ANGRY. BLOODY ANGRY.

I rarely initiate new threads, but on this occasional I feel that I must.

I switched on the TV just after one o’clock today to catch up on the latest national news. BBC national news? Olympics. BBC regional news? Olympics. BBC news website? Most items about the Olympics plus a couple of items on Covid. BBC breaking news link? Olympics.

So I started doing a bit of channel hopping. Sky News? Live coverage of the unveiling by Prince Charles of the new national memorial to police officers who have fallen in the line of duty. Great Britain News? Live coverage of the same intensely moving ceremony, which was held at the National Arboretum in Staffordshire where many, many memorials to those from both military and civilian services who have died in the line of duty are located.

But for the BBC nothing - but nothing - that might interfere or even interrupt their endless, dreary coverage of the Great God Sport is considered as being worthy or important enough to be televised.

The Second Coming of the Messiah or the appearance of an asteroid 20 miles wide heading straight for the earth might just merit a brief mention on the rolling news bar if the snooker championships or women’s football
were on the news schedule.

So yes, I’m angry. Bloody angry. It is time this wretched Left-dominated, unpatriotic and profligate apology for a broadcasting organisation that enforces licence holders to fund it on pain of imprisonment was abolished and replaced by a subscription service, so those of us are sick and tired of having its woke diatribes rammed down our throats can walk away from it.

Go on give it to 'em.

The bastards couldn’t even be bothered to break Olympic coverage to allow a one or two minute clip showing a brief part of the most moving and solemn aspects,  such as the wreath laying, minute’s silence or deeply moving euology spoken by a policeman’s widow.

I'm not very happy with the news these days, it all inane questions from reporters, a lot of people interviewed look rather askance when being interviewed, although others are shall we say lacking.
Some stories seem to be on a loop and are repeated and repeated word for word then others barely get a mention, if at all. Someone famous blows their nose and its breaking news.

I hate the fucking Olympics. It’s dull, dreary and shite.

Fred, I get your point though. The media only covers what it wants to.

Covering sports is certainly not the product of any left-wing bias, it's all about money. Fred, surely as a long-time reporter, you know that sports dominates everything but something that's going to affect literally everyone, immediately, and in a bad way.

So many people complain about the media, but as a business and an industry aiming to give its customers what they want, the media does a fantastic job, really. To cater to people like us at the expense of the horde that makes up its customer base would be financial suicide for any media company.

Ben Reilly wrote:Covering sports is certainly not the product of any left-wing bias, it's all about money. Fred, surely as a long-time reporter, you know that sports dominates everything but something that's going to affect literally everyone, immediately, and in a bad way.

So many people complain about the media, but as a business and an industry aiming to give its customers what they want, the media does a fantastic job, really. To cater to people like us at the expense of the horde that makes up its customer base would be financial suicide for any media company.

A couple of points there, Ben. I wasn’t asking for blanket, long-running coverage by the BBC of the National Arboretum  ceremony; just at least a short live clip of the most moving part of this once-in-a lifetime event, the laying of wreaths by the future King and the most senior of the country’s politicians and law enforcement agencies in  honour of all policemen and women who have fallen while protecting their fellow citizens.

Given the sheer amount of time that the BBC are devoting to the Olympics, usually displacing practically every other topic on its news channels, a tree or four minute live clip would not have been expecting too much.

Secondly, money. Both Sky News and the new GBN channel, both of which exist primarily on advertising income, screened the whole ceremony live and without interruption. Even the fledgling GMB did not break in to screen an advert for corn flakes or washing up liquid.

The BBC, which is this country’s national broadcaster, a role that is supposed to carry responsibilities as well as privileges, gets its multi billion pound income from a substantial and compulsory tax that is levied on anyone owning a TV set, whether they watch BBC programmes or not.

Refuse to pay and the BBC can exercise its powers to visit the “suspects” at their homes, put them under surveillance by detector vehicles and even demand entry. Resistance or refusal to buy a licence can result in a heavy fine, a criminal record and even a prison sentence.

