this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2024
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To watch tv in UK you need a tv licence
This was done as sort of a tax to fund public television without taxing people who don’t use it
The person then concludes that they should have voted for the nazis because liberals bad
I mean you do in the US as well, but it's called "A Netflix/Hulu/Disney Plus membership"
And it only funds one channel instead of dozens of TV, radio, web, apps, weather and news channels.
Also publicly funded TV tends to be way better. They have somewhat more accountability so especially news, politics etc tends to be much better. For leisure programs that varies a bit more by country, but obviously the BBC has produced a lot of great stuff.
Accountability to the government, you mean?
BBC news on anything Armenian just stink.
Everything as a bias, BBC generally does better than most.
We have those, too. You can choose not to pay for them.
Truly, the freest country in the world.
I can't believe that is a real thing.
It did well for a long time. The BBC produces a lot of excellent programmes. It was also unafraid of holding the government's feet to the fire.
Unfortunately, the Tories successfully gutted it about a decade back. It still produces excellent programmes, but is neutered politically.
As for the licence fee. It is effectively an extra tax. However, if you don't watch TV, you don't have to have a licence. It's not perfect, but better than just a flat tax. It also helped keep them semi independent of the government.
Funding services by taxing people who use them? Yep, it's a thing.
They're making fun of how Brexit was pushed on a platform of getting rid of overstrict EU regulations and bureaucracy (as well as a lot of overt racism) but it turned out a load of it was just homegrown British bureaucracy that had nothing to do with the EU but UKIP voters kept complaining that anything they didn't like about Britain was the fault of the EU anyway