Ha. Brilliantly wonky article. Little of that had occurred to me. I guess there are counter arguments but it feels broadly right. Frigging around with boundaries will not save the Tories if Labour can score near 40%. If it's close between the 2 main parties we'll get a Labour government because nobody will do confidence & supply with the Leavey Eng Nat Cons. Nevertheless 1.8 is imo great value for Cons next election largest party. I'm on that and adding to it. The bet can land AND at the same time GTTO - which would be nice. A Labour outright majority feels remote to me and one of any size above 25 close to impossible. That will have to wait until the country's dominant Leave identity has faded, which will take several years.
The Indian commentators are wastes doing the cricket, they should be spin doctors for politicians as they could make the biggest omnishambles seem like the most minor snafu.
Love the siren that goes off to indicate a no ball.
Which has happened quite a 'concerning' number of times in this innings. A curious viewer might take note, that professional players are not usually so careless in their run-up.
The TV “license” is something out of the dark ages.
Put a modest tax on internet and mobile data.
Job done.
Or abolish the tax altogether and make it a voluntary subscription model.
People choose to subscribe to Netflix, or Disney, or Prime if they find it provides value for money. Why should the BBC be an exception to that? Maybe the BBC would be better quality if it needed to actually provide value to its subscribers.
As you know, I am in favour of a "module" subscription approach to the BBC.
Split it up into component parts. Say:
Sports News & current affairs Entertainment - drama Radio Weather Local Radio/TV Childrens Documentaries Films Comedies Box sets/back catalogue (done by BritBox now) Art & Culture Other?
And charge varying degrees for each with some logical bundles.
You'd need to get to £14.60 to be equivalent to the licence fee.
Curious how you would value that?
BBC Sport - what do they have nowadays? Snooker? Struggle to get anyone subscribing to that. News - Free. Sky, ITN, Facebook, YouTube - none of them charge I don't think there's a single subscription news channel out there. Entertainment, drama, documentaries, films, comedies, box sets, childrens - this is equivalent to Netflix. BBC is inferior to Netflix on these so maybe give it 70-75% of Netflix costs. £5 maybe per month? Weather - Free. Who in this country pays for weather? I can ask Google or Alexa the weather at any time free of charge.
No idea how to price up art and culture, or how popular it is.
Don't see how you can possibly justify £14.60 from that.
I wouldn't, the market would.
I would say £3.99 for news & current affairs £2.99 for childrens £3.99 for sport (MOTD, Wimbledon, and all the reports/red button/reviews I haven't looked at everything they cover) Art & Culture £1.99 Radio £2.99
But there would be some bundles which would make it more sensible. Perhaps more perhaps less.
Take a couple of quid off it all still you can get there or thereabouts.
You don't like the BBC so wouldn't pay a penny which is fine. It wouldn't be for you.
Look at directory enquiries. Was "free" (I think?) then went to 43p when it was deregulated and now is what through the 118 services? A fiver?
Does anyone actually pay a fiver though nowadays with phone numbers freely available for almost everything online? Niche services that next to nobody uses tend to charge more when they're actually used for some odd reason.
I think you're ridiculously overvaluing the value of the BBC there. The BBC has a tiny selection of childrens output. I doubt many people would choose to pay £3.99 for news and current affairs when most people will get theirs free of charge online anyway.
MOTD alternatives on YouTube are increasingly popular free of charge. £3.99 for Wimbledon and the Snooker is a pisstake.
If your model was followed I expect the overwhelming majority of households would pay less than £14.60 per month. What proportion of households do you think would pay that or more? The truth is its just not that good value for money.
Perhaps perhaps not. Not working for you we get that hence my subscription model. I didn't say it was compulsory. It has the benefit of people paying for what they want instead of having to have, say, the Today Programme and the Archers, when they only listen to James O'Brien and Nick Ferrari on LBC.
Why should they pay the bbc isn't lbc a private company and not part of the bbc?
I wouldn't worry about the declaration - both Anderson and particularly Leach can stick around if needed but they'll all go for shots, and get out quickly here I expect. More runs = more scoreboard pressure too.
Love the siren that goes off to indicate a no ball.
Which has happened quite a 'concerning' number of times in this innings. A curious viewer might take note, that professional players are not usually so careless in their run-up.
You cynic.
Indian bookmakers are well known for their probity.
The TV “license” is something out of the dark ages.
Put a modest tax on internet and mobile data.
Job done.
Or abolish the tax altogether and make it a voluntary subscription model.
People choose to subscribe to Netflix, or Disney, or Prime if they find it provides value for money. Why should the BBC be an exception to that? Maybe the BBC would be better quality if it needed to actually provide value to its subscribers.
As you know, I am in favour of a "module" subscription approach to the BBC.
Split it up into component parts. Say:
Sports News & current affairs Entertainment - drama Radio Weather Local Radio/TV Childrens Documentaries Films Comedies Box sets/back catalogue (done by BritBox now) Art & Culture Other?
And charge varying degrees for each with some logical bundles.
You'd need to get to £14.60 to be equivalent to the licence fee.
Curious how you would value that?
BBC Sport - what do they have nowadays? Snooker? Struggle to get anyone subscribing to that. News - Free. Sky, ITN, Facebook, YouTube - none of them charge I don't think there's a single subscription news channel out there. Entertainment, drama, documentaries, films, comedies, box sets, childrens - this is equivalent to Netflix. BBC is inferior to Netflix on these so maybe give it 70-75% of Netflix costs. £5 maybe per month? Weather - Free. Who in this country pays for weather? I can ask Google or Alexa the weather at any time free of charge.
