The Daily Mail, bless them, have had a seriously slow week for news. Taking a leaf out of The Sun's book they decided to browse the blogosphere for inspiration.
Further following The Sun's lead they've forgotten to credit the Justice of the Peace's blog, despite it being abundantly obvious that was the source of their article.
Earlier this week His Worship, not his real name, wrote an article critical of the way valuable court time was being consumed by the legal triviality of TV licence evasion.
No-one in the entire world, outside the BBC, could reasonably consider TV licence evasion to be a criminal matter. It is farcical that people can be humiliated in court for watching TV programmes on equipment they legally own, in the comfort of their own home, when people committing far worse crimes are dealt with in a fraction of the time by way of a fixed penalty notice.
As the Daily Mail put it: "For smashing up a bus shelter, or painting a wall or stealing from a business you walk away with your name intact and a small fine.
"But the army of TV licence officials will hunt you down, knock on your door and haul you to court if you don't have a TV licence? The Men from Mars must think we're completely mad."
The licence fee is an outdated anachronism from a time when television was novelty rather than norm. It's time to have a complete rethink and make the BBC sing for its supper rather than rely on state handouts.
Further following The Sun's lead they've forgotten to credit the Justice of the Peace's blog, despite it being abundantly obvious that was the source of their article.
Earlier this week His Worship, not his real name, wrote an article critical of the way valuable court time was being consumed by the legal triviality of TV licence evasion.
No-one in the entire world, outside the BBC, could reasonably consider TV licence evasion to be a criminal matter. It is farcical that people can be humiliated in court for watching TV programmes on equipment they legally own, in the comfort of their own home, when people committing far worse crimes are dealt with in a fraction of the time by way of a fixed penalty notice.
As the Daily Mail put it: "For smashing up a bus shelter, or painting a wall or stealing from a business you walk away with your name intact and a small fine.
"But the army of TV licence officials will hunt you down, knock on your door and haul you to court if you don't have a TV licence? The Men from Mars must think we're completely mad."
The licence fee is an outdated anachronism from a time when television was novelty rather than norm. It's time to have a complete rethink and make the BBC sing for its supper rather than rely on state handouts.
2 comments:
We agree entirely Ray.
Thanks for dropping by.
The way I see it is that the BBC, with its current funding, is not answerable to anyone for producing anything that has to be financially viable. They can churn out utter rubbish 24/7 and it makes not a jot of difference.
If other broadcasters behaved the way the BBC do they would be out of business very quickly. If the TV licence was scrapped and the BBC had to actually generate its own income to pay the 23,000 odd employees it has they would not stand a cat-in-hells chance of doing so and would either go bankrupt or have to have a major axing of all the rubbish and maintain just the popular stuff in order to survive.
The BBC know this, the UK government know this.
I would guess that the TV licence and everything associated with it make the UK the laughing stock of the world's media, however they are the world's largest broadcaster and probably carries some sort of demented prestige for those in the top spots of the BBC and government.
Between the perceived prestige and not wanting to add 20,000 to the unemployment figures we need some kind of miracle for the BBC's and TVL's dictatorship to end.
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