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For UK members. If you own a TV you must have a licence. WRONG!

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posted on Mar, 22 2012 @ 05:12 PM
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reply to post by PW229
 


Pay again ? But you won't have paid at all.

You might have "The Blue Planet" downloaded from some dodgy site on your hard drive. Or streaming on iPlayer. But if you don't have a tv licence, you've never made any financial contribution towards that documentary at all, or any other BBC tv show. Nor made any contribution towards the amazing BBC Radio services (and surely they deserve a mention too ?)(especially the BBC World Service, which the Foreign Office pay towards).

As someone from across "la Manche", I can say that the quality of BBC TV and Radio more than justify the fairly insignificant costs of your tv licences. That's not to say the BBC is beyond criticism, that it isn't a bit top heavy. I don't approve of the celebrity wages some of their people get. And there seems to be too much management, too few innovative, creative people.

But still. You're very lucky. Try the European equivalent for a few days. You'd soon go nuts.



posted on Mar, 22 2012 @ 06:25 PM
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The quality of BBC programming is vastly superior to anything I've encountered around the world. They set the standard to which all other channels wish they could meet, or even get close to. I am not a BBC employee, nor do I believe they are perfect, but the model of TV licensing in the UK has given rise to the finest producer of TV content, and blissfully, without adverts ! Yes, WITHOUT ANY COMMERCIALS.

I no longer live in the UK, and am now forced (albeit for free) to watch so many commercials so often that I record everything and watch it later so I don't have to be subjected to the brainwashing. What's with going to an ad break 2 minutes before the end of a show ? There aren't many things I miss about the UK, but Doner Kebabs and the BBC rank very highly on the list !

For all those whining about the license fee, go live abroad and see what drivel is produced.....



posted on Mar, 22 2012 @ 07:08 PM
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Thats is such dribb;le. Who do you pay to watch TV too. You need everyone NOT to pay the stupid thing.

There isn't anything worth watching on TVs to pay a license for .
Can I stop the eletricity man entering my property randomly. You can be sitting outside enjoying the sun and then this stranger wanders past you . Its really unsettling .



posted on Mar, 22 2012 @ 07:16 PM
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reply to post by wigit
 

Public broadcasting in the USA is miserable, and I cannot, for the life of me, come up with any excuse to continue funding it. Why do I say this? It's because it has been overly politicized and become little more than a convenient anf free forum for the Left. Once upon a time it had a role, maybe, but today with cable, satellite, computers and the Internet and even old fashion ham radio it is more than obsolete.
Pay for a TV license?@?@ Are you insane or what? Who dreamt up such a thing? How many absolutely worthless troglodytes like the one in the first film employed this way? And, you're telling me the courts are actually handling such cases? What, you don't have any real criminals or even bad drivers to prosecute? Heck, I can see it now, some poor bloke denied a real job because of their record as a TV scofflaw.
All of this tells me so much about why we are not 50 British colonies and why the Union Jack's presence has fallen so far down in the world scene.



posted on Mar, 22 2012 @ 07:21 PM
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You guys in the UK get taxed to watch broadcast TV!


What a load of crap.

I thought the FCC was bad .....

Its never to late to migrate to the US.

We will be having a revolution again soon though.... I am sure we can find some firearms for you!




posted on Mar, 22 2012 @ 07:23 PM
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Originally posted by MarksThoughts
reply to post by wigit
 


All of this tells me so much about why we are not 50 British colonies and why the Union Jack's presence has fallen so far down in the world scene.


You've got to be kidding..... 'cos the US is such a fine upstanding player on the world stage.....



posted on Mar, 22 2012 @ 07:28 PM
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In other words, you want to carry on watching all the television programmes that are funded by license fees, but are too cheap to pay $150 a YEAR for tv services?

So, if everyone follows the advise of your thread, and cancels their licensing fees, you will either be forced to move towards satellite / cable style providers like in other parts of the world (way more expensive than $150 a year) or the BBC will shut down completely.

If you think licensing vans are a myth, where do all those "one tenth of all court cases" come from? I'm sure people aren't going door to door listening to see if the telly's on and asking for a license.

Personally, if I were you, I'd pay my $150.



posted on Mar, 22 2012 @ 07:33 PM
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There seems to be a major misunderstanding here of what the tv license in the UK pays for.

It's not for public broadcasting like we get here in North America, like PBS.

People in the UK who pay for a TV license get about the same number of channels as anyone in the USA or Canada do with a basic cable or satellite package, but it's delivered over the air, through an antenna on the roof and a (usually hd) digital converter hooked to the TV.

The licensing fee collected is used to partially fund the BBC, which have several commercial free stations in the UK in both standard and high definition.

It's a HELL of a lot cheaper than basic cable or satellite in North America.



posted on Mar, 22 2012 @ 07:43 PM
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I certainly don't mind sharing with my wife paying 11 or so pounds a month for the BBC, (although as a poster above points out, it also helps pay for Channel 4, and also amounts to a basic cable range of stations with freeview). No adverts during sporting fixtures, and programs like Sherlock, Dr Who, etc, This lack of corporate influence is really important. With rivals like Sky you both have to pay a subscription and get adverts, the worst of both broadcast worlds.

