ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Non-US Electrical Systems & Trades How many BBC employees to change a light bulb?

Here we pay an annual tax on owning a tv, except it's a part of our taxe habitation [ or local "rates" ] commensurate on owning a house. You can't avoid paying, so we don't need detector vans, threatening letters or all the other BS pretence of 'funding the BBC'. It's £77 a year and it's only for a "proper" tv set, so you can watch tv on the internet, a laptop or a mobile free. I have to add that french tv is generally regarded by the french as utter crap and viewing figures are low.
We don't have 'road fund licenses' for cars either- it's added to the price of the fuel at the pumps.

We don't have 'road fund licenses' for cars either- it's added to the price of the fuel at the pumps. [/quote]
Which is still cheaper than we pay in UK!
(Looking forward to my Easter holiday in France)
BTW New forum layout looks good - just need to get used to it.

Geoff the French Gummint have gone mad the last few years. It's disgusting the way they give pensioners enough money to live on, try to keep the population happy with reasonable tax levels on fuel, wine etc., and dump all those popular things like road tax, tv licences etc. Take that madman Chirac. 2 years ago he had the temerity to give me a 20% income tax rebate just for being old. Never even gave us a referendum on it, the scallywag. How we envy you lucky Brits at home in Blighty!!

Don't get me started on this one!

Even when France did have the vignette it was considerably cheaper than the British tax disc. The standard annual rate here now is £180 (for those of us with pre-2001 vehicles). Chancellor Gordon "Dick Turpin" Brown has just raised the top rate for new cars in the highest band to £300 with the announcement that that will increase to £400 next year! That's all on top of the 300% tax applied to the fuel, of course, plus the insurance premium tax, plus the 17.5% VAT on parts, plus the now-£50 annual MoT inspection fee.

Yet with all this tax on motoring, the roads (at least around here) are falling apart. Potholes and rough surfaces have become the norm.

If this were France, there would have been demonstrations in the streets and blockades by now!

TVL seems to be pretty much the same as German GEZ and Austrian GIS... both are known to simply send payment forms to everybody they find on the door bell name plates... in at least one case a dog... or one GIS story that happened to a friend of mine: she was just having dinner when a GIS guy rang the door bell and came in before she could say anything. Then he told her they didn't pay TV fees (which are if I remember correctly around €20/month). She answered they don't own a TV. "I see you have cable TV!" he claimed pointing to the connector box of the telephone (cable TV company offers telephone service via their lines but that needs a transmitter box). "No we don't, that's for the telephone!" "You must have cable TV! I have a box like that at home and I have cable TV!"

In Germany you have to pay for ANY computer that COULD be connected to the internet!

We have the same here. In the office there is a company for maintenance, but they charge about 10 EUR/hour + bulb.
Ridiculous.

Do these guys have legal right of entry in Austria? TVL inspectors here certainly don't, even though they might try to imply that they do. Basically, if they don't have a search warrant you can tell them to "go away" and slam the door in their face. If they try to force their way in, then you have every right to use "reasonable force" to stop them.

I was just reading an interesting piece in an old journal about German radio licensing in the 1930s. I'll copy and post later.

Here we go. I found this in the "Going Back" column of Practical Wireless, August 1970. The quote here is from 1932:



Chimney sweeps as government snoops. What would Dick Van Dyke say?

Gorblimey, Mary Poppins, hi've fahnd hay wireless hairiel stuffed up yer chimley. I shall eff ter report you to der Abschinittsbeevollmachtigte!