of adverts per year that you're missing out on. How much would I have to pay you to watch 63 hours of adverts? I imagine that it would be significantly more than 100UKP.
Okay, so maybe you like some adverts or you don't watch that much BBC or you have a DVR and skip the ads anyway, but for the vast majority of television watchers in the UK, the 100UKP+ almost certainly is justified by comparing it to what the alternative is.
Health care, public education, police, and the like unambiguously benefit everybody. (Even those who don't get sick benefit from other people being treated, which reduces contagions, and even those who don't have children or who send them to private school benefit from an educated populace.) Therefore it makes plenty of sense to make everyone pay for them. But it's rather doubtful that public television provides any notable benefit to those who don't receive it.
Am I being naive to suggest we're entering a new age of philanthropy?
Zen tips: Pay attention. Don't take it personally. Believe nothing.
..TV watches YOU!
(alt version: In Soviet Russia, TV taxes YOU!)
Libertas in infinitum
The licensing scheme is most curious. There's still a potential problem. In the UK we have 5 "terrestrial channels" of which two - BBC1 & 2 are covered by the license. This effectively means that for the other three channels their audience is held captive to the BBC license fee. (Think of a government backed license fee for PC's, initiated by Microsoft that every computer owner HAD to pay even if they used a Mac or Linux). So the BBC acts as a sort of highwayman for television viewers in the UK. You cannot buy a license free tv that doesn't show BBC channels either.
The other main point is this, since the David Kelly affair the BBC has had much of it's journalistic teeth pulled and the content and style of much of the news is "headlines for tellytubbies people" stuff. Happy, orange people with no minds, recite platitudes and propaganda with a dazzling smile and buckets of utterly fake concern in their voices. Lament for a BBC now lost and gone.
The thought of the BBC going bankrupt warms my heart. Get stuffed, you rent-seeking termites.
Too much Law; not enough Order.
It is very important to understand exactly how this works in the UK.
There is a state broadcaster, the BBC, who runs TV and Radio stations. There is a fee charged for watching any TV, and the resulting revenues are paid to the state broadcaster. It is a criminal offence to watch TV and not pay the fee.
There are also numerous other broadcasters, probably 50-100. Some are subscription based, others are advertising funded. None get any revenue from the license fee.
However, you cannot legally watch any of these, without paying for the state broadcaster, whether you want to watch it or not.
To see what is really going on, you have to look at the newspaper business. The analogy would be that the State publishes a newspaper. It would be illegal to read any newspaper, without having a subscription to it. Officials would go around newsagents, stop people buying The Times, and demand to see proof that the buyer had subsribed to the Government paper.
This is why a number of people in the UK think that the license fee in its present form is an abuse of human rights, and probably unlawful under the European Human Rights legislation. It restricts free access to information.
It is also positively wicked in its application. The people who end up being caught and going to jail for watching TV without paying the BBC are the poor and the single mothers. They are people who, if given a choice, would take the $200 a year and spend it on food or clothes, and just watch the free channels. It is a completely regressive form of taxation, as well as restricting access to information and entertainment.
The result on the BBC is equally unfortunate. It has turned into a powerful lobby group whose aim is to extract more and more money from the license fee, and use it to enter more and more areas of the media. We thus have the amazing situation in which the State broadcaster is the leading magazine publisher in the UK.
This is why the eminent theatre director Jonathan Miller refused to pay his fee, was taken to court, and announced his intention of appealing to the Strasbourg court on human rights grounds.
What is wrong about the license fee is, it is wrong to make people subscribe to the State channel as a condition of being able to watch TV. Just as it would be wrong to make them subscribe to the State newspaper as a condition of reading the press, or to buy music by the State bands, as a condition of being allowed to buy CDs. It has nothing to do with the quality of the BBC. It is about compulsion, and restriction.
I would personally subscribe, given the option. But I would defend vigorously your right to watch TV without subscribing, and if that leads to a smaller BBC, that would be better both for the country, and for the BBC.
Exactly. Just like NPR and PBS in the US.
Rich, snooty, big-city liberals force us working stiffs to give them money, so they can watch opera and documentaries on yacht seamanship without having to pay for it, or God forbid having to watch any icky commercials. Then they pat each other on the back for their pious civic-mindedness.