No idea how to price up art and culture, or how popular it is.
Don't see how you can possibly justify £14.60 from that.
I wouldn't, the market would.
I would say £3.99 for news & current affairs £2.99 for childrens £3.99 for sport (MOTD, Wimbledon, and all the reports/red button/reviews I haven't looked at everything they cover) Art & Culture £1.99 Radio £2.99
But there would be some bundles which would make it more sensible. Perhaps more perhaps less.
Take a couple of quid off it all still you can get there or thereabouts.
You don't like the BBC so wouldn't pay a penny which is fine. It wouldn't be for you.
Look at directory enquiries. Was "free" (I think?) then went to 43p when it was deregulated and now is what through the 118 services? A fiver?
Does anyone actually pay a fiver though nowadays with phone numbers freely available for almost everything online? Niche services that next to nobody uses tend to charge more when they're actually used for some odd reason.
I think you're ridiculously overvaluing the value of the BBC there. The BBC has a tiny selection of childrens output. I doubt many people would choose to pay £3.99 for news and current affairs when most people will get theirs free of charge online anyway.
MOTD alternatives on YouTube are increasingly popular free of charge. £3.99 for Wimbledon and the Snooker is a pisstake.
If your model was followed I expect the overwhelming majority of households would pay less than £14.60 per month. What proportion of households do you think would pay that or more? The truth is its just not that good value for money.
Perhaps perhaps not. Not working for you we get that hence my subscription model. I didn't say it was compulsory. It has the benefit of people paying for what they want instead of having to have, say, the Today Programme and the Archers, when they only listen to James O'Brien and Nick Ferrari on LBC.
I'm in favour of a subscription model. If the BBC wants to go down your route I'd have no objection to that.
I think if you get your model implemented it would devastate the BBCs finances precisely because people would deem its not worth paying for most of the dross they currently get taxed for.
If your model was implemented do you think the BBCs revenue would go up, down or stay the same?
People are angry with Tory sleaze. Kier could definitely revive that tag, it will resonate.
But they don’t necessarily want a return to unreformed public sector bureaucracies of the 1970s.
Exactly. But a better criticism would be that some of these companies are based in offshore tax havens and not paying tax to the U.K. exchequer on the profits made from these contracts and that this is unfair, especially when the Covid bills come in. Such contracts should not go to such companies. In short, if you want to supply services to the British state, you must also pay tax to it not seek to avoid doing so.
The TV “license” is something out of the dark ages.
Put a modest tax on internet and mobile data.
Job done.
Or abolish the tax altogether and make it a voluntary subscription model.
People choose to subscribe to Netflix, or Disney, or Prime if they find it provides value for money. Why should the BBC be an exception to that? Maybe the BBC would be better quality if it needed to actually provide value to its subscribers.
As you know, I am in favour of a "module" subscription approach to the BBC.
Split it up into component parts. Say:
Sports News & current affairs Entertainment - drama Radio Weather Local Radio/TV Childrens Documentaries Films Comedies Box sets/back catalogue (done by BritBox now) Art & Culture Other?
And charge varying degrees for each with some logical bundles.
You'd need to get to £14.60 to be equivalent to the licence fee.
Curious how you would value that?
BBC Sport - what do they have nowadays? Snooker? Struggle to get anyone subscribing to that. News - Free. Sky, ITN, Facebook, YouTube - none of them charge I don't think there's a single subscription news channel out there. Entertainment, drama, documentaries, films, comedies, box sets, childrens - this is equivalent to Netflix. BBC is inferior to Netflix on these so maybe give it 70-75% of Netflix costs. £5 maybe per month? Weather - Free. Who in this country pays for weather? I can ask Google or Alexa the weather at any time free of charge.
No idea how to price up art and culture, or how popular it is.
Don't see how you can possibly justify £14.60 from that.
I wouldn't, the market would.
I would say £3.99 for news & current affairs £2.99 for childrens £3.99 for sport (MOTD, Wimbledon, and all the reports/red button/reviews I haven't looked at everything they cover) Art & Culture £1.99 Radio £2.99
But there would be some bundles which would make it more sensible. Perhaps more perhaps less.
Take a couple of quid off it all still you can get there or thereabouts.
You don't like the BBC so wouldn't pay a penny which is fine. It wouldn't be for you.
Look at directory enquiries. Was "free" (I think?) then went to 43p when it was deregulated and now is what through the 118 services? A fiver?
Does anyone actually pay a fiver though nowadays with phone numbers freely available for almost everything online? Niche services that next to nobody uses tend to charge more when they're actually used for some odd reason.
I think you're ridiculously overvaluing the value of the BBC there. The BBC has a tiny selection of childrens output. I doubt many people would choose to pay £3.99 for news and current affairs when most people will get theirs free of charge online anyway.
MOTD alternatives on YouTube are increasingly popular free of charge. £3.99 for Wimbledon and the Snooker is a pisstake.
If your model was followed I expect the overwhelming majority of households would pay less than £14.60 per month. What proportion of households do you think would pay that or more? The truth is its just not that good value for money.
