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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."
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.
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.
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.
I'd gladly pay a PC Tax to keep Big Brother off our screens.
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
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.
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)
Why stop at a TV license? Why not cherge people progressively more for bread, milk, meat, cars, computers etc. based on their income. I mean, surely it's unfair that that rich pay proportionally less of their income on food than the poor do - right? That's the logical conclusion of such a corrupt socialist system - people are rewarded for doing poorly and punished for doing well. Quite frankly it sucks.
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
I've never heard of emergency treatement requiring payment in advance. In my experiance it isn't until after treatement that they start talking about payment (for any planned visits everything is always paid in advance though).
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
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
the definition of 'emergency' can be really interesting though....
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Try to imagine the outcry that would happen in the USA if any remotely similar scheme was tried here (and rightly so too!)
The BBC is also required by law to provide a variety of programming and not just what is very popular. It means channel 4 gets the crap but popular stuff like "big brother", and the BBC gives us great, but virtually unheard of stuff like "the mighty boosh".
The BBC is now providing its content online for PC viewing. As long as there is a need for the BBC online (and there currently is), I believe a license fee (read "tax") should be payable on all computers wired up and capable of decoding and displaying BBC content at an acceptable quality. If you don't have the software though, or your computer is too slow, or it doesn't have a monitor, or your network connectivity is spotty, then I don't think you should have to pay anything.
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?
Because politicians are too chickenshit to raise taaxes directly. Instead, they raise revenue by adding taxes through the backdoor.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Australia does this for its two non-commercial channels. These channels report the government's corruption/incompetence with more ferocity than the commercial channels, and so their budgets have shrunk substantially over the last 10 years. One now has to show ads.
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.
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.
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!
See, your idea works if you look at purchasing power in absolute terms. However if you use a more relative approach, you would realize that under the current system rich people pay less for bread, milk, meat, cars, computers etc. than poor people do. In fact one could argue that not taking into account marginalism leads to a lot of less than optimal market outcomes. So while socialism is not a good option (in my opinion), capitalism is far from working as well as it might in the future.
Indeed. So please steal from them, post haste.
All the instances that you enumerate are theft. You only help to prove the point. It's funny that you so easily judge worth and feel it your right to steal.
I judge you worthless. If the majority agrees should we steal your possessions?
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.
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
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?
Because it's far easier to pass a tax on a minority, i.e.:
People who use this particular highway/bridge.
People who use this other highway/bridge.
People who use the train.
People who use the bus.
Sooner or later, you've managed to levy a tax on everybody.
People don't mind taxes they don't pay, because of which, they get outvoted on the ones they do pay.
. Try to imagine the outcry that would happen in the USA if any remotely similar scheme was tried here (and rightly so too!)
Yes, I'm sure the American's would overthrow the govrenment in a trice if, for example, it turned out that it wiretaps people illegaly. That's what you have your assault rifles for, after all.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, the TV licensing inspector is not directly an agent of the state, and while I understand that they like to pretend that they have the right to enter, they don't actually.
no taxation without representation!