I am angry. Deeply angry. It is coming up to the anniversary of when I moved into my flat, and so coming up is financial pain as I renew the insurance, increase my service charge payments, get ready for a hike in council tax. Most depressing of all was the very early reminder from the TV Licensing Authority. They always tell me that my licence is due for renewal a good couple of weeks before it actually is. This year they want £140! One hundred and forty pounds! I have a choice: pay up or ditch the telly.
Part of me would quite like to ditch the telly. I rarely watch broadcast telly. I tend to watch top drawer (usually US) shows and films on DVD. About the only programmes I watch regularly are the news and Newsnight. They tend to be so simplistic and patronising that they send me into a rage, so I am cutting down. I don’t watch Eastenders or Jonathan Ross. I don’t watch Strictly Come Celebrity Anything. So in terms of the TV licence I am getting very poor value for money. I could easily cut BBC programming out of my diet, so what exactly am I paying for? Unfortunately I can’t get rid of the telly because I rent my second room out and I doubt many lodgers would be prepared to live somewhere without a 50Hz flicker box.
The cheapest Sky package is £16.50 including broadband. For that you get Sky One which has all the latest US TV shows and popular programming. If you say that the broadband is “worth” a fiver a month, Sky telly is cheaper than the BBC. The BBC has Jonathan Ross and Dale Winton, Sky has Battlestar Galactica. I know which I would prefer to be paying for.
If the BBC had to survive in a competitive environment it would go bust immediately. It is sustained in its present form by the compulsory tax. It is in a protected position which allows it to operate in way which no organisation would if it had to earn its living. It costs a lot and delivers little. Lots of people say that the BBC provides things which the market would not. I find that hard to believe. I would be willing to take the chance. At the very least the BBC should be pared down significantly. Perhaps to one terrestrial channel, one radio station and a basic website. The rest should be allowed to sink or swim. I don’t see why anyone should be forced to pay for the childish guff it pumps out most of the time.
I watch about 2 hours of TV a week – all of which is then put on iPlayer. Left to my own, I’d disconnect the aerial and stop paying without hesitation. That would also bring the joy of being able to taunt TV Licensing!
There is a very good argument for the licence fee, though. If we all have to pay a little something, then someone is able to do the kind of programming that we ought to have but probably won’t pay for – a somewhat slippery category but one that probably exists. What a shame, though, that we manage to do the half of the argument that raises the money, but then forget the other half.
Personally, I’d close the BBC and start again from scratch with a new licence fee of about £30.
Patently – OK but now you are getting into the “we know what’s best for you” patrician mindset. Also, who decides on what is “best” to make with the taxpayer pound. How is quality measured? Why isn’t the BBC already doing this instead of competing aggressively with the commercial broadcasters in an ugly race to the lowest common denominator?
The BBC does provide things that the market does not, that’s not the problem. The problem is that it provides things that the market already provides, but gets us to pay for it instead.
I don’t want the BBC privatised but I do want it massively slimmed down.
The BBC does provide things that the market does not
Examples please Mr Tory?
I’m sorry, but to me the fact that the BBC is able to lead the move to online media through iPlayer and the best website in the world is enough to justify the licence fee. I blogged before about how I’d be happy for them to drop 90% of their content and focus on in-depth documentaries, fantastic children’s programming, and online content. However, the directors seem to think they should be chasing viewer figures instead, which is a shame.
So a private sector broadcaster or technology company would never have been able to do an iPlayer? Really? Youtube? Are you saying that I should have to pay for something that you like?
Best or most popular web site? If you are referring to the BBC News website, then are you reading the same slanted, biased, totally-ignores-certain-stories News web site that I look at?
Patently – OK but now you are getting into the “we know what’s best for you” patrician mindset.
That’s a straw man, Blue. The fact that something is good for people doesn’t mean that they won’t want it. Nor does the fact that they want it mean that the market will necessarily provide it.
Two examples in this category might be good childrens’ TV without adverts pushing the latest “must-have” toy, or genuinely impartial political reporting. When I visit the US, I don’t see either.
