While driving home from work on Friday I happened across the News Quiz on BBC Radio 4. Noted for its left-of-Marx political ‘humour’ and sneering jibes against anyone outside the BBC’s narrow subset of acceptable viewpoints, I decided to see what it would throw up this time.
It wasn’t long before the rent seekers of Toksvig and Co managed to take time out from their script to criticise anyone who dares oppose the idea of being compelled by statute to pay for the BBC as you can hear in the clip below:
Andy Hamilton’s attempt to justify the licence fee by arguing that everyone funds ITV through a purchase tax is laughable.
As for La Toksvig being ‘enraged’ that some people happily pay £60 per month for Sky TV yet complain about the BBC providing all this ‘good stuff’ for just £145 per year, she completely and willfully misses the point. People with a television set have a choice whether or not to buy Sky yet no choice about funding the BBC, despite routinely being ill served by BBC bias by omission, and the corporation hiding behind Freedom of Information exemptions in order to avoid accountability and public oversight of its editorial direction.
Autonomous Mind 
Come on… La Toxic is a comedienne…apparently…
We do have a choice about funding the BBC we can simply stop it. I did.
Ignore their impressive computer generated letters.
Ignore their black uniformed salesmen when and if they knock.
Never ever contact TVL aka Crapita aka BBC about anything.
It’s scary at first but once you realise that all they have in their ‘arsenal’ are threats and bullies and the biggest pile of paper and envelopes in Europe they become the irrelevance they really are.
No radio licence is required to be able to receive free to air BBC radio broadcasts so why is a licence required to receive their free to air TV broadcast?
No wonder other nations call us spineless.
Have to agree with Bill here – it is an optional tax, and an anachronistic one at that.
I stopped paying it over a year or so ago, and still get the hilariously faux threatening computer generated letters, some in red print even, which I file neatly away after a good chortle.
I put an “implied right of access denied” notice outside my front door which meant the Capita salesmen do not bother me again with their clipboards.
I’ve watched the odd live Question Time and other programmes either on my PCs or my TV with the full knowledge I won’t be prosecuted nor fined and I get to save £146.50 a year, but mostly the output from most of the channels is simply trite, biased or available on free download.
It’s only a matter of time before most people realise it’s an optional tax and then the BBC will be forced to adopt the modern way of financing: by subscription.
And please don’t expect politicians to do this, they are too concerned with their own political futures to rock this creaking, ancient boat; it would be political suicide for any politico to do this.
So let the people do it instead by cancelling their direct debits.
One by one.
The BBC got a boost to their income to encourage digital switchover didn’t they? Now that process is all but complete there is no justification for a continued excess of money.
Where else but the BBC would you be forced to pay a licence tax to subsidise this
idiot spouting his usual garbage and then be told it was “public service” broadcasting ?
I’ve long believed the BBC to be the most dangerous and subversive force at work in Britain today.
Even those who avoid its slanted news and analysis are still subliminally force-fed neo-Marxism as the underlying assumptions in the majority of its entertainment output.
The control it exerts over broadcasting in the uk – and hence over opinion – is incalculable.
For some strange reason, those who are outraged by the proportion of the media owned by Murdoch are quite blind to the same argument being turned on the BBC.
I wonder why?
‘Andy Hamilton’s attempt to justify the licence fee by arguing that everyone funds ITV through a purchase tax is laughable.’
Always thought his wry outlook on such as QI, etc made him one of the better ones.
This places him with a rather ignoble cabal, unified by being seemingly unaware that trotting out vacuous BBCphilic logic-free statements (from a very limited script being recycled currently – ‘You don’t have to watch’, ‘It’s an essential service, like A&E depts’, any SKYcomparison that fails to note its option kicks in only after the BBC has got its 145 and a half pounds of flesh, etc) sounds less than credible when uttered by those whose profile, if not main source of income, is via the very entity giving them the full resources of a multi-billion media monopoly to push their views in its support. Turkeys and Christmas.
I can hurt ITV in all manner of ways if I find their output beyond the pale. That fundamental right is denied me, uniquely, with the UK national broadcaster.
I can only be encouraged that the lack of skill being deployed shows the paucity of their arguments, and they know they are on the ropes.
Sadly, with all in the government (the one that presents us with such as Fox and Huhne as those best able to lead) seduced by the chance at a slot on Daily Politics, I don’t see much hope for much necessary corrective action from that quarter.
Beeb still won’t tell anyone how much they get from the EU, despite FoI requests. Or how much senior execs get from the bent programme procurement scheme. I say strike – don’t pay the TV poll tax.
