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 Posted: Mar 30, 2012 - 10:54 AM |
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Joined: Jul 18, 2005
Posts: 62354
Location: (using avr-gcc in) Finchingfield, Essex, England
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Quote:
I would be happier if the content vs commercial times were more reasonable.
Doesn't everyone have Sky+ or some other PVR these days? What are adverts? |
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Posted: Mar 30, 2012 - 11:10 AM |
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Joined: Feb 12, 2005
Posts: 16324
Location: Wormshill, England
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Yes. I have Sky+ and use it.
Mind you, the main purpose of TV is for sending you to sleep on the sofa. I find this works quite well for me.
When / if you wake up, you rewind back to the plot. Or just conclude that it was crap anyway, and switch off.
David. |
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Posted: Mar 30, 2012 - 11:21 AM |
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Joined: Jul 02, 2005
Posts: 5950
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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david.prentice wrote:
Anyway, the licence vs tax question boils down to practicalities. Which is why I asked "how well does it work in Australia?"
David.
Well actually David, you asked ...
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How does the Australian system work?
... and I replied to that question. The answer to your belated efficacy question is ... brilliant (ambiguity intended). The savings alone in generating those bad gases resulting from travelling to the centralised licence dispensing office would be enormous 
Cheers,
Ross |
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Ross McKenzie
ValuSoft
Melbourne Australia
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Posted: Mar 30, 2012 - 11:39 AM |
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Joined: Feb 12, 2005
Posts: 16324
Location: Wormshill, England
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Ross,
I am suspicious of the 0.08 AUD per day.
My UK licence is 0.61 AUD per day.
Either the BBC does an lot more than your ABC, or there is a serious inefficiency somewhere.
I have never travelled to pay a TV licence. Pre internet, you used the mail.
I have travelled to buy a Car licence. They do not take prisoners!
David. |
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Posted: Mar 30, 2012 - 11:58 AM |
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Joined: Jul 18, 2005
Posts: 62354
Location: (using avr-gcc in) Finchingfield, Essex, England
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Quote:
I have travelled to buy a Car licence.
Not any more - I love the fact that the insurance and MOT details are now available to them online so it can all be done on their website - no more travelling to a post office and waiting for hours in a queue to show your MOT and insurance documents! (the road fund licence for one of my cars expires at midnight today - the new tax disc came through the post - it has efficiently been "tidied away" - I do hope I can find it!) |
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Posted: Mar 30, 2012 - 12:16 PM |
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Joined: Feb 12, 2005
Posts: 16324
Location: Wormshill, England
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Cliff,
When your garage can't do the MOT until the 1st Nov, you lose that 'convenience'.
In the old days, you had a wider window. The garage could issue the MOT up to the 3rd or 4th of the month.
The moral of the story is. You have from 1 Oct to 31 Oct to arrange your MOT appointment. Don't leave it till too late!
David. |
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Posted: Mar 30, 2012 - 12:44 PM |
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Joined: Jul 02, 2005
Posts: 5950
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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david.prentice wrote:
Ross,
I am suspicious of the 0.08 AUD per day.
My UK licence is 0.61 AUD per day.
Either the BBC does an lot more than your ABC, or there is a serious inefficiency somewhere.
I have never travelled to pay a TV licence. Pre internet, you used the mail.
I have travelled to buy a Car licence. They do not take prisoners!
David.
Well read it and weep. My suspicion, yes I am entitled to have one, is that your licence money goes into the UK Chancellor's general revenue fund which pays for the BBC and the rest goes on Union Jack's of the waving variety
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The term "where your 8 cents a day goes", coined in the late 1980s during funding negotiations,[54] is often used in reference to the services provided by the ABC.[55] It is estimated that the cost of the ABC per head of population per day is now 7.1 cents a day, based on the Corporation's 2007–08 'base funding' of $543 million.[56]
Source ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian ... orporation |
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Ross McKenzie
ValuSoft
Melbourne Australia
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Posted: Mar 30, 2012 - 12:55 PM |
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Joined: Jul 18, 2005
Posts: 62354
Location: (using avr-gcc in) Finchingfield, Essex, England
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If the UK licence is £149 and paid by about 20m households in the UK that is $2.9bn. You do have to wonder exactly what costs $2.9bn to run a handful of TV and radio channels. Paying people like Jonathan Ross (previously) $7m/year probably doesn't help!
This:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-14114366
says that payment to "talent" was £0.2bn in fact. So where does the other £2.7bn go I wonder?
... actually this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC#Revenue
suggests that BBC1 alone is getting on for half the expenditure at £1.4bn. I wonder how many other TV channels in the world have a £1.4bn budget? |
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Posted: Mar 30, 2012 - 01:03 PM |
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Joined: Jul 02, 2005
Posts: 5950
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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Mind you Cliff and David, I have to admit that our ABC does broadcast a lot of your British shows and they are of very high quality in general. So I guess you are paying for their production and distribution and we are paying a lot less to broadcast them.