If so-called "public" media were not living an elitist lie, it would be mostly NASCAR races and soaps.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
I live in the UK, don't have a TV, and I don't pay the TV licence. I do use a lot of the BBC's services, the news website is the best in the world (which isn't saying much), and I listen to Radio 4, which ranges from assinine to inspired.
When I'm outisde the UK I still use those services. Thank you UK taxpayers. Should I be paying for them as a Brit, should I be paying for them as a Brit who lives overseas, and should foreigners who use the same services? And where should the money go from subscribers to BBC's News24 channel? Foreign drama sales? Monty Python reruns? DVD sales? Big questions, and not ones I'm qualified to answer.
I'm a journalist, and I've looked into selling work to the BBC, their terms/rates of pay suck for freelancers. I used to have a flatmate who joined the BBC, nearly drove her nuts, the politics and internal fighting. The BBC takes in a lot of intelligent and educated people, who can't do journalism for shit - graduates tend to be too impatient to be able to do a lot of serious legwork, they spend their days in front of screens rather than seeking out face time with intereresting sources. But that's a problem with many media in general now, not just the beeb. World going to hell in handbasket, news at 10.
What if I have a TV, but I only use it to watch DVDs? Do I still have to pay for this stupid license? How do they differentiate from their stupid van whether I'm watching a movie off of a DVD or a broadcast program?
Nobody seems to hae mentioned the TV licesing authorities preferred method of collecting fees - fear.
Every year they produce a new set of 'we know where you live' 'we're going to get you' adverts, and nobody thinks there's anything wrong with this! They'll be doing the same if this applies to PCs.
On top of it all they don't use superspy, anti-terrorism, hacker, magical equipment it's much, much simpler.
1 Take a list of all the addresses in the UK
2 Take a list of all address which *are* paying fees
3 Subtract List 2 from List 1
4 Harass all the remaining addresses
Yes, why not?
I suppose this idea has more appeal to Europeans and others who are used to TV as a public service rather than a vehicle for commercials. Public service TV often carries programs that have less popular appeal (but far higher quality of information), and of course you're not plagued by stupid adverts every 2 minutes. BBC, for example, broadcast some very good educational programs during the night for you to record and watch later - they include such things as language courses, preparation for national exams etc.
As the system works now there is a number of drawbacks. First of all the need to try to catch the ones who watch TV without paying their license, and secondly the fact that the license fee at the same whether you are rich or poor, which means that eg. old age pensioners, who often have a very small income and perhaps feel they need TV more than most, can have a hard time paying. By making it a tax, both of these issues could be addressed. I like it.
Since the method used by the detector vans to tell if you have a TV is to detect the output from a CRT (be it a tv or Pc's monitor) an easy solution would be to buy either a TFT or plasma screen then they can't detect anything coming from your house. I have qualms with paying the BBC any money for the right to watch TV as I dont watch BBC channels and since I pay a subscription to SKY each month I'm not using BBC equipment to recive the programmes I do watch. The whole TV licence thing is nothing more than a throwback to the days when the BBC was the only tv provider and in my opinion they havn't given us anything remotly worth watching in the past 5 years that would justify me paying them £100+ a year.
To err is human. To forgive is not company policy.
As a resident Brit, I agree entirely. Too few people recognise how important it is that the BBC continue on public funding!
This country is a crock - it makes more sense financially to be unemployed than have a low-paying job. Hence I'm emigrating. Britain is driving away business and intelligence, through their mindblowingly stupid benefits and taxation system.
I'm English and I've never had a television. I do own hundreds of DVD's, which I watch on my pc. The reason I don't own a television is basically this - no one else seems to have raised this so I thought I would -
There are many, many television channels that I COULD receive if I had the equipment. However, to watch them I have to pay the BBC a fee. This is regardless of whether I ever watch the BBC or not. Do you only want to watch satellite channels? No matter, you still have to pay the BBC.
I find this unacceptable - so no TV - and it only took me two and a half years and numerous 'visits' to convince the BBC that this was so.
Frankly, I think the BBC should take commercials - other than for their own products, of course - or go subscription only.
