The Biased Broadcasting Corporation

[NurembergVillan]

Nothing to see here. This bloke is as honest as the day is purple.

[chrisp65]

35 minutes ago, MakemineVanilla said:

You are a relatively well-off middle-class person - I was expressing a concern that it is the worst off who are subjected to a tax which the government knows affects them the most, and then  spends it on opera and the ballet, who boast about it on their website.

I think taxes which fall on the poor and the precariat are unfair.

 

I can see that, it’s a single price (more or less) and it’s a lot if you’re poor and not qualifying as one of the groups that gets it free or cheaper. That sort of tax is unfair, totally get that.

But I don’t think we can generalise that ‘the working class’ like Ant & Dec on ITV and the middle class like subsidised Opera. I can absolutely assure you my very working class m-in-law likes both, my father likes neither, but late in life he has discovered reading Dickens. I’d have sympathy with the argument people with less money pay less, I can get behind that. Better still, we fund it differently, less directly from the license more directly through some sort of hypothecated tax. But the working class vs middle class thing isn’t sitting right for me. Certainly not the concept of freeing the working class from a tax by leaving them to Murdoch and Dacre etc.. I’m not even sure what class is, or what class I am. My dad started off as a farm labourer, went on to work in a factory all his life. We lived in a council house and I left school at 16 with 3 O levels. Now I own my house, have a bunch of letters I can stick after my name on emails, and my brand new car will be delivered to the house in April. I buy booze I don’t drink the same day. I stand on a terrace and shout bantz at amateur footballers from ex mining towns. So what the hell class is that? 

Edited March 18, 2023 by chrisp65

[KentVillan]

Some hobbies are elite / middle class because they are so expensive… like polo or helicopters. We shouldn’t be funding those from taxpayer or lottery money.

For stuff like opera or chess, where the barrier isn’t money, I think it’s kind of irrelevant which class groups are more interested in them on average, so long as you’re expanding access to *some* working class people.

It’s demeaning to say to someone, you’re working class so your sports are boxing and football and darts.

[NurembergVillan]

2 hours ago, MakemineVanilla said:

You are a relatively well-off middle-class person - I was expressing a concern that it is the worst off who are subjected to a tax which the government knows affects them the most, and then  spends it on opera and the ballet, who boast about it on their website.

I'm a bit lost here - are you referring to the TV licence or the national lottery?

[KentVillan]

13 minutes ago, NurembergVillan said:

I'm a bit lost here - are you referring to the TV licence or the national lottery?

I think whichever one is most convenient for the particular logical leap in the argument 

[Xela]

Never trusted the BBC since they got rid of Steve Wright in the Afternoon

Defund! 

[bickster]

1 minute ago, Xela said:

Never trusted the BBC since they got rid of Steve Wright in the Afternoon

Defund! 

That was worth the licence fee that year  

[MakemineVanilla]

1 hour ago, chrisp65 said:

I can see that, it’s a single price (more or less) and it’s a lot if you’re poor and not qualifying as one of the groups that gets it free or cheaper. That sort of tax is unfair, totally get that.

But I don’t think we can generalise that ‘the working class’ like Ant & Dec on ITV and the middle class like subsidised Opera. I can absolutely assure you my very working class m-in-law likes both, my father likes neither, but late in life he has discovered reading Dickens. I’d have sympathy with the argument people with less money pay less, I can get behind that. Better still, we fund it differently, less directly from the license more directly through some sort of hypothecated tax. But the working class vs middle class thing isn’t sitting right for me. Certainly not the concept of freeing the working class from a tax by leaving them to Murdoch and Dacre etc.. I’m not even sure what class is, or what class I am. My dad started off as a farm labourer, went on to work in a factory all his life. We lived in a council house and I left school at 16 with 3 O levels. Now I own my house, have a bunch of letters I can stick after my name on emails, and my brand new car will be delivered to the house in April. I buy booze I don’t drink the same day. I stand on a terrace and shout bantz at amateur footballers from ex mining towns. So what the hell class is that? 

It used to be a lot easier to identify a person's class: father's profession, social attitudes, cultural tastes and preferred newspaper etc.

I think low-skilled workers are treated badly, by employers and governments, and they have few if any advocates in the media.

What seems plain to me is that while we all dig in on opposite sides of the so-called culture war, the fundamental inequities get ignored, and the parties carry on regardless.

Taxes have become increasingly regressive under both main parties.

