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.

Better still, let's make crisp and soft drink manufacturers pay for it, not poor people. Instead of taxing the people, why don't we tax the corporations with their £1bn headquarters.

'If you are so poor that you can't afford the license fee then you also can't afford the television.'

Even though they're a dime a dozen for free on Freecycle and Freegle groups all over the place? How do you figure on that? There's no 'maintenance' on a television. And they're easy enough to get for free.

If we live in a socialist system that taxes teh public to pay for the state broadcaster, then let's be real socialists and tax teh profit of huge corporations and banks in their swank offices, rather than poor people in their rented and negative equity homes. And why is it like the poll tax, where someone on minimum wage pays the same amount as Sir Fred the Shred?

expat, that is true, but if you can't afford the license fee, then you can't afford to have it in the house basically.
And they do use electricity, so not entirely maintenance cost free.

I agree that a TV isn't compulsory and if you can't afford a license then you shouldn't be watching it. You can watch iPlayer for free - in fact my BIL & SIL don't have a TV and only watch iPlayer for that very reason.

We do have a TV (& Sky for our sins!) and part of it's cost is the license fee, just like running our car. It's convenient and useful but we also have to factor in MOT, insurance, tax, fuel and maintenance into the budget. I wouldn't expect someone else to pay those for us and if I didn't pay them then I'd expect the consequences.

Claig, it's not a poll tax, no one is forcing anyone to own a television (or other expensive live broadcast-receiving equipment).

No but if you do own one and never watch teh BBC, they still force you to pay for the BBC. It's a bit like asking you to pay road tax if you don't own a car.

I DO NOT PAY MY TV LICENCE...

I recently moved, and it triggers a check, so I've had letters and visits by the licence people. But i don't have a tv or as yet a broadband connection.

And according to the literature if I don't watch any 'live' broadcasts I don't pay the licence fee. So if i got broadband i could happilly sit
her watching Dr Who or whatever as long as it was on iPlayer the day after it was on telly.

I happilly watch dvd's on my laptop.

So Claig , maybe your downtrodden poor who are all being sent to prison should do the same if they can't afford the licence. You don't have to pay it. But if you're going to watch it then you should pay for it.

I'm even considering paying it despite not having to.

It would be so much easier to shove poor people into the Workhouse and stop them wanting to have any kind of decent standard of living.

No it's not. It's like owning a car that you only drive in your garden and paying road tax.

..... And i don't believe that any one with a tv never, never watches the BBC

'expat, that is true, but if you can't afford the license fee, then you can't afford to have it in the house basically.
And they do use electricity, so not entirely maintenance cost free.'

So does heating. Can't afford to run it, you really should be living in the street.

the article I linked to shows that huge numbers of people are in fact not paying, and the BBC doesn't catch them all. The 168,600 a year that they prosecute is only a fraction of the total number of people who don't pay.

Would it be right to charge people road tax if they own a car that never goes on the road, but remains on their private property?

er Claig, if the pension fund is running at a deficit (like many many many pensions - stand up Royal Mail) then that deficit is made up by greater contributions by staff. fwiw the BBC pension deficit isn't that big, no bigger than the NHS pension deficit or indeed the Royal Mail's (actually I think it's significantly smaller than Royal Mail's)

Who are these bloody mandarins you speak of? I've never heard of anyone speaking Mandarin at the BBC... is it a new service akin to BBC Persian service? The BBC mandarin service? I think we should be told.

Yeah, right. Shelter, water, food, television. Essential.

Claig, I know fuck all about road tax to be honest, that was your metaphor, you can run with it if you like.

Would it be right to charge people road tax if they only nipped down the shops now and again , and made the odd trip to dr who bay or panorama hills ? Yes if course it would.

I can't believe you're arguing that people against the licence fee NEVER ever watch anything on the BBC

Well you better look into it. The mandarins will probably drop a bill through your door asking you to pay road tax, even though you don't own a car.

'Yeah, right. Shelter, water, food, television. Essential.'

A pensioner who is unable to leave their home might well see it as quite essentail to their mental well-being. But of course, if they're poor, fuck 'em. To the wall with 'em. It's their fault for being poor, anyhow.

Some people really do never watch BBC. Ever.

I'm saying they can get the funding from advertisers and relieve the taxation burden on the public.

I will gladly keep paying my tv license if it means no adverts.

The BBC should come up with a scrambling system so that poor people can choose if they want to watch it or not. expatinscotland is right. Old people who live alone are lonely and the TV is like company. Let them watch ITV for free. Similarly, young children should not be denied the right to watch free ITV, just because their parents are poor. If the BBC can't waive their licence fee for those who are in financial difficulty, then let thejm develop a scrambling system, rather than threatening vulnerable people.

It sounds like an encryption system is not impossible

'Ministers have in recent years openly questioned whether the licence fee is a sustainable means of funding the BBC in the future. The realisation that TV Licensing is a tiger with rather weak teeth will concentrate minds even more on this issue. Planning for a switch to encryption and subscription ? which eliminates the evaders ? may prove to be rather more attractive than just waiting for the system to fall into disrepute.'

Al Capone used to go knocking on businesses' doors offering them protection, and they had to pay up even if they didn't want his services.

expat, you seem to be assuming that I'm rich.

You seem to be reading a lot into random posts online.

I never assumed FA about you.

hate to say it but old people are usually the BBC's most loyal viewers. And if they're over 75 they don't pay for the licence anyway.