Right now. If I wnat to watch a TV show - I'll wait for the DVD, they can have my money that way, but not otherwise.
This will never happen, if you think gay pride marches or anti-war protests are ugly, imagine 5 million geeks decending into London...
The cloud of noxious BO would obscure satellite imagery - perhaps even give smog warnings over the thames area on the midday weather.
I would personally parade naked in front of the BBC offices to fight this. Now you *know* they want to do it.
I was 200 meters away from when the bomb went off outside the beeb, sounded like someone shaking a giant sheet of steel for about 10 seconds.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
A blanket tax wouldnt be so bad, but only if it applied to all content, not just for the BBC.
/any/ content, then I could happily go off sourcing it from whomever happened to record it. The TV stations can just seed torrents of their TV shows into the community (saving huge amounts of cash on distribution, bandwidth and packaging, etc) and be renumerated via the license system.
If I could pay £120/year to cover me for
Basically, p2p should just be seen as another broadcast medium.
If a TV company produced a programme of high quality (both content wise and encoding) with no DRM, and seeded it to p2p, they could even put minimal ad breaks into it and suddenly they have control over the content again, rather than having to fight 'piracy'
The TV licensing pricing model in the UK is inherently unfair in that it is free for one group of people and not for another.
My sister is from the UK and lives in Spain most of the year. She watches British TV every day via satellite (like millions of other ex-pats.) Likewise, the BBC website is viewed by millions of people all across the world and is an excellent resource but why do people in the UK have to subsidise the service? It really pisses me off that I have to pay for something and someone else doesn't.
What is the point in having a TV license at all (in the UK)? Well, the obvious first answer is to fund the BBC. Fine. But why can't the BBC be funded from general tax funds? It could be, but in theory that would be unfair to those who don't own a TV. That argument would have worked well in the 1950's and 1960's when TV ownership was smaller. But what portion of people in countries like UK and USA do not own a TV today? I believe the figure is so small at this point of a modern connected society that if the BBC funding were switched to general tax funds, there would be overall savings because the overhead of maintaining all the individual TV license fee accounts, and the enforcement (the guys driving around in the trucks scanning for the carrier frequencies typically emitted by a TV), would no longer have to be paid for. I'm sure you can find many government services that get paid for by taxes which not everyone can make use of.
FYI, I don't live in the UK, so I cannot be certain of any of this (I live in a country that didn't think very highly of British taxes on tea and surely would not like a TV tax at all). I could be wrong ... maybe lots and lots of people in the UK don't have a TV. If not, I wonder why that is.
This does make me wonder if the TV licensing people are trying to keep the licensing just to keep their jobs (as opposed to doing some work that actually produces something of value for the country).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Government proposes to expand taxation... film at 11:00
"It's just as strange for someone in the UK to hear that you might be asked to pay in advance for emergency hospital treatment."
Contrary to popular belief, it is not only uncommon to expect payment in advance for emergency hospital treatment in the United States -- IT IS ILLEGAL.
If it were funded from taxation then the government of the day would have too big a stick when "suggesting" that they behave "better" or "more responsibly". We have already seen what can happen even without that with the effects of the David Kelly affair.
That's great, but you can't judge people entirely by their incomes. Some rich guy's kid can get put in charge of a business for a couple of years, run it to the ground while earning millions, and in return gets another million or two just for leaving. Meanwhile I can turn up for work every day for a year and earn just over £8k.
Instead of new law thats impossible to police, why not tax the devices? they tax cigerates and beer easily enough. At least that way they are only charging people that can actually view tv on their pc's.
And once streamable tv gets mainstream its not going to be free is it? so there is still no need to tax pc's...unless of course its just a flakey excuse to screw more money out of us.
----- I refuse to have an argument with an unarmed person
It just so obvious to me that the population at large, endowed with such poor taste as they are (else why would crap be popular), should be taxed to pay for the content you find particularly good that I wonder why you even bother writing that down.
I do see your point about the usefulness of a little misdirection (a law requiring a "variety" of programming) in getting it past the unwashed, though.
The priceless part was excluding headless, internet-less PCs with poor connectivity or missing software (that virtually any PC sold today for more than $300 would have). Now *that* was inspired.