<story><title>TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England</title><url>https://hackaday.com/2021/01/18/tv-detector-vans-once-prowled-the-streets-of-england/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>saberdancer</author><text>What is the point of this license fee in this day and age? Everyone has a TV, so everyone pays the license fee. Wouldn&amp;#x27;t it be simpler to just use a part of the taxes already collected to go to BBC.&lt;p&gt;My problem with this type of license fee collection is that it bring forward a number of costs associated with it that could be removed if it went directly from taxes and that today everyone has TV so it doesn&amp;#x27;t really &amp;quot;tax the rich&amp;quot; that it probably was intended to do in the early days.</text></item><item><author>boffinism</author><text>The BBC is currently dedicating hours of airtime a day to educational content to match our primary and secondary curricula because the schools are shut and lots of kids can&amp;#x27;t access online provisions. And still people complain about the licence fee in terms of whether or not they enjoy BBC gameshows...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>carschno</author><text>No, the idea never was to &amp;quot;tax the rich&amp;quot;. The license fees as present in many European countries are not taxes because the broadcasters are independent from the governments, including full control over what they do with _their_ budget. The idea is that the governments cannot (threaten to) cut their budgets to enforce pro-government reporting on public broadcasters.</text></comment>
<story><title>TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England</title><url>https://hackaday.com/2021/01/18/tv-detector-vans-once-prowled-the-streets-of-england/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>saberdancer</author><text>What is the point of this license fee in this day and age? Everyone has a TV, so everyone pays the license fee. Wouldn&amp;#x27;t it be simpler to just use a part of the taxes already collected to go to BBC.&lt;p&gt;My problem with this type of license fee collection is that it bring forward a number of costs associated with it that could be removed if it went directly from taxes and that today everyone has TV so it doesn&amp;#x27;t really &amp;quot;tax the rich&amp;quot; that it probably was intended to do in the early days.</text></item><item><author>boffinism</author><text>The BBC is currently dedicating hours of airtime a day to educational content to match our primary and secondary curricula because the schools are shut and lots of kids can&amp;#x27;t access online provisions. And still people complain about the licence fee in terms of whether or not they enjoy BBC gameshows...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>andyjohnson0</author><text>&amp;gt; Wouldn&amp;#x27;t it be simpler to just use a part of the taxes already collected to go to BBC.&lt;p&gt;That would make the BBC dependent on the government for its revenue, which definitely isn&amp;#x27;t desirable. The current system, where the BBC collects its own revenue under the authority of a royal charter, is intended to help insulate it from political interference.</text></comment>