Mr Bragg is an effing idiot. Just because someone once told him he could write ‘right-on’ songs and sing them, he has the hubris of thinking he knows something about anything. What a joke. He will be forgotten by history, unless he’s in the room 101 of people who were not worth mentioning.
The name is a giveaway.
From the free dictionary:
Brag
1. A boast.
2. Arrogant or boastful speech or manner.
Works for me.
Not the house that Bill Bragg built…
The house that BB lives in.
@Bill
09/10/2011 at 3:05 pm
Ain’t paid mine in years, once you realise they can not enter your premises your laughing, although if they discern that you are watching TV through say your window or can hear it they can get a search warrent and come in to your premises but I’m pretty sure no search warrent has ever been issued for a TV licence.
I did actually open the door to one of these gentlemen once but I informed him he could not come in as my girlfriend was walking around the house naked and I did not want to disturb her for anyone and asked him to come back in a week and shut the door on him. I haven’t answer my door since and eeveryone that I do want to come in my house know to ring me on my mobile when there standing at my front door.
They can peer through my window and will see the telly but unless I answer the door and answer their ‘Are you using equipment that accepts and displays a free to air broadcast signal or a pre-recorded ex free to air programme’ question in the affirmative nothing can happen.
Even if anyone comitts the heinsous crime of actually watching a free to air broadcast and they admit it to the doorstep goon he will always try to get them to cough up because that is how he gets his commission.
Taking people to court is very expensive and more than a tad risky for Crapita because should they lose in court the papers, those that are left, will be all over it as selling papers is something of a dying art so any ‘real news’ will get printed.
But as the court has to give the ‘potential offender’ at least seven days notice of search warrant being executed it is very easy to remove offending box from the room before the goon visits so the threat really is a hollow one.
Finally although I have a low opinion of local plod the ones I know have never been on a TV licence search and they say they don’t know of anyone on the force who has.
Indeed. And also, nobody has been prosecuted due to evidence from a so called TV detector van.
It’s as easy as BBC.
So, who else is still paying the optional telly tax?
Still not convinced?
Google is your friend.
Every one of these posts is brilliant. I stopped listening to the News Quiz years ago, when it ceased to be funny, and became a propagnada tool of the GrascoStaliNazi’s. 2 minutes of TNQ was funnier than any half hour these days, even SImon Hoggart failed.
But I stopped paying the license TAX in Aug. 2009, and my letter of complaint informing them of such ran to 9 pages of occasions of blatant political bias. I then joined Vladimir Bukovsky’s Refuseniks.
TV Detector vans were just vans. According to 2 websites I visited, both written by electronics engineers who were university researchers and lecturers, the technology to detect what channel someone is watching on a TV set has NEVER existed! It is not technically possible – even with a van full of equipment. I lost the links with a disk crash, but you’ll soon find them .
It never has been possible, and never will be now, with LCD and plasma TV’s.
@right_writes:
You’re kidding us? He lives THERE?
Preaches racial harmony, multiracialism, living side-by-side, multiculturalism, and lives THERE!
And in ‘Brickbat’, he wrote: “I used to want to plant bombs at the last night of the proms”.
What a ****.
Billy Bragg an arse (assuming **** is arse) how dare you. Arses are useful Bragg just isn’t.
What we should realise, is that Toksvik & Co. are actually doing us a favour. The next time you encounter someone who believes the BBC are incredibly cheap and good value for money and who deplores “licence dodgers”, take this line;
“Wouldn’t it be a good idea, in the light of your beliefs, to issue the licence in the form of an access card – like Sky’s – which you would insert into a box in order to view BBC stations? At £145 per annum, it’s such good value that no-one would opt-out and those who are electing not to pay, would now have to pay. The BBC gains greater funding with no increase in the fee and we decriminalise a section of society. Win-win”
Giving the people choice can be forced on the BBC *using their own arguments*.
I don’t pay a penny to them. They can leftist on as much as they like as far as I’m concerned.
@ Gary Baggers Perhaps we should also issue the road fund licence as a smart card to be put into cars before they can be driven – presumably on the right hand side of the road in your case! (The principle would be the same!)
And can somebody please explain to me how ITV get their money if there is not an ‘advertising premium’ on virtually all the goods and services we buy – with even less choice than the Licence Fee choice (no live TV = no licence fee) about paying it! (Or have I got it wrong and there’s a television fairy who provides it for us!!??)
As for bias, as always in the eye of the beholder. Try Googling “BBC is too right wing”, and read some of the eight million hits that come up. You never know, it might just be informative rather than the self congratulatory whinging that seems to be the norm here!!!