Not everyone here is dishonest... I don't mean to suggest everyone in Poland is, but just because something's hard to prove doesn't mean we all take advantage of that and go "HAHAHAHAHA, NO MONEYS FOR U".

No, it means that you agree to pay tax for watching tv. This is absurd to me. In Poland most people don't want to pay TV tax, they pay just because they're forced to. You can call this dishonest, I call it rational.

And I don't consider people who avoid paying taxes dishonest. The less taxes the better.

HaaaaaaaHahahahaha!

I strangely feel like giving out free information today so.

The first time I watched the BBC it was on a TV that you had to switch on half an hour before you actually wanted to watch something, ask you parents (or maybe grandparents why). I graduated 20 years ago, I reentered education as a mature student.

My opinions are based on nearly 1/2 a century of watching a country I used to love slip into decadence and corruption and the supposed "guardian" against this go along for the "kickback" ride.

I could go on for many, many pages about the corruption that the BBC failed to expose. Here are a couple, just for you.

Tony Blairs declaration of war against Iraq was ILLEGAL, it was in breach of 10 (TEN) national and international laws. 300,000 Iraqi CHILDREN (note that I am not counting adults here) died in this conflict, BECAUSE THEY WERE IRAQI. FYI this is called GENOCIDE. have you heard this on the BBC? Erm...no.

Ok try this....

The United Kingdom actually does have a written constitution, it states, in part, that nobody may give power over the British people to any foreign power. The signing of any european treaty by any prime minister was an act of treason, reported by the corruption finding BBC? Erm... no.

Corporations are psychopathic, not my conclusion, the conclusion of many Doctors, professors of psychology, etc. Watch this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ui9C6xVpVf0 or maybe google "corporations as psychopaths".

You say this "...governments and Corporations rely on people to exist, people rely on them for services.... On second thoughts I can't actually be bothered right now.

**** Nasty drunken vindictiveness deleted, apologies for any offence caused. *****

Here is a handy hint, Use multiple sources of information, not just the box in the corner that tells you everything you "think" you need to know.

The tax isn't really the shocking thing, the shocking thing is how it's handled. Reminds me a bit of the local tax on prostitution over a century ago. They didn't tax it directly, they just taxed sewing machines and it was understood what the tax was for.

Then again at that point if you were a woman in this part of the country at that point odds were damn near 1 that you were in fact a prostitute as it was pretty much the only reason why women would make the journey in the first place. At that point I don't believe there was even a single sewing machine in the town.

No you pay a license fee that funds a number of programmes that are (largely) free of advertisement money / free of industrial / commercial sponsorship. [Largely because this is increasingly watered down - but that again is a different problem.] Just taxes are, nothing else, but a fee to use the state provided infrastructure.

Taxes are necessary the way our current economic system is set up. I dislike the whole "less tax = better" thought process, because it is so incredibly short sighted. A state needs income to function - without taxes (a usage fee, of sorts) the basic infrastructure (roads, social care, police / firemen, etc.) will go into disrepair and vanish. And no - privatising is not a proper option. The state CAN provide for services that are economically unsustainable; the private industry will not. I am not aware of a single country that doesn't have "less economically valid" areas - these will be left out even more the moment you remove a state funded basic infrastructure / social services.

Now I DO agree that there's a lot of money squandering going on, a lot of corruption, a lot of bad decisions. THAT are the things to protest against. Asking for accountability. Asking for transparency. What's nonsense is going down that me-me-me route of wanting to dodge taxes, avoid contributing, yet somehow magically expecting your local roads to be maintained for "free".

Ooooops forgot to add for any lawyer monitoring this.

The views expressed by Stuart9001 as soley the views held by Stuart9001 and are not in any way shared by GOG.COM or any of it's affiliates or whatever.

BTW. In case anyone is wondering I do have a valid TV license I hate this but there are other ways to protest, which I use. My MP really hates me.

I don't know how it's handled on BBC, but on Polish TVP even if shows are not interrupted by standard commercials, you may see a LOT of product placement.

"Oh, John, your hair look so great, what's that shampoo? Oh, it's new Challet no. 5!"

something like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhIIPbO_6xg and like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Inscky6EyQ8

This is just another type of commercial used in public TV to override the law. Also, they make shows "parts" like "Farting with the stars part 1" and then part 2 to show regular commercials, overriding the law again.