Perhaps perhaps not. Not working for you we get that hence my subscription model. I didn't say it was compulsory. It has the benefit of people paying for what they want instead of having to have, say, the Today Programme and the Archers, when they only listen to James O'Brien and Nick Ferrari on LBC.
Why should they pay the bbc isn't lbc a private company and not part of the bbc?
My point is that under my model you wouldn't have to pay for anything you didn't want to. It is a (voluntary) subscription model. Just that you don't have to take the whole lot you can pick and choose.
People are angry with Tory sleaze. Kier could definitely revive that tag, it will resonate.
But they don’t necessarily want a return to unreformed public sector bureaucracies of the 1970s.
Exactly. But a better criticism would be that some of these companies are based in offshore tax havens and not paying tax to the U.K. exchequer on the profits made from these contracts and that this is unfair, especially when the Covid bills come in. Such contracts should not go to such companies. In short, if you want to supply services to the British state, you must also pay tax to it not seek to avoid doing so.
Or take the tax up front out of the contract price and make the contract tax free
Well, this is now just silly. 45 minutes left and three rabbits batting, they should declare.
Are you sure ? India have 23 overs left today apparently. 45 minutes indicates more like 12 overs. 45 mins and 23 overs would indicate India have bowled incredibly slowly (Maybe they have)
The TV “license” is something out of the dark ages.
Put a modest tax on internet and mobile data.
Job done.
Or abolish the tax altogether and make it a voluntary subscription model.
People choose to subscribe to Netflix, or Disney, or Prime if they find it provides value for money. Why should the BBC be an exception to that? Maybe the BBC would be better quality if it needed to actually provide value to its subscribers.
As you know, I am in favour of a "module" subscription approach to the BBC.
Split it up into component parts. Say:
Sports News & current affairs Entertainment - drama Radio Weather Local Radio/TV Childrens Documentaries Films Comedies Box sets/back catalogue (done by BritBox now) Art & Culture Other?
And charge varying degrees for each with some logical bundles.
You'd need to get to £14.60 to be equivalent to the licence fee.
Curious how you would value that?
BBC Sport - what do they have nowadays? Snooker? Struggle to get anyone subscribing to that. News - Free. Sky, ITN, Facebook, YouTube - none of them charge I don't think there's a single subscription news channel out there. Entertainment, drama, documentaries, films, comedies, box sets, childrens - this is equivalent to Netflix. BBC is inferior to Netflix on these so maybe give it 70-75% of Netflix costs. £5 maybe per month? Weather - Free. Who in this country pays for weather? I can ask Google or Alexa the weather at any time free of charge.
No idea how to price up art and culture, or how popular it is.
Don't see how you can possibly justify £14.60 from that.
I wouldn't, the market would.
I would say £3.99 for news & current affairs £2.99 for childrens £3.99 for sport (MOTD, Wimbledon, and all the reports/red button/reviews I haven't looked at everything they cover) Art & Culture £1.99 Radio £2.99
But there would be some bundles which would make it more sensible. Perhaps more perhaps less.
Take a couple of quid off it all still you can get there or thereabouts.
You don't like the BBC so wouldn't pay a penny which is fine. It wouldn't be for you.
Look at directory enquiries. Was "free" (I think?) then went to 43p when it was deregulated and now is what through the 118 services? A fiver?
Does anyone actually pay a fiver though nowadays with phone numbers freely available for almost everything online? Niche services that next to nobody uses tend to charge more when they're actually used for some odd reason.
I think you're ridiculously overvaluing the value of the BBC there. The BBC has a tiny selection of childrens output. I doubt many people would choose to pay £3.99 for news and current affairs when most people will get theirs free of charge online anyway.
MOTD alternatives on YouTube are increasingly popular free of charge. £3.99 for Wimbledon and the Snooker is a pisstake.
If your model was followed I expect the overwhelming majority of households would pay less than £14.60 per month. What proportion of households do you think would pay that or more? The truth is its just not that good value for money.
Perhaps perhaps not. Not working for you we get that hence my subscription model. I didn't say it was compulsory. It has the benefit of people paying for what they want instead of having to have, say, the Today Programme and the Archers, when they only listen to James O'Brien and Nick Ferrari on LBC.
Why should they pay the bbc isn't lbc a private company and not part of the bbc?
My point is that under my model you wouldn't have to pay for anything you didn't want to. It is a (voluntary) subscription model. Just that you don't have to take the whole lot you can pick and choose.
There's nothing wrong with a 'pick and mix' subscription model, but the BBC would lose a lot of money going down that route so I can't see them choosing to do that even if the licence fee were abolished.
Taxing the internet to fund a television network is nuts. It's palpably worse than the licence fee. Why should someone who doesn't even own a television be taxed to fund the BBC?
Do you have any kids?
Because of plenty of people don't yet their taxes for education.
I've never claimed any social security benefits yet I contribute my taxes towards them.
The BBC isn't a public service.
Schools are a public service.
Public service broadcasting is a public good. The BBC is a public service broadcaster.
We have this argument occasionally on PB. But unless you get the basic concept of public service broadcasting, it’s just two sets of people talking past each other.
“Public Good” is a technical term in economics. It is something which is non-rivalrous (meaning if one person uses it that doesn’t stop someone else being able to) and non-excludable (meaning you can’t stop anyone from using it even if you wanted to). Analogue broadcasting is a classic example of a public good, while education fails on both counts (if the class is full then that stops the next student who wants to join getting in, and schools can certainly exclude students if they need to). Modern digital broadcasting is only a public good if the ability to exclude is deliberately removed: a subscription model is easy to build in which makes it excludable unless (like the BBC with the system we use in the UK) you don’t build it into the basic specifications.