Work is still the curse of the drinking classes!

[MakemineVanilla]

51 minutes ago, NurembergVillan said:

I'm a bit lost here - are you referring to the TV licence or the national lottery?

I was drawing an equivolence between people who watch commercial television but are required to send money to the BBC to do so legally, with poor people who do the Lottery, sending money to subsidise high culture they have no interest in. 

I understand that the German system is even more expensive and is compulsory if you have a TV or not.

[sidcow]

All these people claiming they never use any BBC services, was it weird only watching half of the World Cup? 

[sidcow]

Can't believe the number of people who have never watched Peaky Blinders, Silent Witness, Luther, Line of Duty, killing Eve, Happy Valley, Doctor Who, Gavin and Stacey, Only Fools, Alan Partridge, Anything by David Attenborough, Top Gear, The Office and the literally thousands of other shows.  Never watched any of them. 

Never watched half of every major International football tournament since the dawn of TV. Never watched any Olympics or other major athletics. Never watched any of the hundreds of important documentaries. 

Yet do watch telly often. 

Yeah I'm calling total bullshit. 

 

[KentVillan]

55 minutes ago, sidcow said:

Can't believe the number of people who have never watched Peaky Blinders, Silent Witness, Luther, Line of Duty, killing Eve, Happy Valley, Doctor Who, Gavin and Stacey, Only Fools, Alan Partridge, Anything by David Attenborough, Top Gear, The Office and the literally thousands of other shows.  Never watched any of them. 

Never watched half of every major International football tournament since the dawn of TV. Never watched any Olympics or other major athletics. Never watched any of the hundreds of important documentaries. 

Yet do watch telly often. 

Yeah I'm calling total bullshit. 

All of those programmes are indoctrination actually by woke fisherthem

[ml1dch]

8 hours ago, sidcow said:

Can't believe the number of people who have never watched Peaky Blinders, Silent Witness, Luther, Line of Duty, killing Eve, Happy Valley, Doctor Who, Gavin and Stacey, Only Fools, Alan Partridge, Anything by David Attenborough, Top Gear, The Office and the literally thousands of other shows.  Never watched any of them. 

Never watched half of every major International football tournament since the dawn of TV. Never watched any Olympics or other major athletics. Never watched any of the hundreds of important documentaries. 

Yet do watch telly often. 

Yeah I'm calling total bullshit. 

 

And are also childless. As I'm pretty sure there isn't a parent in this country who hasn't relied on an hour of cBeebies babysitting at some point. 

[VILLAMARV]

12 hours ago, sidcow said:

All these people claiming they never use any BBC services, was it weird only watching half of the World Cup? 

Obviously, this isn't aimed at me, because I'm not one of 'all these people'

But yes, it was notably weird only watching half the world cup.

I didn't have a TV license, or an internet connection through the world cup because I'd moved into a new place pretty much just before it started. I have a dab radio though and where I live now you only get the BBC radio channels on digital radios. Old school FM/MW/LW still work, but the capabilities of my radio only stretch to FM. I could buy a new one sure, or go and sit in the car if I really needed talkradio (all crackly like the old days), but I am way past the point of needing or wanting talksport. I tried it the other weekend now I have an internet connection, while the Barry Spinaker debacle was unfolding. It's got even worse than it used to be. Their Saturday round the grounds programme was surely made up of more adverts, betting odds discussions, and presenters plugging events round London that weekend in pseudo-friendly 'what you doin this weekend mate' chats than actual sports coverage of hundreds of actual games. "Oh, over to you in Brighton" - "yes it's 3-0 here, I know it was still 0-0 last time we spoke but....". The betting stuff is insideous. But the sports coverage by the BBC is unrivalled in quality of output in this country as others have often stated in this thread IIRC.

No adverts, Massively obvious Liverpool bias, Garth Crooks. It's like an old comfy sweater and you know where you are.

1-0 Auntie

But the World Cup - yeah I watched and listened to this one less than any other in my life except '86 and the ones before that I don't remember. Any of the games (England/Wales and the QF's onwards) I really wanted to watch I was invited to my friends houses and I watched one in the pub. But much harder to take time off work in the build up to christmas than the middle of the summer for me so I didn't watch every minute as I would choose to and definitely have done in the past. Love the World Cup me.

AFAIK I haven' been in breach of any TV licensing laws there. And yet consumed plenty of said sporting occasion, most of which was on the BBC.

