Apple Music, Netflix, Disney+, BBC.
That's four. I don't want any of them.
Three I have to take due to kids' nagging, the fourth I have to take due to state apparatus' nagging and legal threats.
That's four. I don't want any of them.
Three I have to take due to kids' nagging, the fourth I have to take due to state apparatus' nagging and legal threats.
I get a letter every month from the licencing people, it just goes in the bin. I've had 1 visit, he asked to come in, I said no. That was basically the end of it.
(For the record, I have a TV but I currently have no way to watch live TV on it, so why should I have a licence! I don't use their service)
However, the same aim could be achieved by just setting a formula in law. 1 pound per british citizen, or 0.0001% of the average income per citizen last year. Numbers pulled out of ass as i have no idea what an UK tv license costs. As long as they make the formula extremely hard to change, it will work.
If they could find a way to fund Radio 4 without it I'd be in favour of scrapping the fee.
Some countries (like Finland or Switzerland) require you to pay it even if you don't own a TV. It's really just a tax.
The reasoning for it not being a tax is that the public service broadcaster should have political independence from the government. Most people don't want their country to have a "government mouthpiece" state broadcaster, and it is much easier for the government to tell the broadcaster what to do and say by fucking with its funding if it's directly funded from the treasury.
Other countries do the same thing with a different trick, such as inserting it into your electricity bill.
The UK is a powerhouse in media production, part of that is due to the BBC funding all sorts of productions, both the visible (actors, etc.) and the invisble (camera operators, set designers, costumers, writers, directors...).
It has also been clear for centuries that private media, historically just the newspapers, but now TV channels, film studios, etc., have been disastrous, as their private owners either focus on profitability and pump out scandal and lurid stories, or if they've made their millions some other way, they run a paper in order to pump out biased propaganda. So a state-funded but not state-controlled broadcaster is an ideal thing to have.
Feel like this should be in their letters rather than (or in addition to) the threat of legal action.
It could be worse, though, Crapita also run the civil service pension system and have completely fucked it up: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yg54750gdo
Bring some sanity back to the world.