It's always been very dirty; it's part of the culture.
In the 80s I rode for my university team in France (and occasionally as a stagiaire for the Système U team) and we used to take massive amounts of steroids in training and inject ourselves with OTC amphetamines (acquired from Italy) in competition.
The are current riders in the pro peloton who have been up Madone faster than Lance when he was on HGH, EPO, testosterone, insulin and blood bags...
Well, this is now just silly. 45 minutes left and three rabbits batting, they should declare.
Are you sure ? India have 23 overs left today apparently. 45 minutes indicates more like 12 overs. 45 mins and 23 overs would indicate India have bowled incredibly slowly (Maybe they have)
It’s on time, not overs, isn’t it? And the close is 11am our time.
At least, so I thought. Feel free to show I’m wrong.
The TV “license” is something out of the dark ages.
Put a modest tax on internet and mobile data.
Job done.
Or abolish the tax altogether and make it a voluntary subscription model.
People choose to subscribe to Netflix, or Disney, or Prime if they find it provides value for money. Why should the BBC be an exception to that? Maybe the BBC would be better quality if it needed to actually provide value to its subscribers.
As you know, I am in favour of a "module" subscription approach to the BBC.
Split it up into component parts. Say:
Sports News & current affairs Entertainment - drama Radio Weather Local Radio/TV Childrens Documentaries Films Comedies Box sets/back catalogue (done by BritBox now) Art & Culture Other?
And charge varying degrees for each with some logical bundles.
You'd need to get to £14.60 to be equivalent to the licence fee.
Curious how you would value that?
BBC Sport - what do they have nowadays? Snooker? Struggle to get anyone subscribing to that. News - Free. Sky, ITN, Facebook, YouTube - none of them charge I don't think there's a single subscription news channel out there. Entertainment, drama, documentaries, films, comedies, box sets, childrens - this is equivalent to Netflix. BBC is inferior to Netflix on these so maybe give it 70-75% of Netflix costs. £5 maybe per month? Weather - Free. Who in this country pays for weather? I can ask Google or Alexa the weather at any time free of charge.
No idea how to price up art and culture, or how popular it is.
Don't see how you can possibly justify £14.60 from that.
I wouldn't, the market would.
I would say £3.99 for news & current affairs £2.99 for childrens £3.99 for sport (MOTD, Wimbledon, and all the reports/red button/reviews I haven't looked at everything they cover) Art & Culture £1.99 Radio £2.99
But there would be some bundles which would make it more sensible. Perhaps more perhaps less.
Take a couple of quid off it all still you can get there or thereabouts.
You don't like the BBC so wouldn't pay a penny which is fine. It wouldn't be for you.
Look at directory enquiries. Was "free" (I think?) then went to 43p when it was deregulated and now is what through the 118 services? A fiver?
Does anyone actually pay a fiver though nowadays with phone numbers freely available for almost everything online? Niche services that next to nobody uses tend to charge more when they're actually used for some odd reason.
I think you're ridiculously overvaluing the value of the BBC there. The BBC has a tiny selection of childrens output. I doubt many people would choose to pay £3.99 for news and current affairs when most people will get theirs free of charge online anyway.
MOTD alternatives on YouTube are increasingly popular free of charge. £3.99 for Wimbledon and the Snooker is a pisstake.
If your model was followed I expect the overwhelming majority of households would pay less than £14.60 per month. What proportion of households do you think would pay that or more? The truth is its just not that good value for money.
Perhaps perhaps not. Not working for you we get that hence my subscription model. I didn't say it was compulsory. It has the benefit of people paying for what they want instead of having to have, say, the Today Programme and the Archers, when they only listen to James O'Brien and Nick Ferrari on LBC.
Why should they pay the bbc isn't lbc a private company and not part of the bbc?
My point is that under my model you wouldn't have to pay for anything you didn't want to. It is a (voluntary) subscription model. Just that you don't have to take the whole lot you can pick and choose.
There's nothing wrong with a 'pick and mix' subscription model, but the BBC would lose a lot of money going down that route so I can't see them choosing to do that even if the licence fee were abolished.
Well of course I don't think they would want to do that but I also think that if you did go pick and mix then it is possible that there would be an appetite at a price (which might suprise on the upside) for much of the BBC's output.
The TV “license” is something out of the dark ages.
Put a modest tax on internet and mobile data.
Job done.
Or abolish the tax altogether and make it a voluntary subscription model.
People choose to subscribe to Netflix, or Disney, or Prime if they find it provides value for money. Why should the BBC be an exception to that? Maybe the BBC would be better quality if it needed to actually provide value to its subscribers.
As you know, I am in favour of a "module" subscription approach to the BBC.
Split it up into component parts. Say:
Sports News & current affairs Entertainment - drama Radio Weather Local Radio/TV Childrens Documentaries Films Comedies Box sets/back catalogue (done by BritBox now) Art & Culture Other?
And charge varying degrees for each with some logical bundles.
You'd need to get to £14.60 to be equivalent to the licence fee.
Curious how you would value that?
