They seem to arrive every month at the moment, I think my area is being targeted in one of their campaigns. I don’t bother opening them now, I can recognise the envelope. These are computer generated and I know it is the usual threats: huge fines, jail, special investigators coming to call, detector vans full of high tech. If they call at my door, I am seldom at home. Eventually they come around in the evening and at weekends, presumably looking to see if there is the tell tale glow of a TV set. I have had to put with this harrassment for many years now.
I really don’t feel I should have to prove my innocence to these people. When I hear about the fat salaries at the BBC and the insufferable pomposity of the management, the waste and incompetence (200million wasted on an cancelled video archiving system.) My perception of the value of the BBC takes a knock. For all the quality programming that people admire so much, there is also a huge amount of trashy low quality programmes that dilutes the brand. The BBC seems determined to dominate the national conversation, even if it means proliferating BBC related channels in order to keep pace with Murdoch vision and other advertising led private broadcasters. As we did not have enough trash TV.
If The BBC got its act together and made availble the complete archive of their recordings that are currently rotting in vaults, they might raise enough revenue to do away with the license. Sadly they seem to have screwed it up.
I participated in an experimental scheme to put the archive online a few years ago. To be honest it was more about UI than content, but the really big problem they have is a legal one. Music rights and residual payments, basically.
In the UK, many people also have a subscription for satellite TV which is dominated by Murdochs Sky TV.
This is around $56 a month plus and extra $40 if you want Sport and an extra $28 if you want movies. About 50% of households have one of these pay packages, the rest are content with the BBC and commercial free to air channels.
If you want to get these services (or similar ones from competitors) over a cable network or the wired telephone network that is also used for broadband Internet, then again you have to pay another fixed cost. A line rental, which amounts to another $300 a year on top of your license fee of $250 a year.
I’ve not had a telly for the 20 years I’ve lived in the UK. At first the TV licensing had a good cop/bad cop thing going. One month the letter would say “how happy and wonderful the world would be if everyone paid their fee”. The next month it would be “pay up or we’ll kick your gran in the taint then throw you in jail!”. These days I just go online about once every 2 years to tick a box saying “yep, still no TV”.
Recently I’ve been watching Tour de France highlights on the ITV player. Somehow they can tell I have adBlock turned on and nag me to turn it off before showing the program.
There were only a handful of these and the houses and flats are so close together in the UK that is difficult to locate an unlicensed TV specific to one non-paying household. Moreover, modern TVs don’t back-radiate as much signal and people watch TV on all kinds of devices. Most prosecutions are as a result of ‘investigators’ just asking the simple question: ‘Do you have a TV’ where there is no record of license being paid. If the answer is yes, you get a summons and a fine and possibly your name published in the local paper to your undying shame. Not exactly high-tech.
To many people this smacks of ‘Big Brother’ tactics of a surveillance society and the officials who come to the door ‘are only doing their job’.
Whilst I would not go so far as some US libertarians, armed to the teeth and ready to take on the Feds. Nonetheless, in the UK there are many, like myself who detest this sort of dishonesty and bullying by BBC, a state institution that is otherwise well regarded. Other countries do not finance their public broadcasters in this divisive manner. It seems to be an example of UK silliness because they can’t come up with another way to preserve the independence of the BBC. They should try harder! :smack:
Until fairly recent times the licence fee was collected and enforced by the Post Office. The BBC getting directly involved (and outsourcing it to Crapita) is a recent development.
Right, so I am probably paying a lot less for about the same number of channels, as my once a year licence fee gets me access not only to the BBC but numerous commercial (advertising supported) channels via digital “Freeview” broadcast". The number of channels may not be quite so high, but it is in the ballpark of what I used to get on basic cable when I lived in California. With a handful of exceptions, most of the commercial channels are crap that I almost never watch, but that was true of US basic cable too.
Telephone or cable line rental and broadband internet costs are nothing to do with the BBC or the licence fee at all, it is all done by for-profit businesses. However, I can assure you, from fairly extensive personal experience (as well as a good deal of reading on the matter), that Broadband internet in Britain is cheaper and of better quality than it is in the vast majority of the United States. (Britain is far from having the world’s best home internet services - last I heard it was actually South Korea that did best - but it is markedly better than all but a few small pockets of the USA). Despite having invented the internet, the USA very possibly now has the worst home internet services in terms of price and quality of any first world country, largely due to the way its cable companies are allowed to operate as local monopolies. But, as I said, none of this has anything to do with the BBC, which is not an ISP (or a phone, satellite, or cable operator), or with the TV licence fee.
Obviously you very much dislike the licence few system, but I think you are probably in a tiny minority in being so exercised about it. Frankly, I have never before come across or heard of anyone in Britain who was as concerned about it as you seem to be. Like all “taxes”, of course, people do not like having to pay it, and it is a regressive tax, which I agree is a bad thing in principle, but it is low enough amount that I think most people (even poor people, such as myself) do not mind paying it very much, and even if you don’t pay it, the chances of getting caught are very low. All your talk of people living in fear of the knock on the door from the licence fee inspectors reads to me more like paranoid fantasy than the reality of life in contemporary Britain. If I were worried about Britain developing into a police state (I am not, really, but there are a few faintly worrying signs), the BBC and the licence fee fee inspectors would be way, way at the bottom of my list of trends and institutions that might contribute to making that happen.
I have nothing to hide from them, nothing to fear because I don’t own a TV. They cannot prosecute me. But they insist I provide a signed form to that effect or I get hounded by their ‘investigators’.
You know, I don’t like it when these faceless authorities insist that I prove my identity, my honesty, while their officials remain anonymous.
I suppose it is a question of personal liberty. I see it being eroded in the UK progressively and resent it very much. One of the great things about the culture in the UK was that it had few of the strictures imposed by Continetal governments on its citizens. There was an honour system of sorts. You were assumed to be honest and fair dealing unless it became clear you were not.
This has become steadil unravelled. Each day I get calls from faceless droids from banks, utilities and all manner of characters wanting me to identify myself, so they can sell me something. What is your name, confirm your address, what is your date of birth? Usually they are ambulance chasers or one sort or another.
There is a fundamental dishonesty in the way these organisations go about their business and the BBC, one of the most trusted institutions, really should know better.
If you are not perplexed by this sort of this then maybe that is fine for you. But I don’t think I am in any sort of minority. Distrust of government and all these dubious authorities is part of the vigilance that keeps it a free country.