For example we had QI and Shadow Line tonight and I watched The Accused recorded on my pvr from a few nights ago.
... and no the ABC does not make Neighbours |
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Ross McKenzie
ValuSoft
Melbourne Australia
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Posted: Mar 30, 2012 - 01:13 PM |
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Joined: Jul 18, 2005
Posts: 62354
Location: (using avr-gcc in) Finchingfield, Essex, England
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Quote:
we are paying a lot less to broadcast them.
Wikipedia wrote:
£112.9 million from other income, such as providing content to overseas broadcasters and concert ticket sales;
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Posted: Mar 30, 2012 - 03:11 PM |
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Joined: May 04, 2007
Posts: 3529
Location: Geelong Australia, Home of the "Cats"
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@David
Quote:
Either the BBC does an lot more than your ABC, or there is a serious inefficiency somewhere.
Because of the size of Oz compared to the UK and some of the remote communities we have here, there would be many more transmitting stations & link infrastructure in Oz. So we get a lot more bang for the dollar from the ABC.
The ABC is fiercely independent and woe behold any government that tries to influence it.
We do get a lot of BBC programs and one would assume that we pay for them, but obviously subsidized by the viewers in the UK. So we better not change that!
I was amazed that a licenses are offered for B&W TV. I would have thought that all B&W TV's would be landfill by now?
I note that Radio licenses in the UK were abandoned in 1971,
whereas I was led to believe earlier, that they still existed,
when I asked whether you need to have a license for listening to MW stations elsewhere in Europe or on SW. |
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Posted: Mar 30, 2012 - 07:44 PM |
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Joined: Mar 28, 2001
Posts: 20390
Location: Sydney, Australia (Gum trees, Koalas and Kangaroos, No Edelweiss)
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Quote:
how well does it work in Australia?
No license fee for abour 35-40 years now??
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the adverts become 30% of the broadcasting time
We now have some 16 channels of Freeview.
Their slogan is: "More for you"...more blasted commercials!! Apart from the ABC (3 channels) that's all you get for about 50% of the time on the other channels.
This week a new channel popped up, Extra...Extra commercials 24 hours of that and nothing else, I think we now have 2 of those. Other channels are wasted by sport.... |
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John Samperi
Ampertronics Pty. Ltd.
www.ampertronics.com.au
* Electronic Design * Custom Products * Contract Assembly
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Posted: Mar 30, 2012 - 09:41 PM |
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Joined: Jan 24, 2008
Posts: 521
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kevin_white wrote:
No, it really is an empty van with some antennas stuck on top. Ideal for scaring people into thinking that TV detector vans are not just a scam.
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And although it doesn't state whether they were detected using the vans there are people bing prosecuted.
I'll say it again: no-one has ever been prosecuted on the evidence of a TV detector van. No warrant to force entry to a property has ever been obtained based on evidence from a TV detector van. That's because there is no evidence, they are just white vans and these days they can't even be bothered with the antennas.
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The technology is simple - every TV since the mid 1950's has been a superhet and as such radiates at the local oscillator frequency as well as at the IF. They are easy to pick up with a receiver and from their frequency and content it is trivial to determine what TV station is being watched.
While you are technically correct there are numerous flaws in your scheme. For a start all TVs have superhet receivers regardless of if they are connected to an antenna or tuned into anything or not. In fact it could be tuned in to BBC1 but as long as the antenna was not connected or the display was set to the SCART input it would still be legal to operate without a TV license, as many people do.
Older VCRs and games consoles also use the RF input, so again you would need to find a way of determining what was actually on screen. Although the technology to do that does exist with CRTs it is notable that TV licensing have never demonstrated it, their vans visibly don't contain the necessary equipment and it didn't exist until the 80s when they were claiming to have it in the 60s. Plus it doesn't work with LCDs.
Look, we know exactly how TV Licensing operates. It is well documented. They have a database containing all addresses in the UK and which of them have a TV License. They assume every address without one has a TV anyway and owes them money. They send threatening letters, then if that doesn't work they might send someone round in a scary "TV detector van" or with a handheld device that looks like someone out of Star Trek. These people are extremely pushy and will try to peek through your curtains or get a foot in the door, and will hang about outside for hours. They are on commission, naturally.
The reason so many cases go to court is that typically the court will award TV Licensing the price of a TV license plus £30 costs, where as they demand payment of huge fines. Therefore it is better for people to go to court and simply admit that they forget to get one. |
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Posted: Mar 30, 2012 - 10:24 PM |
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Joined: May 26, 2004
Posts: 2538
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada
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Quote:
No, it really is an empty van with some antennas stuck on top. Ideal for scaring people into thinking that TV detector vans are not just a scam.