BBC Sport - what do they have nowadays? Snooker? Struggle to get anyone subscribing to that. News - Free. Sky, ITN, Facebook, YouTube - none of them charge I don't think there's a single subscription news channel out there. Entertainment, drama, documentaries, films, comedies, box sets, childrens - this is equivalent to Netflix. BBC is inferior to Netflix on these so maybe give it 70-75% of Netflix costs. £5 maybe per month? Weather - Free. Who in this country pays for weather? I can ask Google or Alexa the weather at any time free of charge.
No idea how to price up art and culture, or how popular it is.
Don't see how you can possibly justify £14.60 from that.
I wouldn't, the market would.
I would say £3.99 for news & current affairs £2.99 for childrens £3.99 for sport (MOTD, Wimbledon, and all the reports/red button/reviews I haven't looked at everything they cover) Art & Culture £1.99 Radio £2.99
But there would be some bundles which would make it more sensible. Perhaps more perhaps less.
Take a couple of quid off it all still you can get there or thereabouts.
You don't like the BBC so wouldn't pay a penny which is fine. It wouldn't be for you.
Look at directory enquiries. Was "free" (I think?) then went to 43p when it was deregulated and now is what through the 118 services? A fiver?
Does anyone actually pay a fiver though nowadays with phone numbers freely available for almost everything online? Niche services that next to nobody uses tend to charge more when they're actually used for some odd reason.
I think you're ridiculously overvaluing the value of the BBC there. The BBC has a tiny selection of childrens output. I doubt many people would choose to pay £3.99 for news and current affairs when most people will get theirs free of charge online anyway.
MOTD alternatives on YouTube are increasingly popular free of charge. £3.99 for Wimbledon and the Snooker is a pisstake.
If your model was followed I expect the overwhelming majority of households would pay less than £14.60 per month. What proportion of households do you think would pay that or more? The truth is its just not that good value for money.
Perhaps perhaps not. Not working for you we get that hence my subscription model. I didn't say it was compulsory. It has the benefit of people paying for what they want instead of having to have, say, the Today Programme and the Archers, when they only listen to James O'Brien and Nick Ferrari on LBC.
Why should they pay the bbc isn't lbc a private company and not part of the bbc?
My point is that under my model you wouldn't have to pay for anything you didn't want to. It is a (voluntary) subscription model. Just that you don't have to take the whole lot you can pick and choose.
There's nothing wrong with a 'pick and mix' subscription model, but the BBC would lose a lot of money going down that route so I can't see them choosing to do that even if the licence fee were abolished.
The TV “license” is something out of the dark ages.
Put a modest tax on internet and mobile data.
Job done.
Or abolish the tax altogether and make it a voluntary subscription model.
People choose to subscribe to Netflix, or Disney, or Prime if they find it provides value for money. Why should the BBC be an exception to that? Maybe the BBC would be better quality if it needed to actually provide value to its subscribers.
As you know, I am in favour of a "module" subscription approach to the BBC.
Split it up into component parts. Say:
Sports News & current affairs Entertainment - drama Radio Weather Local Radio/TV Childrens Documentaries Films Comedies Box sets/back catalogue (done by BritBox now) Art & Culture Other?
And charge varying degrees for each with some logical bundles.
You'd need to get to £14.60 to be equivalent to the licence fee.
Curious how you would value that?
BBC Sport - what do they have nowadays? Snooker? Struggle to get anyone subscribing to that. News - Free. Sky, ITN, Facebook, YouTube - none of them charge I don't think there's a single subscription news channel out there. Entertainment, drama, documentaries, films, comedies, box sets, childrens - this is equivalent to Netflix. BBC is inferior to Netflix on these so maybe give it 70-75% of Netflix costs. £5 maybe per month? Weather - Free. Who in this country pays for weather? I can ask Google or Alexa the weather at any time free of charge.
No idea how to price up art and culture, or how popular it is.
Don't see how you can possibly justify £14.60 from that.
I wouldn't, the market would.
I would say £3.99 for news & current affairs £2.99 for childrens £3.99 for sport (MOTD, Wimbledon, and all the reports/red button/reviews I haven't looked at everything they cover) Art & Culture £1.99 Radio £2.99
But there would be some bundles which would make it more sensible. Perhaps more perhaps less.
Take a couple of quid off it all still you can get there or thereabouts.
You don't like the BBC so wouldn't pay a penny which is fine. It wouldn't be for you.
Look at directory enquiries. Was "free" (I think?) then went to 43p when it was deregulated and now is what through the 118 services? A fiver?
Does anyone actually pay a fiver though nowadays with phone numbers freely available for almost everything online? Niche services that next to nobody uses tend to charge more when they're actually used for some odd reason.
I think you're ridiculously overvaluing the value of the BBC there. The BBC has a tiny selection of childrens output. I doubt many people would choose to pay £3.99 for news and current affairs when most people will get theirs free of charge online anyway.
MOTD alternatives on YouTube are increasingly popular free of charge. £3.99 for Wimbledon and the Snooker is a pisstake.
If your model was followed I expect the overwhelming majority of households would pay less than £14.60 per month. What proportion of households do you think would pay that or more? The truth is its just not that good value for money.
Perhaps perhaps not. Not working for you we get that hence my subscription model. I didn't say it was compulsory. It has the benefit of people paying for what they want instead of having to have, say, the Today Programme and the Archers, when they only listen to James O'Brien and Nick Ferrari on LBC.
Why should they pay the bbc isn't lbc a private company and not part of the bbc?
