TO SAY I LIKE THE BBC....but the near £300 license fee needs questioning..Lets question

[ScousyFogarty]

BBC and COMPULSORY LICENSE FEE...(Paid by rich and poor alike.)

It has been suggested that the Beebs automatic cash-flow from rich and poor, should be looked at as the fee gets closer to £300 a year.

Victoria Derbyshire mentions this on her TWITTER site. (Dont know if she has ever done it on her programme.?)

You will notice that when a big name has a book out; they get interviewed on many BBC TV and radion shows. (They are usually rich and could be charged a fee for the free book plug.)

There will be many other ideas as to how the license could be REDUCED or the money RAISED by other means.

Do you have any ideas. ? Or are we going to sit back and watch the license fee go to £300 a year? (Its food for thought.

Victoria Derbyshire and Gabby Logan may well have ideas on this . Ask them if you feel like doing so.

headfairy you are never going to change the perception that a newsreader's salary means the whole organisation is corrupt.
Go and get a cup of tea (which you will have to pay for yourself.)

We are a poor family. I still don't resent the license fee.

The BBC produces world class programming.

I would happily pay the license fee for 1 series of any David Attenborough documentary, or for BBC news coverage, or for Radio 4...so getting all of that for only £3 a week seems like a deal. ( I would seriously find that money out of my pathetic budget just for the Archers!) :)

It is interesting that at least there was a voice for the dissent towards a programme like 'Jerry Springfield'. Let's not forget the wonderful response we got from Channel 4 and the complaints they received about Frankie Boyle's ill-conceived, unfunny remarks made about disabled children.

BBC might be a sexist organisation, but at the same time it does have the funds to be able to cater for needs that no commercial station would be able to provide.

Older people are also exempt from paying the fee as are partially blind. I think the exemption should be extended.

The other issue is not so much the overpayment of the presenters, but a lot like Graham Norton and Jonathan Ross also own the production companies and make their fortunes from that - salary is only part of the deal.

Yes some poor people would willingly pay, but there are hundreds in jail who couldn't pay and couldn't afford the £1000 fines they were given.

Katisha :o my dh can't believe the BBC don't provide free tea or coffee.

I do think the free licence should be extended a bit.. but I think exemptions should be means tested. My parents get a free tv licence and they can easily afford it. But of course then you get the argument that means testing costs more than it saves. So you run around in ever decreasing circles.

Sorry - I am being dim, but why on earth would people think they would be jailed for not paying a fine?? Sounds very Dickensian ...

Also - Remember Miss Kaplinkyplonk - moved to Channel 5 for a silly amount and then fell pregnant and walked away from the job.

Claig, no one is forcing them to own a television.

Headfairy - I tend to get a pottymouth when banging my head against brick walls.
Hope Springs, some bloke was de-armed with a nija sword.
We were getting the younglings ready for bed, whilst my eldest channel hopped, starting at BBC1, and there is full glorious technicolour was the deaded, armless man. A long, lingering shot to boot.

Like I said, had DD been channel hopping around the horror or sci-fi channels, well, c'est la vie, but being pregnant and hormonal got very indignant and emailed - they were dismissive, condescending, patronising and rude. Dealing with people like that makes me potty mouthed too. Their whole tone was "well, yes, but it's ok because we're the BBC. Sorry, but that scene was not appropriate for a Sunday night at 8 something pm. After several emails they just put me on the wild goose chase so I gave up (morning sickness for 9 months FAIL).

That's what gets me. They are publically funded, but they think they can do what the fuck they like and screw any little man who tries to say "Well, actually, that's a bit not on".

And there should be closing quotation marks after italic BBC.

timeWasting, we have already discussed that it is not just televisions, but you need to pay the BBC's licence fee if you own a phone or PC that can receive live broadcasts, even if you don't watch them. And just like the poll tax, the millionaire pays the same as the person on minimum wage.

"Yes some poor people would willingly pay, but there are hundreds in jail who couldn't pay and couldn't afford the £1000 fines they were given."

hundreds in jail?

have you got a source for that figure or did you pull it out of your bottom?

There were some figures from 20 years ago bandied about that were in the hundreds, the last time I saw this issue being discussed in the house of lords (a couple of years ago) that figure had dropped to single figures.

Lets not let facts get in the way of a good rant tho.

btw we are not the only country in the world to have a compulsory TV license, most developed countries do; it's around £110 in France and higher than ours in Germany and the service they get doesn't remotely compare to the BBC's output.

And if you can afford a fancy phone or PC, then you're not actually too poor to afford the license fee.

It is simply not the case that impoverished people are being forced out of this money with no alternative.

Lunabelly, that does sound bad... and it's not on that you should have been treated so dismissively.

Claig, those figures for people being jailed for licence fee evasion are very old.. 800 or so people (so not thousands) in 1994. Tv licencing actually turn a blind eye to a lot of evasion because it's considered too costly to persue all the cases.

Well said, Lunabelly. you are right to be indignant at their shoddy customer service.

I don't see the point of the BBC and would happily see it privatised personally.

Urgh claig... it's not customer service. We're not customers, we're licence fee payers. Agreed though, licence fee payers deserve a much more measured and less patronising response.

Maybe if it was customer service as in a normal company rather than in a cushioned state enterprise, then we would see improvements in how they treat the public, who pay the bill.

Remember the phone-in voting scandals?

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1033291/BBC-executives-caught-fakery-scandal-rewarded-bumper-pay-rises.html

www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1018916/New-TV-scandal-BBC-fails-pay-100-000-charities-flawed-phone-vote.html

and yet some mothers with children are jailed because they failed to pay the licence fee.

Yes because we all know how well large privately funded organisations handle complaints don't we?

AFAIK the procedures the BBC have in place for complaints is far more comprehensive than the major commercial channels; I understand people will have bad experiences and that this is most probably an area where they could improve but really not convinced it's a reason to scrap publicly funded television in this country.

It's just staggering

'This money collected from viewers, believed to have been destined for the Children in Need charity, then went straight into the corporation's pocket.
Other charitable shows likely to have suffered because of the practice are Comic Relief, Sport Relief and the Children In Need show itself.
These shows have already admitted ripping off viewers once, after they confessed to faking competition winners.
The latest revelations raise the prospect that some viewers could have been duped more than once on the same programme.
The BBC Trust yesterday admitted that £112,000 pounds had been stashed away by its commercial arm, when it should have been given to charity.'

Failed to pay the license fee for a television they could have got rid of.

It's not like council tax, which is actually compulsory afaik, you have a choice in whether you own equipment that receives live broadcasts.

You see, now if these poor people weren't going around buying Plasma tellies with their benefit payments, we wouldn't have all these problems with paying/not paying BBC license fees to watch East Enders

You have the RIGHT to be treated fairly and reasonably and in a civic fashion - at the same time it also have the responsibility to treat them similarly.

If you thought it breached the watershed rules - you could have taken your complaint further ??

BBC was not the only corporation that was tarnished with the whole phone-in scandal.

If you have a computer and just watch DVD's and iPlayer ( as long as it's not live ) I don't believe you need a licence.