Also, who decides on what is “best” to make with the taxpayer pound.
There’s the problem; the BBC decide this. Which means that, inevitably, their plans expand and the licence fee rises. And they define “impartial”, which means that the decent kids’ TV is the only one of my examples that I find when I come home.
Their expanding plans also push out or duplicate other work. As you say, Youtube seems to work well enough. So why have we all been forced to pay for iPlayer? Answer: because Youtube does not have use limitations that are present in iPlayer and which allow the BBC to prevent us from keeping the footage – the same footage which was made with our taxes. So we have paid to create a system that duplicates a freely available system that suits our purposes, but not the purposes of the person who decided we should pay for its replacement.
Now that really is “we know what’s best for you”.
If were serious, we would cut the licence fee down to the current BBC2 budget, close the rest of the BBC, and release the staff from their licences so that those creating what is in fact commercial television (Top Gear? Eastenders?) can go and do so in the private sector. We might not be able to create a system that does not result in a quangocracy that grows like topsy, but at least we can prune it from time to time.
So I should pay £140 a year for kids TV when I don’t have kids? No. If you as a parent want to pay for good kids TV then you will (along with millions of other parents) subscribe to a good quality kids TV channel. Or you will buy good kids TV programmes on DVD. Or you will decide that there are no good kids TV shows and get your kids to read a book instead. Your straw man is that advertising-funded channels are the only business model. Wrong.
OR
If kids TV is really so vital to children’s development (which I challenge) then the education department can fund programmes from its existing budget.
Yes, it is arguable that the reason there are no decent kids’ channels apart from CBeebies is that CBeebies is there to soak up the demand, for free. But the absence of such channels in (say) the US points the other way.
You shouldn’t be paying £140 for my kids’ TV. You should be paying £30ish for my kids’ TV, for impartial news reporting, for proper investigative journalism, for critical questioning of the Government, etc.
Instead, you’re paying £140 for my kids’ TV, for promulgation of a left-leaning news & politics agenda, and for production of lowest-common-denominator popular trash.
Err, why should I be paying for your kids’ TV? You wanna entertain ‘em, you pay. You wanna edoocate ‘em, get ‘em a book. When I was a wee lad, we had a tiny amount of kids telly. We often missed it because it was at lunchtime. I am not interested in paying for two wall-to-wall channels full of cartoon characters saying “eh oh” at each other. Sorry if that sounds harsh.
I was actually referring to their entire website, Blue, which is probably the most usable, accessible and informative web site on the internet. Bar none. Their news reporting may be shocking, but that’s not the fault of the website guys.
I’d agree with a massive reduction in the scope and budget of the BBC – for instance, news.bbc.co.uk could be made a professional content aggregation system, which prints and links to content from other sources within their excellent website structure. That wouldn’t bother me. I’d also agree that a significant proportion of pure entertainment shows – particularly the soaps, etc – could be moved to a commercial system. The BBC have always made the world’s best documentaries on all sorts of subjects, though, and have done a huge amount of the research and development towards the TV, radio and internet systems we all use.
Lastly, YouTube is a lot of things, but iPlayer it ain’t. The content is user-generated (or pirated), there’s no remuneration for the content producers (incidentally, Patently, 90% of the BBC’s output is made by outside production companies, hence the need to limit the time you can watch it for – not sayin it’s right or wrong, just explaining it), there’s maximum lengths for the videos, the quality is poor to middling (at best). Some American studios are finally (a year late) starting to reate iPlayer-like systems such as hulu, but even that isn’t as good.
The BBC is flawed, yes. Too big, yes. Too expensive, yes. But a lot of it is still worthwhile and I still support it.
My point about Youtube is that the commercial sector is quite capable of building an iPlayer type piece of software, I wasn’t saying that Youtube is “as good” right here right now. Sorry, I take issue with this idea that a really good website is in the domain of public-service broadcasting. So what if it’s somehow very technically clever? Well done the techies but since when has this been the remit of the BBC to have a clever website?
I live for the annual rants!
Stu, the content may be made by independent companies, but it is paid for by us. Then, we are told, we cannot keep the content that we have been forced to pay for.