My point is that under my model you wouldn't have to pay for anything you didn't want to. It is a (voluntary) subscription model. Just that you don't have to take the whole lot you can pick and choose.
There's nothing wrong with a 'pick and mix' subscription model, but the BBC would lose a lot of money going down that route so I can't see them choosing to do that even if the licence fee were abolished.
Ask the question the other way round: would the licence fee be abolished even if the BBC moves to a subscription model? Television licences are not a uniquely British institution.
The Indian commentators are wastes doing the cricket, they should be spin doctors for politicians as they could make the biggest omnishambles seem like the most minor snafu.
I love how in Indian newspapers, a bus falling into a gorge thousands of feet below, killing all 124 onboard, is described as a "mis-hap".
Taxing the internet to fund a television network is nuts. It's palpably worse than the licence fee. Why should someone who doesn't even own a television be taxed to fund the BBC?
Do you have any kids?
Because of plenty of people don't yet their taxes for education.
I've never claimed any social security benefits yet I contribute my taxes towards them.
The BBC isn't a public service.
Schools are a public service.
Public service broadcasting is a public good. The BBC is a public service broadcaster.
We have this argument occasionally on PB. But unless you get the basic concept of public service broadcasting, it’s just two sets of people talking past each other.
“Public Good” is a technical term in economics. It is something which is non-rivalrous (meaning if one person uses it that doesn’t stop someone else being able to) and non-excludable (meaning you can’t stop anyone from using it even if you wanted to). Analogue broadcasting is a classic example of a public good, while education fails on both counts (if the class is full then that stops the next student who wants to join getting in, and schools can certainly exclude students if they need to). Modern digital broadcasting is only a public good if the ability to exclude is deliberately removed: a subscription model is easy to build in which makes it excludable unless (like the BBC with the system we use in the UK) you don’t build it into the basic specifications.
Since its illegal to watch the BBC without a subscription licence fee it is not non-excludable.
Still some positives for Sir Keir, he has improved Labour's image and polls significantly better than his predecessors
'Some 48 per cent say Labour has changed for the better under Sir Keir, who took over last April. Just four per cent said Labour had got worse and 35 per cent said he had made no difference. Over-35s, graduates and white collar workers were more positive, while younger voters were more likely to say he had made no difference.
- Some 36 per cent think he “has what it takes” to become PM, which is down two points from August, while 33 per cent think he is ready to be PM now. His scores as a potential PM are higher than either Mr Corbyn or Mr Miliband, the previous two Labour leaders, achieved during their near-decade of opposition. Sir Keir is seen as decisive by 46 per cent and indecisive by just 28 per cent.'
The overall voteshares of Conservatives 42%, Labour 38% and LDs 7% and Greens 8% from Mori in their new poll would give a Conservative majority of just 8, so still a significant swing to Labour even if the Tories would just scrape home
Including the latest IPSPS/MORI poll in the EMA (which seeks to smooth the noise) gives the Tories a 2% lead and 8 short of a majority.
To be fair to Boris fans, there probably has been a real swing to the Conservatives over the last month or so, and so smoothed data will understate their current position a bit.
And the government has had a good month. Their approach to vaccines has paid off- even if I think the consequences of that have been exaggerated. The B-thing hasn't lead to instant disaster. Liz Tuss's trade deals sound good.
Question is- is this a change in the climate, or the calm before the storm? The cabinet is still stuffed with people who are broadly incompetent and frankly rather sleazy. The Britannia Unchained agenda might not be popular when it becomes concrete. Whilst a lot of the bills for Covid will capitalised as funny money, the economics of the next few years still look grim.
The TV “license” is something out of the dark ages.
Put a modest tax on internet and mobile data.
Job done.
Or abolish the tax altogether and make it a voluntary subscription model.
People choose to subscribe to Netflix, or Disney, or Prime if they find it provides value for money. Why should the BBC be an exception to that? Maybe the BBC would be better quality if it needed to actually provide value to its subscribers.
As you know, I am in favour of a "module" subscription approach to the BBC.
Split it up into component parts. Say:
Sports News & current affairs Entertainment - drama Radio Weather Local Radio/TV Childrens Documentaries Films Comedies Box sets/back catalogue (done by BritBox now) Art & Culture Other?
And charge varying degrees for each with some logical bundles.
You'd need to get to £14.60 to be equivalent to the licence fee.
Curious how you would value that?
BBC Sport - what do they have nowadays? Snooker? Struggle to get anyone subscribing to that. News - Free. Sky, ITN, Facebook, YouTube - none of them charge I don't think there's a single subscription news channel out there. Entertainment, drama, documentaries, films, comedies, box sets, childrens - this is equivalent to Netflix. BBC is inferior to Netflix on these so maybe give it 70-75% of Netflix costs. £5 maybe per month? Weather - Free. Who in this country pays for weather? I can ask Google or Alexa the weather at any time free of charge.
No idea how to price up art and culture, or how popular it is.
Don't see how you can possibly justify £14.60 from that.
I wouldn't, the market would.
I would say £3.99 for news & current affairs £2.99 for childrens £3.99 for sport (MOTD, Wimbledon, and all the reports/red button/reviews I haven't looked at everything they cover) Art & Culture £1.99 Radio £2.99
But there would be some bundles which would make it more sensible. Perhaps more perhaps less.