And not nearly as scary as the antennas they used to use, great helical cones looking like a 1950's idea of a Martian death ray. In fact all they needed was a pair of ten inch loops a few feet apart, quite sensitive and directional enough to get a bearing on the LO from a hundred feet or so. Even a cheap transistor radio would give you a bearing on the whistle from the line output stage.
However, use of these detector vans has been documented on film, as for example this YouTube clip - "But you can call me Right Bleedin', all my friends do.". There can be no doubt. |
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Posted: Mar 31, 2012 - 01:28 AM |
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Joined: May 04, 2007
Posts: 3529
Location: Geelong Australia, Home of the "Cats"
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I love this guy, a man after my own heart!
I think mojo-chan might be onto something. Looking at some of the Youtube clips, the whole BBC & TV licensing , Television Inspecting seems hit and miss, they have little corporate identity or standards. It would appear that they are part time workers on commission.
Non-co-operation would seem the best way to remove the whole "scam", So not pay any fees, send back letters, refuse right of access, do not provide information or admit anything, shove a camera in the face of callers while you tie them up with well reasoned argument, tie up their call centers with difficult & probing questions.
I believe it is a violation of civil liberties to prosecute citizens for not paying a license to the BBC, if they do not watch the BBC.
Interesting support site |
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Charles Darwin, Lord Kelvin & Murphy are always lurking about!
Lee -.-
(If you haven't already done so, edit your PostNuke profile and let let us know where you are, what you do & what your interests are.)
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Posted: Mar 31, 2012 - 06:29 AM |
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Joined: Jan 03, 2006
Posts: 4417
Location: Hemel Hemsptead, UK
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Ack. They don't pay a license to the BBC; they pay it to the government. The BBC is merely the statutory agent that collects it.
Which is not to say that such civil disobedience may not be effective, but I suspect the majority of the population would rather have the best TV/radio in the world (trust me, I know: I've been to the world and have not been impressed!) than to make Murdock richer.
It's changed now as advertising money has moved from TV to internet, but the time was when the budget for ITV was close to or exceeded that of the license fee - which meant, of course, that you paid it anyway whether you watched TV or not, since the advertising budget applies to every single item you purchase...
There's one very good and very simple reason for supporting the BBC the way it is: it has a mandate to entertain, educate, and inform; it is in the business of delivering entertainment to viewers and listeners. NO other TV and radio station in the world does this; they are each and every one in the business of delivering viewers and listeners to advertisers. And I despise them for it. |
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Neil Barnes
www.nailed-barnacle.co.uk
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Posted: Mar 31, 2012 - 07:13 AM |
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Joined: Jul 02, 2005
Posts: 5950
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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barnacle wrote:
There's one very good and very simple reason for supporting the BBC the way it is: it has a mandate to entertain, educate, and inform; it is in the business of delivering entertainment to viewers and listeners. NO other TV and radio station in the world does this; they are each and every one in the business of delivering viewers and listeners to advertisers. And I despise them for it.
Neil, whilst I do not have the first hand experience and knowledge that you have of the BBC, I think you are guilty of a rash generalisation with your declaration about all other TV and radio stations in the world; it certainly misses the mark with Australia's ABC. |
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Ross McKenzie
ValuSoft
Melbourne Australia
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Posted: Mar 31, 2012 - 07:46 AM |
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Joined: Feb 12, 2005
Posts: 16324
Location: Wormshill, England
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Your Australian ABC certainly looks a very good deal on paper. e.g. you seem to get better value AND a public service.
I guess that the best opinions should be sought from Australians living in the UK and Brits living in Australia.
It appears that you support your ABC like we are fond of our BBC. I would not support civil disobedience on licences. Likewise car tax and insurance.
I am sure that disobedience can make licences unworkable. If tax works better, then it would seem sensible. Whatever you do, someone will whinge.
David. |
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Posted: Mar 31, 2012 - 08:29 AM |
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Joined: Mar 28, 2001
Posts: 20390
Location: Sydney, Australia (Gum trees, Koalas and Kangaroos, No Edelweiss)
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Quote:
someone will whinge.
...No comment...!  |
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John Samperi
Ampertronics Pty. Ltd.
www.ampertronics.com.au
* Electronic Design * Custom Products * Contract Assembly
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Posted: Mar 31, 2012 - 08:30 AM |
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Joined: Jul 02, 2005
Posts: 5950
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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David, don't get me wrong; this isn't a competition. I strongly support the public sector transmission of information and entertainment ... and the simplest way to fund it. Having a team of door knockers working on a commission basis just doesn't appear to be optimum.
Cheers,
Ross |
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Ross McKenzie
ValuSoft
Melbourne Australia
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