BE – you should not be paying just for TV for my kids; you should be paying for a wide range of things including kids’ TV together with other stuff. If you’re going to go down that route because kids’ TV is no use to you, then I want all public funding stopped for public transport (including buses and the tube), social security, all state schools (mine use a private school), public housing, the Foreign Office, the DSS, BERR, the NHS (I’ll cope with private, thanks), and so on.
Whilst I would in fact be in favour of a firestorm of public bodies, I’m not sure it should be done on the basis of whether or not I use the services concerned.
The annual rant is because it is so outrageous that I should be forced to pay for something I don’t like! OK some people like it, great, why should I pay for their entertainment?
Patently – there are many who would agree with you that you shouldn’t be paying for services used by other people. The key difference here is that the BBC tax is a hypothecated charge on owning a telly rather than a service funded by general taxation. There is no “transport licence” or “education licence” but if there was as a car driver you would be paying for the tubes with it even if you didn’t use the tubes, or paying for state schools even though you use private. The point is that the BBC tax is a tax on people watching ITV and Sky even if they never touch the remote near the tax-funded stations.
Blue Eyes,
loads of people are doing it. My friend hasn’t ever paid for a TV licence. You simply don’t pay, wait for a bunch of red letters, write them a letter saying you don’t have one and refuse entry to anyone that turns up at the door, they write to you and ask for an appointment to come and see your house, which you can either refuse them as they have no legal right to come in your house, or get rid of your TV stuff for the day and let them in. It’s really very easy, and you know the aerial detection stuff is a myth, right?
Alternatively, you could just do this:
http://www.order-order.com/2008/12/civil-disobedience.html
there’s a whole bunch of people doing this now, and the BBC are running so scared that they aren’t taking action.
“Whilst I would in fact be in favour of a firestorm of public bodies,”
I would be though.
“you should not be paying just for TV for my kids; you should be paying for a wide range of things including kids’ TV together with other stuff. If you’re going to go down that route because kids’ TV is no use to you, then I want all public funding stopped for public transport (including buses and the tube), social security, all state schools (mine use a private school), public housing, the Foreign Office, the DSS, BERR, the NHS (I’ll cope with private, thanks), and so on.”
Bang on. Exactly my agenda.
My argument was a conditional – I don’t actually think all those that I listed should be closed. Well, ok, maybe BERR, and plenty of others that I didn’t list!
There is in fact a transport licence; it is called road tax and fuel tax. Between them, they raise far more than is spent on the roads that I use; therefore they support other expenditure such as public transport and state schools. These (and others) are things that I think I should pay for, even though I don’t use them – either because they benefit the country as a whole and therefore I gain some benefit (albeit indirectly), or because they provide necessary help to those who have not been as lucky as I have.
NB – no doubt, but I live in hope that democracy can work. “Disobedience” is not something I can stomach. I try to be law-abiding but campaign for the law to be changed to better suit me.
DavidNCL – I am with you, but we live in a rather stupid nation.
Patently – OK, so two wrongs make a right, do they?
Hi DavidNcl! I thought we’d hear from you!
I think we’d head along the same path, and carry the same model of flamethrower. I would probably stop somewhere earlier than you, though
Patently – OK, so two wrongs make a right, do they?
No, they set a precedent and display a principle.
If you believe that the BBC provides some kind of public good, then there is a principle. Do you? I don’t. I disagree that road users should have their road fund licence poured into the general fund as well.
We don’t have a telly in Frome and I don’t think I’ve ever regretted that, of course mum used to be addicted to UKTV Gold but I suppose Pig is an adequate substitute. I don’t have much of an opinion on the BBC License Fee but I do think it’s a shame you would struggle to find a lodger without having a set. It boggles me how many people find one necessary. And then the 42″ plasma screens are found necessary too!
If you believe that the BBC provides some kind of public good, then there is a principle. Do you?
I think it could, and I think it should.