Take a couple of quid off it all still you can get there or thereabouts.
You don't like the BBC so wouldn't pay a penny which is fine. It wouldn't be for you.
Look at directory enquiries. Was "free" (I think?) then went to 43p when it was deregulated and now is what through the 118 services? A fiver?
Does anyone actually pay a fiver though nowadays with phone numbers freely available for almost everything online? Niche services that next to nobody uses tend to charge more when they're actually used for some odd reason.
I think you're ridiculously overvaluing the value of the BBC there. The BBC has a tiny selection of childrens output. I doubt many people would choose to pay £3.99 for news and current affairs when most people will get theirs free of charge online anyway.
MOTD alternatives on YouTube are increasingly popular free of charge. £3.99 for Wimbledon and the Snooker is a pisstake.
If your model was followed I expect the overwhelming majority of households would pay less than £14.60 per month. What proportion of households do you think would pay that or more? The truth is its just not that good value for money.
Perhaps perhaps not. Not working for you we get that hence my subscription model. I didn't say it was compulsory. It has the benefit of people paying for what they want instead of having to have, say, the Today Programme and the Archers, when they only listen to James O'Brien and Nick Ferrari on LBC.
Why should they pay the bbc isn't lbc a private company and not part of the bbc?
My point is that under my model you wouldn't have to pay for anything you didn't want to. It is a (voluntary) subscription model. Just that you don't have to take the whole lot you can pick and choose.
There's nothing wrong with a 'pick and mix' subscription model, but the BBC would lose a lot of money going down that route so I can't see them choosing to do that even if the licence fee were abolished.
Well of course I don't think they would want to do that but I also think that if you did go pick and mix then it is possible that there would be an appetite at a price (which might suprise on the upside) for much of the BBC's output.
Most critics of the licence fee would welcome the bbc going subscription....strangely the bbc doesn't want to.
The TV “license” is something out of the dark ages.
Put a modest tax on internet and mobile data.
Job done.
Or abolish the tax altogether and make it a voluntary subscription model.
People choose to subscribe to Netflix, or Disney, or Prime if they find it provides value for money. Why should the BBC be an exception to that? Maybe the BBC would be better quality if it needed to actually provide value to its subscribers.
As you know, I am in favour of a "module" subscription approach to the BBC.
Split it up into component parts. Say:
Sports News & current affairs Entertainment - drama Radio Weather Local Radio/TV Childrens Documentaries Films Comedies Box sets/back catalogue (done by BritBox now) Art & Culture Other?
And charge varying degrees for each with some logical bundles.
You'd need to get to £14.60 to be equivalent to the licence fee.
Curious how you would value that?
BBC Sport - what do they have nowadays? Snooker? Struggle to get anyone subscribing to that. News - Free. Sky, ITN, Facebook, YouTube - none of them charge I don't think there's a single subscription news channel out there. Entertainment, drama, documentaries, films, comedies, box sets, childrens - this is equivalent to Netflix. BBC is inferior to Netflix on these so maybe give it 70-75% of Netflix costs. £5 maybe per month? Weather - Free. Who in this country pays for weather? I can ask Google or Alexa the weather at any time free of charge.
No idea how to price up art and culture, or how popular it is.
Don't see how you can possibly justify £14.60 from that.
I wouldn't, the market would.
I would say £3.99 for news & current affairs £2.99 for childrens £3.99 for sport (MOTD, Wimbledon, and all the reports/red button/reviews I haven't looked at everything they cover) Art & Culture £1.99 Radio £2.99
But there would be some bundles which would make it more sensible. Perhaps more perhaps less.
Take a couple of quid off it all still you can get there or thereabouts.
You don't like the BBC so wouldn't pay a penny which is fine. It wouldn't be for you.
Look at directory enquiries. Was "free" (I think?) then went to 43p when it was deregulated and now is what through the 118 services? A fiver?
Does anyone actually pay a fiver though nowadays with phone numbers freely available for almost everything online? Niche services that next to nobody uses tend to charge more when they're actually used for some odd reason.
I think you're ridiculously overvaluing the value of the BBC there. The BBC has a tiny selection of childrens output. I doubt many people would choose to pay £3.99 for news and current affairs when most people will get theirs free of charge online anyway.
MOTD alternatives on YouTube are increasingly popular free of charge. £3.99 for Wimbledon and the Snooker is a pisstake.
If your model was followed I expect the overwhelming majority of households would pay less than £14.60 per month. What proportion of households do you think would pay that or more? The truth is its just not that good value for money.
Perhaps perhaps not. Not working for you we get that hence my subscription model. I didn't say it was compulsory. It has the benefit of people paying for what they want instead of having to have, say, the Today Programme and the Archers, when they only listen to James O'Brien and Nick Ferrari on LBC.
Why should they pay the bbc isn't lbc a private company and not part of the bbc?
My point is that under my model you wouldn't have to pay for anything you didn't want to. It is a (voluntary) subscription model. Just that you don't have to take the whole lot you can pick and choose.
There's nothing wrong with a 'pick and mix' subscription model, but the BBC would lose a lot of money going down that route so I can't see them choosing to do that even if the licence fee were abolished.
The TV “license” is something out of the dark ages.
Put a modest tax on internet and mobile data.
Job done.
Or abolish the tax altogether and make it a voluntary subscription model.