But people who 'never use any BBC services' isn't the yardstick

 

[VILLAMARV]

13 hours ago, sidcow said:

Can't believe the number of people who have never watched Peaky Blinders, Silent Witness, Luther, Line of Duty, killing Eve, Happy Valley, Doctor Who, Gavin and Stacey, Only Fools, Alan Partridge, Anything by David Attenborough, Top Gear, The Office and the literally thousands of other shows.  Never watched any of them. 

Never watched half of every major International football tournament since the dawn of TV. Never watched any Olympics or other major athletics. Never watched any of the hundreds of important documentaries. 

Yet do watch telly often. 

Yeah I'm calling total bullshit.

Isn't this what's called a strawman argument?

I do 'watch telly' if that means watching visual images on my TV and I do that often. If it means watching live TV (broadcast at the time) or using the BBC's platform to view BBC content online or any other platforms and content covered by legislation, then no I suppose I don't 'watch telly' often.

We could go one by one down the list of shows you mention and pit my personal preference against yours but it would be pretty pointless when the point your getting at is that even non license holders like my self have consumed and enjoyed hours and hours and hours of BBC TV content in my life. which is true. I have. The problem with the argument being based around 'never' is that I watched it at a time where I did have a license or when I was a kid and it was my folk's license or when I'm visiting family etc etc. I own DVD's (go down the charity shops I bought fifth element for a pound the other day). I know you were making a point around the value for money of the License overall, but it's not a binary thing, it's not pay it or never access their output. It's about choosing HOW to access it and the only thing I've given up is instant access to what I want when I want it in the confines of my own home.

[VILLAMARV]

And in the name of full disclosure I gave up paying the TV license around 2019. Partly through circumstance but also because I found it increasingly hard to allign myself with the news service and political output, the documentaries that were once groundbreaking journalism have been replaced with stacey dooley, dramas that don't do much for me on a personal preference level and so on and ultimately I'd just rather not. As i've said before it's a pale immitation of what it used to be in my eyes.

That's not a commentary on the quality of the overall output or the perceived value for money of the license fee.

It should be possible to condemn the government control of the debate aspect of the news output without whether you like Blackadder being brought into the equation or whether you like watching the world cup even. It's as insideous as the betting stuff on the other channel to me. If not worse.

I didn't used to begrudge paying the license fee at all. I do now in it's current state.

Edited March 19, 2023 by VILLAMARV
spelling

[VILLAMARV]

5 hours ago, ml1dch said:

And are also childless.

This is true.

[MakemineVanilla]

1 hour ago, VILLAMARV said:

I didn't used to begrudge paying the license fee at all. I do now in it's current state.

According to the blackbelt barrister, you need to have a TV licence if you watch any live TV, on any device, even stuff that goes out live on YouTube.

 

 

[VILLAMARV]

1 minute ago, MakemineVanilla said:

According to the blackbelt barrister, you need to have a TV licence if you watch any live TV, on any device, even stuff that goes out live on YouTube.

...in your own home.

and if i watch it later, i don't. except on certain platforms. Which I don't use. It's a consumer choice. I don't have a box (freeview/sky/virgin etc) or a smart telly. I only have this battered old laptop i'm writing on as a device which connects to the internet. I don't have a phone or tablet. I stopped watching TV channels years ago.

The only way this impacts of my viewing habits or preferences in any way is when Live sports is the thing, especially the world cup etc. When the boxing is on, my mate and his wife who have sky and like rugby and boxing is where quite a few of us head over to watch the big fights. And none of us mind chipping in (although to be fair he normally refuses so we buy him some beers or something). Surely that sort of thing isn't that uncommon? And it makes the sporting event into a social occasion, with alcohol!

I have an amazon account. MrsVM has a netflix. I only know 1 person with a disney+ account but guess what, when we go round there he likes watching the mandalorian with his mates.

I'm certainly not saying how everyone else should do stuff, do what you want, but this is how it works for me and I don't feel out of the loop. I've just never watched half the shows on the list above is all.

 

[limpid]

52 minutes ago, VILLAMARV said:

I have an amazon account. MrsVM has a netflix. I only know 1 person with a disney+ account but guess what, when we go round there he likes watching the mandalorian with his mates.

Amazon has live content so you probably need a TV licence. (Strictly speaking, according to the law.) The licence is for using equipment capable of receiving broadcasts, where "broadcasts" is poorly defined for current technology. Your laptop probably counts as such equipment.