And I think it would be nice if it did. But that’s as far as I’ll go, sadly.
patently, we pay for content we watch, BBC or any other channel, either through subscription/licence fee or through buying products due to watching adverts. The idea that TV content is free is illogical. Since we pay for all content on television, by your logic it should all be free for us to Dow load and watch wherever and whenever we please without any consideration for the people who produced it. Just at the moment, that would mean an awful lot of people losing their jobs.
Blue Eyes, you do pay for state education even if you use private. You do pay for public transport whether or not you use it. As for whether the BBC provides a public good, that’s a personal value decision. I think it does – although it should be smaller and more focused on the good things it does (docu, kids, Internet, specifically – in that order). Since we live in a democracy and the majority still believe in the BBC, it’s still there.
The reason the website is in the remit of the BBC is that it is their mandate to ‘inform, educate and entertain’, which BBC.co.uk does in spades. Similarly, Doctor Who fits within this mandate because of Doctor Who Confidentially, which is informative, educational, and will inspire many people into a career in filmmaking…
I have to say, Stu, that I take issue with your definition of “democracy”. Hitler was elected, don’t forget, does that mean he ran a democracy? Just because something has popular consent doesn’t make it fair. Effectively you are telling me what to do, aren’t you? I’d rather you didn’t.
Please can we separate, again, the stuff which is paid for through taxes and licences? There is a difference. I think.
we did a selection of pieces about the BBC as a general look at capitalism, service providers, state monopoly and taxation. Mixed in were some very general points about news coverage, children’s TV, sport, radio and comedy. In the end the piece was left only partly completed because of the level of sustained, sometimes personal attacks, counter attacks and corner fighting. It was like being in the House!
Probably only bankers bonuses could elicit more passionate debate from the readers.
The splitting tended to occur, as it has done here, on the demand to pay, regardless of use. The licence fee should be viewed as a tax, applicable to all, with certain exemptions, rather than a tax for having a telly. If it is viewed the same as, say VAT, which is paid by everyone for no specific purpose, just general taxation, the anger might fade. The Royal Opera House or the National Portrait Gallery, never comes under the same sort of attack as there is no specific Ballet/culture tax, yet you still pay for them, even if you never visit.
It is hard to believe that £11.66 a month for all the channels/news/radio stations and internet pages isn’t value for money.
It may not be to your taste but it ain’t expensive. The average monthly mobile phone bill is around £25.00 for a basic mobile phone service that allows someone to send and receive calls. Buying the Times newspaper every day equals £375.00 a year, double the TV tax.
As we know, what infuriates with the BBC, is its compulsory.
BQ – fine, I don’t want to pay for the Opera House or Portrait Gallery either! Let the people who use them pay their way!
It isn’t about whether I can find the money for it – I’m sure that I can do without some frivolous consumer product or other so that the smug BBC types of Chiswick can stay in their jobs while the rest of the economy collapses.
If the BBC was not compulsory, then it sounds like most people would continue to pay for it voluntarily. That suits me fine.
Stu, yes I do realise that. But the BBC is substantively different in that you are compelled to pay whether you watch or not. I choose whether or not to subscribe to Sky, or buy the Times, so I choose whether or not to accept their terms. But I must fund the BBC, and it is publicly owned. So it’s property is, ultimately, public property.
BQ – It’s “because of the unique way the BBC is funded”…
Clearly a democracy has to be more than the expressed wishes of the majority taking precedent otherwise the white members of the western democracies good just vote to make the non-white people their slaves. Or perhaps people under six foot would vote to take all the earnings of those over six foot. Democracy is not fascism when and only when an interlocking system of laws, morals, customs and social institutions throttle it’s power. Otherwise all sorts of mad things could take place: for example all the feckless, lazy people people could band together to demand that the minority of hard working, risk takers support them in a life of leisure and that would be crazy!
Ah the beeb thread has now just gone on to prove Godwin’s Law.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin‘s_Law
You can try and disscuss the issues of the day but what really gets people worked up is the telly!
Ha! I did hesitate to mention Hitler and democracy in the same sentence for that very reason, but I went ahead anyway. Bang to rights. My point still stands – democracy and majority rule are not the same thing.