That TV licence bullshit is bullshit. They're not allowed to come in your house, there are no "detector vehicles" and the whole scheme is a house of cards, which one of the miscreants actually admitted over the phone to edds.

Also, the bare bones of your complaint is that while you did see the coverage you wanted to see, it wasn't on the channel you wanted to see it on. Sorry, but I can't act like I think that's a big issue.

Ben Reilly wrote:That TV licence bullshit is bullshit. They're not allowed to come in your house, there are no "detector vehicles" and the whole scheme is a house of cards, which one of the miscreants actually admitted over the phone to edds.

Also, the bare bones of your complaint is that while you did see the coverage you wanted to see, it wasn't on the channel you wanted to see it on. Sorry, but I can't act like I think that's a big issue.

Frankly, I don’t care a fish’s tit whether you regard it as a big issue or not. Since this site is for the exchange  of personal opinions I was simply expressing a strongly held one of mine and also, I might add, of quite a few people I know.

“TV licence bullshit is bullshit”? Between 2011 and 2013 more than 100 people were given prison sentences for failing to pay the magistrate’s court fine impose for not having a TV licence. I would have thought it obvious that the BBC themselves don’t have the statutory powers to impose court fines and a criminal record, but the TV Licensing Authority which controls the system on behalf of the government and therefore the BBC is the prosecuting authority in the criminal court which determines the verdict and penalty.

The Tories’ promises to repeal the law under which failure to hold a TV licence is currently a criminal offence have never been fulfilled, otherwise the TV Licensing Authority would have to take out a civil action to chase up the £157 debt to the BBC and to resort ultimately to securing a High Court writ to secure it. And for civil cases there is no threat of imprisonment, only empowerment of a sheriff or bailiff to “make peaceable entry” to a debtor’s home or forced entry to business premises either to secure full payment or to seize goods to the value of the debt and to sell them at auction.

But such civil cases do NOT result in the debtor risking jail and a criminal record.

No detector vehicles? Nine liveried vans currently operate and are owned by the BBC and operated by contractors.

Fred, re the none coverage by the BBC of Prince Charles uncovering the memorial to the (almost) 5,000 police officers who have died on duty since the police force was founded.

I agree it's bad that an organisation  funded by the British public did not broadcast on TV the ONE ceremony that collectively honoured the men and women  who died, many violently, whilst protecting the public in this country.

At least my local radio station. GMR,  didn't ignore the occasion. Though the ceremony and the minutes silence wasn't broadcast, they did do a piece that day on the officers who lost their lives violently, including the two young police women who were shot dead in Tameside 9 years ago.

The BBC has a charter which states its objectives as in to inform educate etc and as it is funded by the public and is the official tv and radio station of the UK, I think it is failing in its responsibility. The news is not impartial a lot of the time, events like the uncovering of the memorial are national events and should be covered. If there is a sports event there are hours of talk beforehand and hours of talk afterwards. It may be difficult to cover all national events but surely the most important part of the unveiling should have been covered.

Maybe there should be a monthly poll: What do you wish to see this upcoming.... June, July, etc.

Vintage wrote:The BBC has a charter which states its objectives as in to inform educate etc and as it is funded by  the public and is the official tv and radio station of the UK, I think it is failing in its responsibility. The news is not impartial a lot of the time, events like the uncovering of the memorial are national events and should be covered. If there is a sports event there are hours of talk beforehand and hours of talk afterwards. It may be difficult to cover all national events but surely the most important part of the unveiling should have been covered.

I don't think the BBC is a well respected organisation anymore.

The ridiculous payouts they give to their top 'stars'...the inequality between male and female pay, and the proven cover up that was rife there from the 1970's onwards re the horrendous abuse of young girls carried out by Saville and others.

Abuse many top executives at the BBC well knew about and kept quiet.

Syl wrote:Fred, re the none coverage by the BBC of Prince Charles uncovering the memorial to the (almost) 5,000 police officers who have died on duty since the police force was founded.

