I love the BBC just because it's publicly funded — they don't even need to grab your attention to make a profit from you!
It's a tax I can honestly say I don't mind paying!
It's a tax I can honestly say I don't mind paying!
It's also enforced in an incredibly harsh manner and we (the taxpayers) are actually footing the bill to send people to jail who get caught without a license and then can't afford to pay it (though an outrcy in the House of Lords massively reduced the number being imprisioned down from 200 to 20 (roughly) a year.
On the other hand, if it came up for debate and reform, certain political factions would basically kill the BBC, which I love.
Specifically, you can use all their services including the iPlayer as long as you don't use the iPlayer to watch a program as it's being broadcast.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2008/01/iplayer_does_...
I don't have a TV and I live in the UK and the licensing people are aware of this. I do have broadband at home. At first I thought I would watch TV via the iPlayer, but it turns out that I've watched a grand total of one program in the last four months.
They send you a letter asking you to pay and you send it back saying you don't have a TV. That's all I had to do.
They'll probably ask me again in a few years, I suppose.
They then sent me that letter again. I guess the first letter was meant to scare me into paying under the assumption that I had lied.
Then they sent me a letter saying that they would pop round at any time of their choosing and check up on me. They have not yet done so, and if they do they are not coming in. It's a private property and they'll have to get a search warrant (which means going to a magistrate) if they think I'm watching TV.
Our records show that no one living at your address has purchased anything from Foo Department Stores during the past year. Since 99.9% of the UK population buys at least one item each year from us, you must have stolen something from us.
To pay for the item you have stolen ... .
Otherwise we will have to come and search your house to discover what you have stolen from us.
Yours,
Foo Department Stores.
There was no way to tell them you didn't need a license.
The next step is [they say in the letter] that they send an enforcement officer to your address.
If they just had a general phone number or a "we don't have a TV" phone number they'd have saved themselves at least the cost of sending someone out to try and hassle us ... and I'm sure a lot of other people.
It's not my job to chase up their failure to provide contact details on a demand for money.
OT: We got a parking fine when I took my wife in to have our baby last week. The number to call to pay the fine is the wrong number ... gah! I'm just not sure if this is malevolence.
They are not neutral (which is impossible) so there are certain ideas that they promote in their reporting. And even people who are against those ideas are forced to pay for the promotion of those ideas.