David – yes that would be crazy! Britain is crazy/stupid.
DavidNcl that assumes that all white people want non-white people to be their slaves. I dopn’t think I’m in a minority being white and not wanted slaves. Anyway, I didn’t say that democracy was majority rule – I said (or at least meant…) that reduction of licence fees is not an issue which holds sway over the electorate – David Cameron, for instance, would not gain more voters by making a manifesto pledge to lower licence fees than he would lose by the implication that he would privatise the BBC. Or, to put it another way, we still have licence fees because the electorate care less about rising licence fees than they do about the BBC. Hitler dun’t enter into it.
I’d still pay a voluntary BBC Subscription fee. 95% of the TV I watch (I don’t watch much) comes from the BBC so it suits me fine. I have a feeling, in our something-for-nothing culture, that I’d be fairly lonely in that, though – which would lead ultimately to the decline of the BBC (which could take a lot of the quality TV market with it). Maybe that’s the way it should be – but I think if we lost the BBC we’d lose something inherent to our culture, and that would be a shame.
Sorry Stu you are missing the point about “democracy”. You, as a supporter of the licence fee are telling me as a non-supporter that it’s tough shit because more people support your side than mine. That is not democracry. David’s point stands: the majority are “oppressing” the minority because they think they are “right”.
Nor is it democracy…
What is “inherent” about any aspect of any culture? TV has only been around sixty years…
“I think if we lost the BBC we’d lose something inherent to our culture” – I’m at a loss to see what, frankly.
“You, as a supporter of the licence fee are telling me as a non-supporter that it’s tough shit because more people support your side than mine”
Not at all! Perish the thought. I was merely pointing out the fact that our democracy has delivered us to a situation which I happen to agree with (with the caveat that I think the BBC should be much smaller and much cheaper) and you happen not to. It’s not tough shit – if your argument is persuasive and successful then the majority will come round to your point of view and things will surely change. It isn’t the majority that have made the licence fee decision – it’s the government that the majority decided we should have ruling us, rightly or wrongly.
You seem to be trying to tell me that it doesn’t matter what the majority think, it’s about what you think is “right”…
(The BBC has been around for nearly a century, by the way. BBC Television was being broadcast before WWII. 1935, if memory serves, though I haven’t checked. They also broadcast radio a long time before that.)
Err no, in a democracy people who don’t want to be forced to do something should be by the majority. I am not saying I am “right” or that anyone is “wrong” I just want to be free to live my life without being forced to pay for TV that I don’t like but other people do. I am not forcing anyone to do what I want, I am asking not to be forced to do what you say a majority want me to do. That is a classic tyranny of the majority.
*should not be, I can’t ype today.
I’m confused, you seem to have it backwards. In a democracy under the rule of law you abide by the rules set by the government that is elected by the people. You are forced to do some things (such as pay taxes), you are free to do other things (such as complain about having to pay taxes and voting against the government) and you are forced not to do yet other things (such as murder people or steal things).
Tyranny is not being free to do the second part. It isn’t exemption from the first or the third
But BE, there will always be tyranny by the majority in any form of taxation. Otherwise it simply cannot work. Even assuming that taxation and public spending were brought down to levels that I approved of, I’d still only be willing to pay my taxes if I knew that everyone else paid, too.
Taxation is theft.
If its wrong for me as an individual to force you to give me money and it’s wrong for me in a gang to force you to give me money, how does it become right for the majority to force you? How does it become legitimate to force you to pay taxes. How is that different from forcing some minority to be the slaves of the majority.
Davidncl; it follows inexorably from your argument that it is wrong to imprison people who murder.
Ergo, there must be a flaw in your argument.
[...] Behind Blue Eyes » Blog Archive » Public Sector Efficiency [...]
[...] it is obvious, from people’s reactions to the Telly Tax thread, that as a society we have been indoctrinated with the idea that there is compulsory taxation or [...]
Where to begin…
Bluey: “no doubt, but I live in hope that democracy can work”
You do? Seems you have some pretty clear criticism of and disillusionment with it.
