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Please do not write below the line

bbctvlicence.com

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Re: Please do not write below the line

#171

Post by TheRealPomax »

Kwpolska wrote: post #167
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The BBC is prized in the UK, and rightly so. Most national broadcasters have strong public interest provisions but the Beeb has a history and culture of strong independent journalism, incredible childrens and family output and acts as a mainstay anchor to support a creative industry. There is plenty to criticise but the weird ring fenced tax that we pay is incredible value for money (films, tv, web, journalism for th…

How much taxpayer money is wasted on the accounting, the enforcement, and the scary-sounding letters? Wouldn’t it be better if the government just gave taxpayer money to the BBC directly?

You mean "how much money is given to people to do those things"? Because the money doesn't magically disappear in the pockets of "big beeb", all those tasks are performed by people who get paid for that, drawing an income and then spending the money they earned by economically participating in society.

There is no money being wasted. Although it might certainly be a case of paper being wasted.

Re: Please do not write below the line

#172

Post by n4r9 »

jimnotgym wrote: post #78
FL410 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A Licensing officer may call at your property not to collect the letters but to check that you are not watching a TV. Just the thought of this is funny. What kind of uniforms do TV Officers wear? Do they get to carry a weapon? What happens if they find you watching a TV? Amazing.

They wear a shirt and tie. No weapon. You don't have to answer the door to them. You don't have to let them in. However they are generally lieing scumbags who suggest that they are allowed in. If they catch you watching TV they will report you for a £1000 fine and a criminal record. Failing to pay it will land you in prison. I spent years without a license, you don't need one for YouTube and Netflix. I unplugged the…

It's a horrible situation which I am convinced preys on the vulnerable.

We've been sent letters on an almost monthly basis claiming that an officer is "scheduled" to make a visit, that we have a "ten day window" to respond before they take action, etc... . Nothing ever happens and no one ever visits.

I know that you don't have to let the enforcement folk in, and if they turn up I'll politely ask to see their search warrant or for them to mind their own business. But lots of people don't know this and are conditioned to be passive. Prosecutions include the mentally vulnerable and people whose finances are handled by the council. There are thousands every year. Three quarters of the prosecutions are against women, and it makes up more than a quarter of prosecutions against women.

Re: Please do not write below the line

#173

Post by TheRealPomax »

busterarm wrote: post #62
kamaitachi wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not just a U.K. thing. Many European countries have something similar, although it might be called something else. It’s a form of tax that pays for public service broadcasting, including radio stations. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licence#

Yes, but the UK is the only country with a license ridiculous enough to offer you a 50% discount _if you're blind_.

Don't want to pay the full amount? Simply get a black and white television, now it's 70% off.

Re: Please do not write below the line

#174

Post by TheRealPomax »

gs17 wrote: post #72
busterarm wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the UK is the only country with a license ridiculous enough to offer you a 50% discount _if you're blind_.

It sounds weirder than that to me: > colour TV: £169.50 per year; monochrome TV: £57.00 per year; blind people: 50% discount People who can't see their color TV at all pay more than people who can but have an old black-and-white one?

That's... not what https://www.gov.uk/find-licences/tv-licence says at all.

If you're blind, you almost certainly qualify for a free license.

Re: Please do not write below the line

#175

Post by TheRealPomax »

Zak wrote: post #20
cooper_ganglia wrote: post #13

A "TV License" is one of those things I alway assumed people were making up to satirize the claims of over-regulation & bureaucracy in the UK. Finding out it was real was a mixture of hilarious and sobering.

Many European countries are worse about it than the UK; even people who do not own a television are required by law to pay. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licence

So, basically "how tax works"? You pay into a common good, whether you use it or not.

Re: Please do not write below the line

#176

Post by netsharc »

miki123211 wrote: post #161
cooper_ganglia wrote: post #13

A "TV License" is one of those things I alway assumed people were making up to satirize the claims of over-regulation & bureaucracy in the UK. Finding out it was real was a mixture of hilarious and sobering.

It's not just the UK, many countries have a government-run TV network, and they want that network to be subsidized only by the people actually watching TV, not random taxpayers who don't benefit from it. If you were to design such a system in the 2020's, you could just put a DRM scheme on your broadcast and demand payment only from the people who actually want to watch that network specifically, but that technology w…

> they want that network to be subsidized only by the people actually watching TV, not random taxpayers who don't benefit from it.

Eh, the 2 countries I know charge people if they have a device capable of viewing the TV/radio/the TV/radio stations' online offer, so anyone with a smartphone (and who doesn't have a smartphone?) are also require to pay the license fee, even if they don't have a TV or radio at home.

There's a joke that since the license fee is charged if you have equipment theoretically capable of viewing TV, then maybe people should apply for government child allowance, since they have equipment theoretically able to make them parents.

Re: Please do not write below the line

#177

Post by andybak »

carlosjobim wrote: post #64
TillE wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's basically a whole parallel tax collection system, which is truly nuts. Like the administrative overhead alone surely outweighs any abstract concerns about independence from government, which doesn't really exist in the UK anyway.

The purpose is psychological to attach a monetary value to the government TV channels, which makes the viewer consider them valuable and therefore trustable.

No. It really isn't.

Re: Please do not write below the line

#178

Post by ryandrake »

cal85 wrote: post #102
ZoomZoomZoom wrote: post #61

The most baffling thing here is how the hell did the author get the organisation to respond , on topic, multiple times? In my experience conversing with various entities that are supposed to provide customer support, absolutely anything outside of an extremely narrow set of vetted topics with prepared answers and especially anything technical gets ignored and receives an irrelevant response at best.

On-topic? Every reply seemed evasive to me. (Regarding how he got them to reply at all, this is required by law of public authorities.)

Hilarious that every time, they responded in a way that was technically on-topic, but totally ignoring the actual questions being asked. Like someone found one word in OP's question, then mindlessly recited a random form response associated with that word.

Re: Please do not write below the line

#179

Post by colonwqbang »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #87
cooper_ganglia wrote: post #13

A "TV License" is one of those things I alway assumed people were making up to satirize the claims of over-regulation & bureaucracy in the UK. Finding out it was real was a mixture of hilarious and sobering.

The BBC is prized in the UK, and rightly so. Most national broadcasters have strong public interest provisions but the Beeb has a history and culture of strong independent journalism, incredible childrens and family output and acts as a mainstay anchor to support a creative industry. There is plenty to criticise but the weird ring fenced tax that we pay is incredible value for money (films, tv, web, journalism for th…

I appreciate state TV content and watch it regularly. But this argument just doesn't hold water. The service is so wonderful that they had to make it a criminal offence not to be a subscriber? And surely an "independent" TV station would have to be one which is not completely controlled by the state.

Re: Please do not write below the line

#180

Post by ryandrake »

textninja wrote: post #168

The purpose seems clear to me from the explanation provided. Here's what I read between the lines. 1. Send out thousands of letters expecting some to be returned. They may be returned due to deliverability issues, or they may be returned with a reply attached or (probably less commonly) scrawled on the pages of the letter itself. Replies to letters are of course common whether they're expressly requested or not. 2. G…

But OP was not planning on returning the letter, so it would never be scanned.

I think the BBC could have solved this preemptively, by simply making the letter say "Please do not write below this line, if you are returning the letter."

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