It's also a good way of 'selling' British culture etc to the rest of the world. That's good for exports and the like, surely.

It's news coverage has been a sadly a let down on recent anti-government domestic political demonstrations, but it's cheap.

I'm genuinely laughing at the Americans on this thread thinking they get 'free' tv. Adverts aren't propaganda? Big companies don't have a social and political addenda?

An advert telling you what you should be wanting, what lifestyles you should be living, every 15 minutes or so is a high price to pay for no subscription fee.


edit on 22-3-2012 by knownothing because: edit is edited



posted on Mar, 22 2012 @ 07:54 PM
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25 years of non payment . yip im a rebel looking forward to a visit from the man pay nothing expect everything



posted on Mar, 22 2012 @ 07:54 PM
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I have to admit I started to laugh about this ! I can NOT imagine paying to have a T.V. liecense . Do you not have commercials in the UK ? This sounds like extorsion, and I agree I would stop paying . Good luck !



posted on Mar, 22 2012 @ 07:55 PM
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I, an Australian unfamiliar with the TV license, bought a television when I arrived in the UK. Fortunately my housemate had a license which covered the whole house. However, a few weeks later in a hilariously Orwellian episode, the "government" wrote to me by snail mail to tell me that they knew I had recently bought a television, but that they did not have me on their list of TV license owners.

So the government had used the address information that I provided at a retailer to track me down, compare my details with a license registry, then send me threatening mail, but protected my privacy by not cross checking against other people who lived at the same address as me to see if they had a license that covered everyone in the house!

I personally considered that to be a hilarious yet incredible abuse of power. Coming from Australia, I simply couldn't believe such things could happen in a country like the UK.

Of course nowadays Australia tries to censor the internet and prevents Australians who have an interest in secret copyright meetings from knowing about them under the pretense that it is not in their interest to know about them. So the Orwellian state is alive and well there too.



posted on Mar, 22 2012 @ 08:01 PM
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reply to post by gotsomethingtosay
 


LOL and the english never invaded or destroyed any other countries, or raped and piliged nieghboring countries . Look in the mirror ,, Mate !



posted on Mar, 22 2012 @ 08:10 PM
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reply to post by letseeit7
 


It's not a competition, um, bud.



posted on Mar, 22 2012 @ 08:14 PM
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Dang they really got you so no free to air? We don't pay it in Australia. The stations make programs which are then payed for by advertisers.
Free to Air. No wonder we get so many people from the UK immigrating here.



posted on Mar, 22 2012 @ 08:30 PM
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How do they even get access to your home? They don't have the right to unless they are invited correct? Do police accompany them the next time or something? I wouldn't have thought so.

Just tell them to leave and not to come back. The way it's done is mad and should never be allowed, they use product placement still as well I believe so why are we paying to not watch ads when the shows are adds themselves? And what if we want to watch sky tv for example (I love watching the film and documentary channels) but don't want any of the bbc channels? What gives them the right to make me pay for something I will never use just incase I choose to? They should just encrypt the channel and give u a code on payment to watch, problem solved! Except nobody would pay!



posted on Mar, 22 2012 @ 08:34 PM
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reply to post by LeBombDiggity
 


But they shouldnt force you to pay though just because you watch tv, Sky for example has hundreds of channels and I would much rather have my £150 at the end of the year in this tough economy, that alone would pay for my sky tv bill for a year, think how many channels you get from there and you pay the same for a few radio stations and a few tv channels WITH NO CHOICE OF NOT WATCHING! They should just encrypt it, plain and simple so that they don't have to bully us in to paying. How good it is or isn't is totally irrelevant.



posted on Mar, 22 2012 @ 08:59 PM
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Originally posted by ukWolf
There are 2 channels, Dave & Yesterday, that to me are pure BBC programmes, is a seperate company making profits off of these channels or is the money funnelled back into running the BBC. I ask this because they are both obviously commercial channels with advertising revenue. ? Are there other such channels ?


What is it with tv channels getting stupid names? lmao Dave?

I only post because many years ago in an Episode of Black Books starring Dylan Moran, Bill Bailey and Tamsin Greig and in it, Manny was not allowed to get to 88F or else he'd suffer DAVE SYNDROME.

Now I see there is Channel called Dave that used to air Black Books... I wish I knew what sordid shenanigans went on in the writers head lol.

But stupid channel names...

Mate, Hello, Gem, Go! etc here, which are just channels fed into the extra bandwidth digital allowed the broadcasters to use, but ... well 3 times the rubbish!!



posted on Mar, 22 2012 @ 09:05 PM
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reply to post by Ghost375
 


Did you need to quote the entire post just to be offensive?

And you did it by using the internet too..



posted on Mar, 22 2012 @ 09:14 PM
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reply to post by LeBombDiggity
 


The irony is, I watch free to air LIVE tv (live to me means as it is happening in the world, and not as it is broadcast to everyone, but here I use it as it is meant) and I don't watch the adverts. I skip past them if I use my pvr. I don't pay any tax/license for tv or what I watch.

I did have foxtell once, thinking I am paying for a advert free service... it had adverts. So I stopped.

Never paid for tv, never will.
Probably why we have such CRAP tv here in Australia.




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