TV License
The TV License. You are under a legal requirement to pay an annual fee (continually rising) for the 'unique way in which the BBC is funded', even tho you may not even watch the actual BBC channels, nor have any intention to watch them. Simply for owning a TV that is able to receive them.
From the moment you buy a TV, you will start receiving 'official letters' stating that you have purchased a TV and must buy a TV License as they have no record of one for your address. However they check the records by name and not by address, so if you live with your spouse or a parent with a differing surname who have the TV license, you will still be listed as 'owning a TV without a TV license' and will thus continue to receive these 'helpful reminders'.
I dont see why i should be forced to pay a TV license for 'one' channel that does not even offer any programming that i am interested in, when i already paid for the TV and have the option of watching the other channels who do not charge me for doing so. Especially not when you pay for Sky or Cable, and have the option of hundreds of alternative channels. Yet you still have to, are forced, to pay the TV License.
It especially angered me when i saw that the BBC has launched an advertising campaign targeting students and 'informing' them that they must have a TV license. As if the government hasn't already been shitting on students yearly, in all manner of ways, since the abolishment of student grants in the late 1990's.
Here's a helpful hint. Why not set it up so that you have to 'activate' the channel, using some kind of authentication system (it's all digital now and has interactive features available in almost all households) made available to you after paying the TV License? That way, you don't watch, and thus dont pay. But obviously this is not what it's about. It's just another form of 'hidden' tax.
The BBC, UP YOURS!
posted by MJ at 8:04 PM
1 Comments:
I'm with you on this one. I have a deep hatred for the TV licence.
The letters that you speak of don't just arrive if you buy a TV, I know I for one received a letter to my flat telling me that they didn't have a record of me having a TV licence. That's because I hadn't moved in yet and there was no television or indeed anything else in there! They just spam all the addresses that dont have a licence and assume that you MUST have a television, because "everyone" does.
It wouldnt work though, activating the channels when you'd paid your subscription - because the funding would decrease, so the quality of output would decrease, and so eventually the people willing to fund it would decrease - it would be a continual spiral into BBC bankrupcy, which the government wouldn't allow, and would pay millions of our tax pounds to bail it out again.
12:27 PM
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home