£142.50 to watch 2 tv channels that never have anything worth watching,& show the same few 20+ year old films year after year with no adverts.
and they wonder why people hate paying for a lisence,when most people are paying extra for cable tv as basic tv’s a total waste of time.

at least you get a discount if your blind haha.

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Not this BBC/TV Licence propagana again please! “Mr Whitehouse said people who dodged the licence had no excuse for their actions”. I don’t have a tv as I’m not interested in watching rubbish so why doesn’t Mr Whitehouse and other members of his ‘Gestapo’ operation stop their actions in sending me stupid threatening letters about not having a TV Licence! Get lost Mr Whitehouse.

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Way back in the early part of last century, when broadcasting was very much in its infancy, and the BBC was the only real Broadcaster to listen to, and latterly watch after 1936 ….. (start of 405 line TV … forgetting Baird’s machanical system… cc 1920′s)

The licence fee had a REAL place.

The licence in those days was a licence to “operate radio and Television receiving apparatus”.. that is: something that recieves electromagnetic waves that carried “entertainment” information. That is.. although you could receive many other interersting signals “out of band” such as ship to shore, teleprinters aircraft, police etc .. you weren’t licensed to receive them…

So .. the “licence” was quite a different “concept” in those days.

The licence “also had a place” in earlier times… bearing in mind the BBC contrubuted very much in the way of broadcasting technology by way of its designs dept (Where I worked cc 1970-72) in Portland Place london, and research dept in Kingswood Warren.

HOWEVER…. things are much different now.

Broadcasting is now no longer the province of one supplier. Radio and TV signals can be received by sattelite, covnentional “aerial”, and of course via the internet.

As such therefore, In my opinion, the Licence fee has no place in such a modern broadcasting environment.

It seems instead that the TV licence has become a “convenient platform” for listing every possible post code and address in the UK – and has that got anything to do with why the level of fine for not paying it is so high relative to the “offence” ?

There is adequate technology to provide broadcasting by other means of funding … look at SKY… if you don’t pay you get switched off .. Simples .. (yes.. sorry ..you can’t compare the meerkats either in that case).

The powers that be had all the technology to hand many years ago cc mid ’80s …. to solve the issue of funding a public service boradcasting system fairly, with British Sky Broadcasting (remember squarials?) .. and what happened to that technology which was WAY ahead of its time?? It was sold off!!

So … lets see the end of the licence !! and a much fairer way of spreading the cost amongst a VERY wide audience (worldwide now.. thanks to the internet) … to fund a public boradcasting service such as the BBC,… if that is what is wanted

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Or move to New Zealand, were we don’t need a TV licence! A car licence, a gun licence, can’t be that dangerous to operate a telly in the UK can it?

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“The average evasion rate is currently a little more than five per cent”
Well if you know it that accurately you must know which addresses are watching TV without a licence, so go and call on them.
Or do you REALLY mean 5% of addresses have no licence, and you’re assuming 100% EVERYONE has a TV. I got rid of my TV 14 years ago and have never looked back. I’m STILL getting damn rude letters from TV licensing though..

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So EE, you didn’t have a TV licence at the house you moved from? Or when you moved, was that the first time you had owned a TV?

Hopefully you’re not looking for sympathy for your illegal act that the rest of us have to subsidise.

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If the BBC is still to continue as the “state” broadcasting medium, the sooner it is brought under some sort of accountable control the better because at present, it is totally outside all form of accountability and control.
When Britain was an imperial/colonialist power with an empire spread across the world, there was a case mad out to broadcast to the world. That case has long since gone. The overseas services should be stopped – period. It eats up billions of the Licenses fee.
The army of beaurocrats and managers should be cut by two thirds and their ginormous salaries used to reduce the license fee. The foreign correspondents could be halved (why do we need a full time rep at the UN in New York – how often do we hear from her. That’s just one example and there are many others.
BBC should be made to pay it’s way the same as the Commercial Stations, the Licenses Fee is a downright liberty and the salaries paid to the top managers are an insult to everyone.
The common story is that they have to pay these salaries to attract the right people, fine, great, let them go elsewhere if they can and I bet that they won’t and can’t.

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