Patently: “I think it could, and I think it should” about the BBC doing a ‘public good’
The whole point of this conversation is the notion of ‘public good’. It is that decisions are made by a centralised organisation about what is in the public good that is my problem with the system as it stands. I don’t think much of the BBC and would dismantle it tomorrow, but I actually think the argument is much better fought—as someone in this thread points out—using the wider arts. Tastes and opinion are much more polarised in the arts, as is participation, so there is much more controversy over its public funding. A centralised body cannot decide on a ‘public good’ in arts, culture or broadcast media. And neither can a genuine democracy, as this will only ever be a decision made by a majority. This stuff really is easy to individualise, and I do think it is coming.
(Yikes, Blue Eyes, any chance you can change the spellcheck on your new blog template to read UK english? All this ‘ise’s got flagged as unamerican)
Stu: “As for whether the BBC provides a public good, that’s a personal value decision. I think it does – although it should be smaller and more focused on the good things it does (docu, kids, Internet…”
The point summed up entirely. I like celebrity cook-offs, half hours devoted to someone making three quid at a tat auction, the serial violence of cockneys, and I don’t even have a computer. I think you and your documentaries and children and internet news should go and get lost. Who is to say what is right enough to be able to steal money from either of us to say?
“DavidNcl assumes that all white people want non-white people to be their slaves”
Of course he doesn’t, he suggests a hypothetical situation. We could use some less emotive examples, Milton Friedman used to talk about the majority deciding what colour tie you had to wear, is that better for you?
“You seem to be trying to tell me that it doesn’t matter what the majority think, it’s about what you think is “right”‘
Correct! At least, it doesn’t matter what the majority think when money isn’t being taken from them to decide what their culture is to be…
“The BBC has been around for nearly a century”
The licence fee was introduced in 1946. I know this after a friend googled it on his iphone this weekend in a pub, which he was subsequently thrown out of under their ‘no mobile phone use’ rule. What is my life coming to that this is what I do in pubs?
DavidNcl: ‘“I think if we lost the BBC we’d lose something inherent to our culture” – I’m at a loss to see what, frankly”
The socialism, silly!
patently: “Davidncl; it follows inexorably from your argument that it is wrong to imprison people who murder. Ergo, there must be a flaw in your argument”
There may or may not be a flaw in his argument, but it certainly doesn’t stem from what he just said there. Ergo, can you elaborate?
[...] Behind Blue Eyes » Blog Archive » Public Sector Efficiency [...]
[...] part of the reason I feel so, well, dirty arguing the case for the BBC against Blue Eyes. Even if I do like the BBC and agree to some extent with the licence fee, I know [...]
re murder (and logic):
“it follows inexorably from your argument that it is wrong to imprison people who murder. Ergo, there must be a flaw in your argument.”
No. My argument (after Bastiat) is that
a) since theft by individual action is wrong and
b) there is no legitimisation process than can make it right springing from collective action which
c) cannot also be used to justify anything (however terrible)
Hence…
d) taxation is wrong.
Let’s try it for murder
a) murder by individuals is wrong
b) if an individual murders (or threatens to murder) then
c) other individuals (his family, friends and others) have the moral right to redress, revenge and restitution
d) so the murderer can be “punished” by other individuals who have been wronged
e) such wronged individuals may act together, in concert or through an agency and retain the right to punish
A legal process may well be involved to determine if a wrong has occurred – but this is moot point (tee hee).
Without compulsory taxation there’s no money to pay for the police, judiciary and law-making. Hence, there can be no infrastructure to imprison criminals and no consequences to crime. Hence, such a society is tolerant of murder. A simple logical deduction.
I wrote a response to NB but it’s been lost to the world of tinterwebs and I don’t fancy re-writing it. There’s a trackback above to the post I wrote on a similar subject.
Without compulsory taxation there’s no money to pay for the police, judiciary and law-making
WRONG! Please see the more recent post! You have fallen for the “no taxation, no public services” argument which pre-supposes that we are all ultimately completely selfish.
I’d much rather pay the licence fee & not have to watch any inane commercials disrupting my viewing pleasure.