And don't get me wrong I don't mean that there should be no taxes at all, I just think there are lots and lots of unnecessary taxes, and license fee is among them. I don't need public tv to exist Nobody need..

Thanks for taking the time to reply eloquently to a post that I gave up on as a lost cause. ;)

Could be worse, in the US we get to pay for cable, sit through commercials and have ever changing product placements in our shows.

It's really freaky to watch a show from 10 years ago and see a Kindle in the background years before Amazon even began developing it.

Well, paying for cable tv is paying for distribution, money's not going to TV stations at all.

And if you mean paid premium canals, like HBO, they don't use commercials.

The problem of public/state TV existence is, that you have to pay license fee, your cable company and you still have to watch commercials between shows. It means you pay three times for the same freakin thing.

Wait... what!? Are you serious that they 'photoshop' product placement into shows now?

:). Yes, I sort of agree with that on the level that the BBC is not doing enough critical and investigative reporting; but I don't think that is a problem of the _system_ behind license fees itself, but how the media - in general - and politics / public life / PR and lobbying operate. It's not just the BBC that fails to report on things like these.

Herman & Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent still is a good analysis, imho. Also - just the scope of what investigative journalism can do has become, due to legislation, ever narrower, and - due to the way libel laws are used a massive financial risk; it's also an expensive long term pursuit that will not have a useful (i.e. conclusive enough / publishable) result frequently. Investigative journalism has to, by necessity, operate in a very grey area, legally: Utterly unethical behaviour by some parts of the media (tabloid press / see news of the world hacking) results in ever tighter libel (and similar) laws that make investigative journalism (of the proper type) too risky.

Neither BBC nor most other media can afford to take the risk of funding investigative journalism frequently; but that in itself, again, is a different problem. People ARE already moaning about how the BBC is wasting money - if it'd become obvious they'd start a lot of investigations that end up without conclusive result (which is always the most likely outcome) people (or rather the Murdoch media) would scream murder. And sadly the BBC's biggest problem is that it is up against a media empire that doesn't like having an "independent" broadcaster around. The moment the BBC stops getting reasonable enough ratings you can be sure there'll be a media shitstorm from that side, accusing it of wasting people's money on things no-one wants to watch. As an organisation it's in a fairly much impossible situation - it can't really guarantee to fulfil all of it's agenda and remain "competitive" enough not to be shut down at the same time.

But - the situation would be much worse without the BBC around. It at least still does give some investigative journalism centre space: For a recent one - remember that panorma investigation into care homes? http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/01/panorama-care-home-investigation-undercover-journalism

Of course, as you say, checking more than one source for your news consumption (but that has been and will always be true) is essential; but without the BBC there'd be virtually no mainstream TV outlet, at all, for any kind of proper investigative journalism, little as there is. As with so many other things; it's not these type of programmes that draw big audiences. Just as a lot of investigative journalism that is produced in book form does not really ever appear in the best seller lists.

Yes it happens. But again - that's not a problem of the fee - it's a problem of how the station (has to) operate. Protest the latter - complain about how your fees are used, not that they are used to maintain something that is, in theory, positive and useful. It is about that cultural, alternative, investigative not-commercially viable programming that still DOES happen, even if moved to minor channels and outside of prime time. No subscription TV will fill that niche - as most of these programmes don't get enough viewers to be economically sensible. But they are necessary. And important.

And I'll very much argue we do need it, and that there's still a lot of good these public broadcasters do that'd be lost without them. Check the US TV landscape and just how desolate it is on really high quality programming. Can they do better? Yeah. Just abandoning them, rather than asking for better quality, is a mistake. Once something has been abolished (or, more likely, privatized) it's unlikely it'll ever return.

I'm not sure what software they're using, but yes, they're using the same basic photoshop techniques to do things like give Seinfeld and iPod and such.

Sometimes I wonder what it's like to live in a country with effective consumer protections.
I'll agree with that, I'm not sure what's all available on the BBC now, but I do get BBC America and there's an amazing amount of good content on their. Granted it's largely distilled from several channels worth of sources, but still.

Our public TV is also usually quite good, but in large part due to the small amount of funding it's not anywhere near as extensive as what's available in the UK.

Though on that note, any British Red Dwarf fans ought to be thanking us in the US for popularizing it. I remember watching it the second year it screened here and being completely blown away by what was happening over there.