A
television detector van. In the UK you cannot watch your own television set
without a license from the state,
which they can refuse and it’s a fine of up to GBP 1,000 (US$ 1,250)
if you’re caught watching your television without one.
In Britain, there are five main terrestrial television channels, in addition to a host of cable and satellite channels which bring the overall total to something like 200. These channels fall into 2 main groups: state-owned, commercial free channels, and privately (company) owned, commercial channels. And the way in which these two types of enterprise derive their incomes couldn't be more different.
The commercial, private company- owned channels all get their income by offering the public a free deal. In exchange for the public effectively agreeing to take heed of the commercials, they get to watch television for free, and the company then charges advertisers to place their commercial advertisements, promising them that there is a ready audience there to see them.
The B.B.C., on the other hand, chooses to have commercial-free television, and so they get their money by having the government which owns them charge the public a straight fee, in exchange for which the public are issued with a "Television Licence", valid for one year, which allows them to watch television.
"Well, so what?", you might think. Two different areas of television broadcasting have utilised two different methods of raising their income. But unfortunately, it is not as innocent as that. You see, on the part of the B.B.C., there is something decidedly sinister about their methods.
Of course, nobody should be allowed to avail themselves of the services of a television broadcaster entirely for free. After all, it costs millions to run these operations. The least we can do, as viewers, is either pay directly for the television channels which we watch, or perform the service of providing a viewing audience for advertisers who pay to place their ads.
And one would expect, in all fairness, to be sued by the B.B.C. if one watches their channels without paying.
But I'm afraid the B.B.C. are more sinister than that. You see, the B.B.C. doesn't stop at saying that you need a licence just to watch the B.B.C. --- outrageously, and with no moral justification whatsoever, they insist that you may not watch ANY television, not one of the many public or private channels, unless you pay for THEIR channels. And if you do not pay up the £108 ($170) annual fee, then you will face an intrusive knock on your door, trial before a British court, conviction and a fine of up to £1,000 ($1,600), and jail if you stick to your principles by tuning out the BBC on your tv set and not paying.
They use the most intimidating methods. Empty trucks drive around housing estates, with "Acme Furniture" or something similar, written on the side, and "Television Detector Van" also written in smaller--- but still quite deliberately noticeable-- lettering. Announcements are broadcast on their channels about what can happen to you "if you get caught" without one of their licences, and licence-payers money is also spilled by them in paying for private commercials which they place on the commercial channels and in which they repeat the same threats.
And recently, old age pensioners were also being threatened by them for not paying enough.
In
the UK no one is allowed to watch any TV channel
unless they pay for the state - owned BBC.
Their methods are fairly typical of countries like this
in which the Head of State and half the Parliament are unelected.
One of their announcements on the commercial channels actually tries to woo the paying public onto their side in the matter. In this video announcement a man goes into a bar, and starts drinking other peoples drinks. The message is, of course that he is a parasite who is not paying his way, and is enjoying for free what others have to pay for, just as a non-licence payer might be called a parasite for watching B.B.C without paying for it. But in reality the position is very different. Because you are not allowed to watch ANY television without paying for the B.B.C., their announcement would be much more accurate if the man went in the bar, with "B.B.C." stamped on his shirt, and said to the private drinkers in there, "Hey-- you can't have your drinks, unless you pay for MY drink! And if you carry on enjoying your drinks without paying for mine I’ll fine you a thousand pounds and throw you in jail if you don’t pay. And oh, by the way, you can have a drink of mine if you want, seeing as you've paid for it".
In any democratic society, this situation is completely, totally and utterly unacceptable.
The B.B.C. are owned by, and are the apparatus of, the British state. Their staff are --or were-- all vetted by the intelligence service MI5 upon recruitment, and I have personally lost count of the number of news stories freely reported by the commercial channels from time to time which appear to cast the state in a dubious light-- which are not carried by the B.B.C.
Quite menacingly, they also portray themselves as the people's "Auntie Beeb" This reminds the true democrat of nothing less than the propagandic patronisation of the populace by the apparatus of the state, more synonymous with the old Soviet Union one might think, than with a free western state.
An American politician once said, "If in any nation state or regime, the apparatus of the State comes up and introduces itself as your auntie -- run like hell".
Needless to say, this is the country whose general attitudes are such that it has the worst Human Rights record in Europe. A coincidence? I doubt it. It is the mentality of the people, their weak grasp of human principles which dictates their tolerance towards such things and allows a state with such a poor record to establish itself in the first place and then to continue without reform.
Its is also rather interesting to see just what the B.B.C. does with the £4 billion ($5.5 billion) which they extract from the public in this way every year. There are holiday shows, where B.B.C. reporters go jet-setting around the world from one paradise location to the next, quiz shows like "The Weakest Link", with 4-figure cash prizes, and in the 1980s a show with the DJ Noel Edmonds included a feature called "Grab A Grand", where a contestant went into a glass booth and had to grab at licence-payers money which flew around in there like confetti, which the contestant was then allowed to keep. The B.B.C. also earned a place in the Guinness Book of Records as being the perpetrators of the biggest defamatory libel in British legal history (one Esther Rantzen, in a show called,"That's Life"). They first used the licence-payers money to produce and broadcast this libel and then, when they were sued, they threw more licence-payers money into hiring themselves the very best in legal representation, and then, when they lost, they further used the licence-payers money to pay over £1 million in damages to their innocent victim.
Thankfully, in the West at least, one rarely ever witnesses anything so utterly shameful, so notorious even, in any of the annals of world television broadcasting, as the British "B.B.C."
It really is time that this outrageous situation was properly addressed. The first thing which should be done is that the Government should drop their oppressive demand that nobody is allowed to watch any television channel without first paying for the B.B.C. Then, if the B.B.C. raises its money privately, only from those who want to watch it, and from no-one else, they can do as they like with a clean conscience.
But the current situation, unfortunately, is a far cry from there.
--- Michael Alan Marshall