Dazey Posted May 13, 2014 Share Posted May 13, 2014 (edited) Just read this story about the BBC spending £11 million on postage to send letters harassing people to pay the TV licence fee. So if you're all wondering why Top Gear's been shit lately .............. For those not from these parts it is a legal requirement for anybody who watches or records live TV to buy a licence at about £150 ($230) a year. Anybody who watches TV without a licence can be prosecuted, fined and potentially sent to prison.Has anybody here ever been fined or threatened by these jackasses for what to me amounts to legal robbery in this day and age. Honestly the BBC can suck my balls! BBC Under Fire For Spending £11m A Year On TV Licence Fee Letters The BBC has come under fire for spending over £11 million of taxpayers' money a year on printing and sending TV licence letters to households.The corporation revealed that it had sent around 55 million letters to unlicensed properties each year, equivalent to more than two letters a year for each household in Britain, in response to a Freedom of Information request by the Huffington Post UK.Tory MP Rob Wilson told HuffPostUK: In an age where many people receive paperless bills to their email accounts and mobile phones, and pay bills and subscriptions by direct debit, it does seem rather anachronistic for the BBC to be sending two paper letters for every household in the UK every single year."This comes at a cost of over £11 million a year, a substantial chunk of the total spending on collecting licence fee revenue. By modernising its methods, the BBC could collect the television licence more efficiently, so that more money is available for making programmes.The BBC Trust has proved to be a deeply flawed steward of the licence fee revenues, but you would expect them to be looking into this and holding the BBC to account. I would be surprised if they werent.At an average cost of around £0.2 per mailing, the corporation is responsible for spending more than £11 million a year on printing and sending out TV Licence letters.The BBC receives most of its income, at around £3.7 billion, from people paying the £145.50 annual TV licence fee in order to watch television live. The corporation said it sent reminders to unlicensed properties and sent paper copies of TV Licences as part of its "statutory duty" to ensure households have properly licensed televisions.John O'Connell, director of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: "This is a huge amount of taxpayers' money to be spent on chasing unpaid licence fees, and again highlights how completely outdated the whole model is. With the technology in place for people to subscribe to their choice of hundreds of channels, more cost effective ways of delivering programming should be explored."Perhaps if the BBC cut out the waste the licence fee could be lowered, meaning more people could afford to pay it and fewer reminders being sent out."A TV Licensing spokesperson said: We collected £3.7bn in licence fees in 2012/3 from more than 25 million licences with collection costs of just 3% of revenue. Reminder letters are cost effective and all have a positive return on investment. We encourage customers to receive our communications by email and transact with us online.HuffPostUK previously revealed that the 107 people had been jailed in just over two years for failing to paying fines for not having a TV licence.MPs voted last month in favour of letting the government decriminalise non-payment of the TV licence fee, in a move that could see ministers move to a system of civil penalties next summer. Edited May 13, 2014 by Dazey Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Len B'stard Posted May 13, 2014 Share Posted May 13, 2014 Translation: we put a bullshit amount to this shit on our accounts and had a share out with the change Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Broskirose Posted May 13, 2014 Share Posted May 13, 2014 Fucking Africa. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnny Drama Posted May 13, 2014 Share Posted May 13, 2014 Wait, you need to pay watch "free to air" TV in Blighty? More bollocks than the sperm bank. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dazey Posted May 13, 2014 Author Share Posted May 13, 2014 Wait, you need to pay watch "free to air" TV in Blighty? More bollocks than the sperm bank.Not only do you need to pay but you can end up in court if you don't. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnny Drama Posted May 13, 2014 Share Posted May 13, 2014 What so you seriously go up to the post office and that and you get out your money to fork out for a TV bill? Sounds like some bullshit US thing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Len B'stard Posted May 13, 2014 Share Posted May 13, 2014 (edited) Well you don't have to go to the post office but yes, that is the principle. Don't other countries have em then? Before that you had your wireless lisence and that. When i was a lad they used to say the telly people drove around with detector vans, dunno if that was true or a myth. Then again, back then they said if you watched anything but the BBC it was alright cuz BBC don't have no adverts so thats how it's funded by lisence fee but ITV and Channel 4 have adverts so they pay for em through that Edited May 13, 2014 by sugaraylen Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnny Drama Posted May 13, 2014 Share Posted May 13, 2014 We don't pay shit for free TV. FFS no one's getting satellite, innit? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Len B'stard Posted May 13, 2014 Share Posted May 13, 2014 (edited) I've never had Sky or Cable or any of that. As in actually had it proper and not just like, the box and getting the shit free channels Edited May 13, 2014 by sugaraylen Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnny Drama Posted May 13, 2014 Share Posted May 13, 2014 Aye. Ditto. You know like the Australian equivalent thereof. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Len B'stard Posted May 13, 2014 Share Posted May 13, 2014 (edited) Yooooooou cheap fuckin' foreign bastard (ironyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy ) Actually it's not even irony is it, just plain bollocks Edited May 13, 2014 by sugaraylen Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnny Drama Posted May 13, 2014 Share Posted May 13, 2014 Never understood why folks pay Rupert fuckin Murdoch an exorbitant amount for a bunch of shite channels every month. There's like 5 good ones worth buying padded with a load of guff. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Len B'stard Posted May 13, 2014 Share Posted May 13, 2014 (edited) I can think of lots of reasons...so you can watch the football so it doesn't freeze on the stream everytime your boys score...2. so you can watch the boxing, 3. i ain't got a 3. So thats not lots of reasons at all, is it? Nice to keep abreast of current cinema and that, movie channels, have a flick through and sort of like...keep up. Snobby obscure shit watching wannabe art-type wankbags like me tend to fall behind in terms of whats going on in current cinema so it'd be nice to have a sort of on demand refresher course to refer to every time I've nothing to do in the evening. Edited May 13, 2014 by sugaraylen Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnny Drama Posted May 13, 2014 Share Posted May 13, 2014 Yeah that's 2 things out of the 100 you're paying for though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thin White Duke Posted May 13, 2014 Share Posted May 13, 2014 I've only read the first sentence of the OP. The only thing that is not shit of the UK is Top Gear. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Len B'stard Posted May 13, 2014 Share Posted May 13, 2014 Me and my cousin used to call up the Nigerian religious witch doctor bloke channel. It's cheap as fuck right, it's these african lads who get people to call up with their issues, shit like 'my kid ain't getting good grades' and this african geezer goes, over the phone:'IN DE NEM OF JESUS!!! IN DE NEM OF JESUS I CAST THESE BAD DEE-MONS OUT OF YOUR SONS SO HE CAN GET DEE GOOD GRADES IN DEE NEM OF JESUS!' while his mobile number scrolls across the bottom of the screen The funniest bit is he proper switches when some bird rings up like:'sistah i theenk i need to geev you my numbah so we can have a one to one con-sul-tation!', I bet you do you randy old goat 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Georgy Zhukov Posted May 13, 2014 Share Posted May 13, 2014 What the fuck are you guys talking about? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dazey Posted May 13, 2014 Author Share Posted May 13, 2014 What the fuck are you guys talking about?In the UK you need a licence to watch TV. If you watch TV without a licence you can be fined and possibly sent to jail. Clear? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bacardimayne Posted May 13, 2014 Share Posted May 13, 2014 The TV license isn't that bad. It doesn't exist in Canada, instead everyone funds CBC through their tax dollars even if they don't watch TV. If you think about it like that it makes more sense to do it like Ingerland does. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Axl_morris Posted May 13, 2014 Share Posted May 13, 2014 The TV license isn't that bad. It doesn't exist in Canada, instead everyone funds CBC through their tax dollars even if they don't watch TV. If you think about it like that it makes more sense to do it like Ingerland does.Candaians call us 'England' too? :*( Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grouse Posted May 13, 2014 Share Posted May 13, 2014 Used to be like that here as well but they changed that in the early 90's. Now it automatically gets deducted from your paycheck. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amir Posted May 13, 2014 Share Posted May 13, 2014 If it wasn't being paid through TV license it'd just be lumped in with a tax.I haven't paid TV license in almost 2 years since I don't have a telly. I don't even watch iPlayer! I regret that now, though, tried looking for some Louis Theroux documentaries and they've all been taken off. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnny Drama Posted May 13, 2014 Share Posted May 13, 2014 Surely you've seen every Theroux doc on TV by now? I know I have. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amir Posted May 13, 2014 Share Posted May 13, 2014 Surely you've seen every Theroux doc on TV by now? I know I have.Just watched Twilight of the Porn Stars, great stuff. Watched him on the Joe Rogan podcast a few months ago, realised I was way behind. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snake-Pit Posted May 14, 2014 Share Posted May 14, 2014 Not only do we have to pay, but we have to remember to pay too!? It'll be cheaper if they did the whole thing automatically. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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