ECN Forum
It's 'elf & safety gawn mad, I tell ya! crazy

For those outside the U.K., remember that this is an organization which is funded by the forcible extraction of a "license fee" from the public whether they wish to avail of its services or not.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/03/25/nbbc25.xml
Crikey!.
How ludicrous is that?.
I mean, it's only a light bulb, how dangerous can changing one possibly be?.
“Here’s a list of cast and crew,
Christ alone knows what they do.”
[Alas Smith and Jones]

No surprises, this is the Beeb, home of excess! Take the BBC News: Two newsreaders take it in turns to read one line in turn off the autocue, while the other stands grinning and posing in his/her latest outfit. The prog. is spattered with special correspondents world-wide who appear at the drop of a hat. Add the business guy, the weather guy, the sports girl, the occasional celebrity, and then after 30 minutes, we go to the “local news where you are”, and stap me if we haven’t got a spare set of the buggers = 2 reading the local news, another weather forecast man etc.etc.

Bring back the pros like Robin Day or Reggie Bosenquet, who read the news for best part of an hour, off a sheaf of papers, at desk on their own, with no autocue or secret earpiece! Doubly impressive for Reggie, as he was usually as pie-eyed as a newt as well!:D

Alan
So what would happen to you if you replace the bulb without telling anyone? laugh
I wouldn't be worried about the creative side of the BBC i.e. people actually making, presenting or producing programmes. BBC's lashing vast resources into endless administration and projects that could be done commercially.

e.g., while I like BBC.co.uk, I can't really understand why it's done entirely at licence fee payers expense.

RTE in Ireland's similar, vast amounts of cash (from licence fees) wasted on admin etc.

Parkinson’s Law, [ cf C. Northcote Parkinson,1955 ], states that “work expands to fit the time available for its completion”, based on his experiences in the British Civil Service Colonial Office. Parkinson observed that, though the British Empire was being drastically reduced in size due to colonies gaining independence, staff numbers in the Service rose at a steady 7% regardless. The Law appears to be linked to those of supply and demand, or of one’s expenses rising in line with one’s income, of which we are all painfully aware.

At the BBC, as Paul stated, income is fixed by the cost of the TV licence, [ a radio licence now being free ], multiplied by the number of households owning a television set.

That’s right folks: an annual TV ownership tax! £131.50 p.a. for color, £44.00 for black/white, free if you are over 75 years old, and due to rise this week to £135.50 / £45.50, a rise of c. 3%

94.3% of the British population view BBC with a TV licence. Satellite, Commercial Station or cable viewer? You still need a licence. Non-payers are prosecuted with vigor, the BBC has special trucks with ‘detectors’ to catch evaders, and fines are gigantic, around £1000 [US$2000].
Fact is, if you are on a Postal [Mail] Code Database and don’t have a licence, a computer will issue you a form demanding you state that you don’t own a television set.
You also must have a licence to watch TV on a mobile phone or a laptop.
Upside: There are no advertisements, and programme quality is good.

Last year, [2006] there were 24,972,000 TVs licenced, 20,810,000 of which were for color.

Income: £2,919,643,000 = about 58 thousand million US dollars [2006] from licence fees. One should add that the BBC gets additional income from publishing, intellectual property rights, copyright, programme sales abroad, phone-ins at premium rates etc..

As we can see, if the Law holds and expenses rise with income, the BBC can well afford to employ a few professional light bulb changers.

Alan
Originally Posted by Alan Belson

Income: £2,919,643,000 = about 58 thousand million US dollars [2006] from licence fees.



You're off by a factor of 10 on the high side..
its ~58 hundred million, or 5.8 billion, or 5.8 Gigabucks.

actually 5,748,439,672 (or so).
Yes, by the time I spotted the mistake, the 3 minute edit time had expired.

Alan
Gidday Alan,
Just as a note, I removed your last post.
Not sure if any Mod here has had to do that under the new system, but be careful, you can take out a whole thread with one click of the mouse.
Originally Posted by Alan Belson
a radio licence now being free


To be pedantic, the radio receiving license isn't free, it doesn't exist at all anymore. It was abolished in 1971.

Quote
Fact is, if you are on a Postal [Mail] Code Database and don’t have a licence, a computer will issue you a form demanding you state that you don’t own a television set.


Now that's something which is totally wrong about the system. The tone of the correspondence from TVL in Bristol isn't far removed from a what you'd expect of a bunch of hoods running a protection racket.

The thing I like the least about them is the way they try to imply things which simply are not in the law, like the "If you do not watch TV, you should call us on 0870 xxx-xxxx or write to tell us. We will contact you in due course."

I don't agree with the license fee, but the legal obligation is to buy a license if you receive broadcast TV. Nothing more.

There is no legal obligation to contact TVL if you don't need a license. If you did decide to call anyway, why should you have to pay extra to call an 0870 number?

The last part of the above says it all anyway -- Even if you do tell them that you don't watch TV, they won't believe you and will still send threatening letters anyway.

Then there are the letters along the lines of "We have authorized an officer to visit your premises and interview you under caution in accordance with the police and criminal evidence act." It all sounds very official, as though you must talk to these clowns just because you don't have a license.

Some of them really do try to give the impression of having more authority than they actually do. It's surprising how many people have been led to believe that they must allow a TVL inspector into their home at any time to check for unlicensed reception.

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!!
Quote
Which is still cheaper than we pay in UK!


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. frown

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. laugh
Originally Posted by Texas_Ranger
she was just having dinner when a GIS guy rang the door bell and came in before she could say anything.


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:

Quote
How Germany does it -- In Germany the listening tax is paid monthly and its collection from set owners is made by the postman on his rounds. The annual cost is approximately 30s. Radio pirates are discovered by the municipal chimney-sweeps who in the course of their daily duties visit all houses, flats and apartments. It is their duty to notify all wireless receivers to the local authorities.


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

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