{"id":24816,"date":"2014-03-25T07:09:49","date_gmt":"2014-03-25T12:09:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=24816"},"modified":"2014-03-25T07:09:49","modified_gmt":"2014-03-25T12:09:49","slug":"bbc-to-be-effectively-privatized-in-proposed-new-legislation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/03\/25\/bbc-to-be-effectively-privatized-in-proposed-new-legislation\/","title":{"rendered":"BBC to be (effectively) privatized in proposed new legislation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>British TV viewers are required to pay a regular license fee (which funds the BBC) or they can be prosecuted. The British government may be <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/danielhannan\/100264819\/the-bbc-will-in-effect-be-privatised-with-vast-consequences\/\" target=\"_blank\">on the verge of changing this<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Budgets come and go, but something more far-reaching will take place in the House of Commons today; something that might change our political discourse significantly, benignly and permanently.<\/p>\n<p>The Government has indicated that it will back a Bill, brought in by the backbench MP, Andrew Bridgen, to decriminalise non-payment of the Television Licence Fee. Instead of being dragged through the courts, defaulters will simply have their access to the BBC switched off &mdash; in the same way that Sky withdraws its services from those who don\u2019t pay their subscriptions.<\/p>\n<p>The practical case for the measure is unarguable. The BBC\u2019s privileged legal position is silting up our criminal justice system. A ridiculous 180,000 people face prosecution every year over non-payment. Under the new regime, they will instead be in the position people who don\u2019t cough up for their gas or electricity bills. A great deal of time and money will be saved.<\/p>\n<p>But the real significance of the proposal is that it will, in practice, remove the BBC\u2019s monopoly. If the penalty for non-payment of the licence fee is withdrawal of the service, rather than prosecution, then that fee ceases to be a tax and becomes a subscription. Refusal to pay is no longer a criminal act, but an exercise of consumer choice. The BBC will become, in practice, a pay-on-demand service like its rivals.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>British TV viewers are required to pay a regular license fee (which funds the BBC) or they can be prosecuted. The British government may be on the verge of changing this: Budgets come and go, but something more far-reaching will take place in the House of Commons today; something that might change our political discourse [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9,28],"tags":[660,394,118,101],"class_list":["post-24816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-law","category-media","tag-deregulation","tag-privatization","tag-taxes","tag-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6sg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24816"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24816\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24817,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24816\/revisions\/24817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}