The best alternative to the licence fee, the report concluded, would be a compulsory broadcasting levy paid by all households, regardless of whether they watch TV, or how they watch.
So, even if you don’t want it, you pay for it anyway. These people really are despicable. Yes, the licence fee should go. The BBC should do as other channels do and fund itself or die.
Such a system was introduced in Germany in 2013 and would do away with the need to detect and prosecute those who avoid buying a TV licence, the committee said.
Of course it would. If you steal from everyone, then there is no need to prosecute anyone. Or, you could just do away with it entirely and let the BBC sink or swim.
What’s happening here is that more and more people are using alternatives to conventional television and rather than accept that its time has now passed, these thieving scumbags cannot see beyond the state dipping its hands into our pockets.
Hear hear.
We don’t watch TV, as I have said before if there is an occasion there is something that is NOT unmitigated tripe and I feel a need to watch I do so on catch up services.
“himself” never watches TV ever, he finds it all too enraging.
Why should any of us pay for biased lies and fakery if the BBC was more impartial and better value for money, didn’t keep paying out vast handouts and frittering cash then maybe people wouldn’t be so angry but NOOO the entitled parasites at the BBC consider themselves indispensable and worthy which they are clearly NOT.
Who needs TV when you’ve got Pirate Bay? Just asking, like…
I agree, but not entirely…
An ideal democracy (in the “ideal gas” sense) cannot work unless the electorate is both sufficiently educated and informed. Until relatively recently, the BBC used to fill that remit, and it did so rather well.
That BBC was seriously wounded in the 1990s by Mr. John Birt, who foisted a part-privatisation scheme on the organisation and all but killed it as a result. What we have today is a half-baked state TV broadcaster that doesn’t know what it should be doing. It has no formal goals. No vision. (Any number of “Head of Vision” middle-manager types, yes, thanks to Mr. Birt, but none of them could recognise true vision if it came up and rammed its knee, very, very hard, into their knackers.)
But faults can be rectified. The BBC needs major surgery, but that’s no reason to shove it into a crematorium just yet.
Funding is the key issue: if educating and informing the electorate is truly a public good—and I contend that it is—then, like roads, schools, legislative, executive, and judicial systems, there’s a strong case to be made that it should be funded collectively by payment of a communal service fee*.
If it isn’t, (as you contend), then it has no future and should be stabbed quietly in a dark alley, then buried in an unmarked grave.
Let me reiterate: I’m not saying the BBC _in its present form_ is fit for purpose. It isn’t, and any reform will need to be a radical affair that kicks seven shades of faecal matter out of the present Corporation and turns it into something _worth_ spending that precious, limited resource we call ‘tax revenues’ on.
* Tax is just a technical term for “service fee” as far as I’m concerned. I haven’t a nationalistic or patriotic bone in my body, so I see countries as businesses like any other. If I find one that offers me better value for my service fees, I’m quite happy to relocate, and have done so on multiple occasions now. (It does help that I’m pretty good with languages though.)
Sean,
A pretty accurate comment – at least one with which I agree.
John Birt has ruined what was a not-too-bad broadcaster
There are many good things about the BBC – sadly, there are now even more bad ones. It’s my personal opinion that their unforgivable lapse in the last decade is so damning they can never be redeemed.
In May 2009 I wrote this to the BBC
“I have lost count of the number of Political Correspondents, Political Editors and Journalists the BBC has a whole has but it seems quite a lot. And to be completely clear |I mean all the BBC’s 4 TV channels, 5 – or is it 7 – Radio Channels, Local TV, Local Radio, World Service, the lot – perhaps you could enlighten me.
As more emerges about MP’s expenses it seems not unreasonable to draw the conclusions that
a) What has been going on has been going on for a long time
b) It is endemic
c) It is ingrained in the institutions and fabric of Government and Parliament
And it gives rise to grave suspicions about Local Government and the Quangocracy that now oversees much of our affairs.
I wonder why the BBC did not know about this, given the resource available to it. Or did you know, and if you did why was it not investigated and reported.
As things stand logic forces me to either one of only two conclusions: that you did know and did nothing, your organisation and reporters being seduced and/or bullied into being mere copy takers for the political spin doctors disseminating the “party line”
Or
Your reporters, current affairs and news production units are inept and not fit for purpose.
I look forward to your reply and observations”
I never got an answer
@Plantman: I think part of the problem is John Birt’s legacy. He effectively ripped the BBC apart, leaving behind a bunch of warring petty fiefdoms that are all _required_ to compete with each other. Each radio and TV channel has its own, completely separate, team. That old management saw of “synergy” is simply not allowed: you can’t pool resources, or share staff, or collaborate in any way, because to do so would violate the sacred holy scripture of “Producer Choice”. (Never mind that choices are only valuable if they are _meaningful_. Choice for its own sake is rarely of any benefit, and often makes things worse.)
So, yes, the “BBC” has all those commentators, pundits, senior political correspondents, political editors, and whatnot, but they’re working at cross purposes. This isn’t a single team, but a whole collection of small teams, with all the obvious overheads and pointless expenses that implies.
I could write pages on how dysfunctional the BBC has become, and what I think should be done to reorganise the Corporation to prepare it for a present — never mind the future — where the second ‘B’ in ‘BBC’ is _already_ an anachronism for many.
I stopped paying my licence fee (entirely legally – although I’ve been accused of “avoidance” and exploiting a “loophole”) about 2 years ago. I haven’t missed the BBC or any live broadcast telly (as in I haven’t longed for it).
It has been good for my soul to get away from the box. I have paid for and watched some top quality films and DVDs online.
The latest is that they want me to pay the licence fee for watching any form of online catchup service – no thanks. You’re going to need a lot of enforcement officers to follow that one up. Current management shows no sign of ending the gut-wrenching golden goodbyes, searing wastes of money on “projects” or an end to the relentless diet of antiques, cookery, soaps and talent(less) shows or the anodyne press-release “news”. They are nothing, they know nothing, they do nothing – and I’m not paying for them.