I agree it's bad that an organisation  funded by the British public did not broadcast on TV the ONE ceremony that collectively honoured the men and women  who died, many violently, whilst protecting the public in this country.

At least my local radio station. GMR,  didn't ignore the occasion. Though the ceremony and the minutes silence wasn't broadcast, they did do a piece that day on the officers who lost their lives violently, including the two young police women who were shot dead in Tameside 9 years ago.

The ceremony at the NA was primarily a visual one in news coverage terms. Radio reporters can only describe what they see, whereas with television cameras showing the actual scene in real time viewers can see for themselves what is happening.

What was most glaringly obvious to me that morning was that both Sky News and Great Britain News made the editorial decision to cover the event live and in full rather than simply showing recorded clips in bulletins later in the day, as was the case of the BBC.

For GMB, of course, it was a local story - and an important one because of the tragic deaths of those two policewomen. I would not be surprised if the regional BBC station for that part of the country also covered it far more fully in their own regional news scheduling, but the fact remains that our national broadcaster’s editors obviously thought that Olympic events were far too important to interrupt, albeit briefly, with the nation’s moving tribute to dead heroes.

I’m pretty certain that police families will soon be going down to Staffordshire to see the memorial, which now rightly has a place among all the military and civilian service monuments which make the NA so special - and very moving. I’ve been several times.

The BBC probably didn't want to change the times of what they are allowed to show of the Olympic Games.
I was just reading how the IOC has done a billion pound deal with Discovery and the BBC and anyone else, is restricted on how much it can show now, unless you pay the full price. Still not an excuse though.

Regarding the TV licence.
True story:


The TV license wankers are a joke.
I rang to inform them that I don’t need a license as I don’t watch broadcast TV and they said “Ok! No problem!” So I jokingly asked if they were going to send their high-tech van round and sit outside my house with their TV-probe-thingy to see if I was lying. The man-child on the other end of the phone stammered that no such van existed.
“How do you catch people then?”
“We don’t,” was the reply.
He then informed me that IF I watched any broadcasted channels on any device I’d be liable for a fine!!!!!
I felt sorry for the man-boy when I gently reminded him....
“But you won’t know, will you?”

Pass it on. You really don’t need to be conned into buying a license.

It’s not my job, or even my desire, to defend the BBC or the TV Licensing Authority, but you only have to google up the latter’s web site to get chapter and verse on its role,functions, powers, prosecution policy and procedures, detection methods and principles on which its enforcement officers operate.

I suggest the person giving you “advice” is living in some version of cloud cuckoo land.

The TV license is being shown up to be an outmoded, outdated and unworkable method of funding the BBC; it should be done away with and the BBC should be funded through something like lottery ticket sales, etc.

I'm sure it served the UK well back in the days of only a few television channels, but in the age of streaming, it's a dinosaur. More and more people are realising it's a rule with no teeth, and they're going to stop paying it.

These days, a working detector would have to be able to intercept internet traffic coming into your home, which is surely a gross violation of privacy for something so trivial as finding out whether you're watching the BBC without a license.

It did make me laugh when I signed up for iPlayer and got to the part where it asks if you have a TV license. I gave up at that point because I assumed I'd be asked to enter a number if I really did have a TV license. Then my stepson told me that all you do is click the "yes" button and you're free to watch anything that's on offer

We are renovating a wreck of a house, we've been doing stuff sporadically for years and in all that time we've had reams of letters asking if we have a tv license, at first I was polite, then less so now I just bin them. We've been threatened with the detector van, visits and being taken to court. Knock yourselves out I said in my last reply. The water, gas and most importantly the electricity is cut off until its finished, I'm sure this could be verified.

Ben Reilly wrote:The TV license is being shown up to be an outmoded, outdated and unworkable method of funding the BBC; it should be done away with and the BBC should be funded through something like lottery ticket sales, etc.

I'm sure it served the UK well back in the days of only a few television channels, but in the age of streaming, it's a dinosaur. More and more people are realising it's a rule with no teeth, and they're going to stop paying it.

These days, a working detector would have to be able to intercept internet traffic coming into your home, which is surely a gross violation of privacy for something so trivial as finding out whether you're watching the BBC without a license.

It did make me laugh when I signed up for iPlayer and got to the part where it asks if you have a TV license. I gave up at that point because I assumed I'd be asked to enter a number if I really did have a TV license. Then my stepson told me that all you do is click the "yes" button and you're free to watch anything that's on offer

If you’ve signed up to BBC iPlayer then the TVLA will almost certainly now have you on record as declaring that you have no TV licence. Since television retailers are legally obliged to forward to the TVLA the details of everyone who purchases a set, it will be pretty easy for their computerised system to verify it. I’m not saying that they necessarily will, but I’ll bet my bottom dollar that they run periodic and probably localised checks.

You’re absolutely right otherwise, it is outmoded and outdated and increasingly people are either refusing to buy a licence or even to cancel their direct debit payments.

The whole matter has been thrown into sharp relief recently because the BBC welched on an undertaking to the government that they would take on the cost of pensioners’ concessionaire licences in return for a large increase in government funding of the Corporation. The ink on the agreement was barely dry before BBC management again became strapped for cash, primarily because of the outrageously high salaries paid to staff and their so-called “talent”, and they then started sending out quite intimidatory letters to pensioners warning them about the penalties for not buying a £156 annual licence unless they could prove that they were in receipt of certain low income benefits.

Fred Moletrousers wrote:I rarely initiate new threads, but on this occasional I feel that I must.

I switched on the TV just after one o’clock today to catch up on the latest national news. BBC national news? Olympics. BBC regional news? Olympics.  BBC news website? Most items about the Olympics plus a couple of items on Covid. BBC breaking news link? Olympics.

So I started doing a bit of channel hopping. Sky News? Live coverage of the unveiling by Prince Charles of the new national memorial to police officers who have fallen in the line of duty. Great Britain News? Live coverage of the same intensely moving ceremony, which was held at the National Arboretum in Staffordshire where many, many memorials to those from both military and civilian services who have died in the line of duty are located.

But for the BBC  nothing - but nothing - that might interfere or even interrupt their endless, dreary coverage of the Great God Sport is considered as being worthy or important enough to be televised.

The Second Coming of the Messiah or the appearance of an asteroid 20 miles wide heading straight for the earth might just merit a brief mention on the rolling news bar if the snooker championships or women’s football
were on the news schedule.

So yes, I’m angry. Bloody angry. It is time this wretched Left-dominated,  unpatriotic and profligate apology for a broadcasting organisation that enforces licence holders to fund it on pain of imprisonment was abolished and replaced by a subscription service, so those of us are sick and tired of having its woke diatribes rammed down our throats can walk away from it.

Look to ways to stop paying your licence. It can be done if you can be arsed to investigate it and implement it. I couldn't agree more. I rarely watch the BBC and never watch the their news.

eddie wrote:I hate the fucking Olympics. It’s dull, dreary and shite.

Fred, I get your point though. The media only covers what it wants to.

Yes, I've not watched it at all. I find most sports boring anyway. I do think they should introduce bottomless football. That might be worth a view just for the laughs.

You don’t need a TV licence if you only watch stored programmes, which are played “on demand” rather than streamed or broadcast live.

For example, you don’t need a TV licence to watch movies and TV programmes on DVD or Blu-ray, or streamed from Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Now TV, YouTube and similar services … unless they stream live TV.

You don’t need a TV licence to watch programmes on catch-up TV services, with the exception of the BBC’s iPlayer. You can watch anything stored on services such as ITV Hub, All 4 and My5, as long as you don’t watch live TV. These services are, after all, paid for by advertising.

I quite liked the Olympics when I was a kid, the idea of people from all corners of the globe competing against one another really enchanted me.

As is probably typical, once I learned about doping, corrupt judges, politics and all the other shit that comes with international sport, I stopped caring nearly so much. I still did get a little thrill when I heard the other day that a guy from Essex had won gold in gymnastics.

I still think the best opening ceremony was the UK one in 2012.   It was awesome.