People choose to subscribe to Netflix, or Disney, or Prime if they find it provides value for money. Why should the BBC be an exception to that? Maybe the BBC would be better quality if it needed to actually provide value to its subscribers.
As you know, I am in favour of a "module" subscription approach to the BBC.
Split it up into component parts. Say:
Sports News & current affairs Entertainment - drama Radio Weather Local Radio/TV Childrens Documentaries Films Comedies Box sets/back catalogue (done by BritBox now) Art & Culture Other?
And charge varying degrees for each with some logical bundles.
You'd need to get to £14.60 to be equivalent to the licence fee.
Curious how you would value that?
BBC Sport - what do they have nowadays? Snooker? Struggle to get anyone subscribing to that. News - Free. Sky, ITN, Facebook, YouTube - none of them charge I don't think there's a single subscription news channel out there. Entertainment, drama, documentaries, films, comedies, box sets, childrens - this is equivalent to Netflix. BBC is inferior to Netflix on these so maybe give it 70-75% of Netflix costs. £5 maybe per month? Weather - Free. Who in this country pays for weather? I can ask Google or Alexa the weather at any time free of charge.
No idea how to price up art and culture, or how popular it is.
Don't see how you can possibly justify £14.60 from that.
I wouldn't, the market would.
I would say £3.99 for news & current affairs £2.99 for childrens £3.99 for sport (MOTD, Wimbledon, and all the reports/red button/reviews I haven't looked at everything they cover) Art & Culture £1.99 Radio £2.99
But there would be some bundles which would make it more sensible. Perhaps more perhaps less.
Take a couple of quid off it all still you can get there or thereabouts.
You don't like the BBC so wouldn't pay a penny which is fine. It wouldn't be for you.
Look at directory enquiries. Was "free" (I think?) then went to 43p when it was deregulated and now is what through the 118 services? A fiver?
Does anyone actually pay a fiver though nowadays with phone numbers freely available for almost everything online? Niche services that next to nobody uses tend to charge more when they're actually used for some odd reason.
I think you're ridiculously overvaluing the value of the BBC there. The BBC has a tiny selection of childrens output. I doubt many people would choose to pay £3.99 for news and current affairs when most people will get theirs free of charge online anyway.
MOTD alternatives on YouTube are increasingly popular free of charge. £3.99 for Wimbledon and the Snooker is a pisstake.
If your model was followed I expect the overwhelming majority of households would pay less than £14.60 per month. What proportion of households do you think would pay that or more? The truth is its just not that good value for money.
Perhaps perhaps not. Not working for you we get that hence my subscription model. I didn't say it was compulsory. It has the benefit of people paying for what they want instead of having to have, say, the Today Programme and the Archers, when they only listen to James O'Brien and Nick Ferrari on LBC.
Why should they pay the bbc isn't lbc a private company and not part of the bbc?
My point is that under my model you wouldn't have to pay for anything you didn't want to. It is a (voluntary) subscription model. Just that you don't have to take the whole lot you can pick and choose.
There's nothing wrong with a 'pick and mix' subscription model, but the BBC would lose a lot of money going down that route so I can't see them choosing to do that even if the licence fee were abolished.
Not really. Perhaps people (and I'm one of them) don't want to pay for something they believe they have already paid for.
That is different from rebasing the entire BBC as a paid for service.
If the BBC thought it would make more money by going sub only and abolishing the licence fee they would in a shot. Fact is they know they would crash and burn if they couldn't rake in their extortion fees.
The TV “license” is something out of the dark ages.
Put a modest tax on internet and mobile data.
Job done.
Or abolish the tax altogether and make it a voluntary subscription model.
People choose to subscribe to Netflix, or Disney, or Prime if they find it provides value for money. Why should the BBC be an exception to that? Maybe the BBC would be better quality if it needed to actually provide value to its subscribers.
As you know, I am in favour of a "module" subscription approach to the BBC.
Split it up into component parts. Say:
Sports News & current affairs Entertainment - drama Radio Weather Local Radio/TV Childrens Documentaries Films Comedies Box sets/back catalogue (done by BritBox now) Art & Culture Other?
And charge varying degrees for each with some logical bundles.
You'd need to get to £14.60 to be equivalent to the licence fee.
Curious how you would value that?
BBC Sport - what do they have nowadays? Snooker? Struggle to get anyone subscribing to that. News - Free. Sky, ITN, Facebook, YouTube - none of them charge I don't think there's a single subscription news channel out there. Entertainment, drama, documentaries, films, comedies, box sets, childrens - this is equivalent to Netflix. BBC is inferior to Netflix on these so maybe give it 70-75% of Netflix costs. £5 maybe per month? Weather - Free. Who in this country pays for weather? I can ask Google or Alexa the weather at any time free of charge.
No idea how to price up art and culture, or how popular it is.
Don't see how you can possibly justify £14.60 from that.
I wouldn't, the market would.
I would say £3.99 for news & current affairs £2.99 for childrens £3.99 for sport (MOTD, Wimbledon, and all the reports/red button/reviews I haven't looked at everything they cover) Art & Culture £1.99 Radio £2.99
But there would be some bundles which would make it more sensible. Perhaps more perhaps less.
Take a couple of quid off it all still you can get there or thereabouts.
You don't like the BBC so wouldn't pay a penny which is fine. It wouldn't be for you.
Look at directory enquiries. Was "free" (I think?) then went to 43p when it was deregulated and now is what through the 118 services? A fiver?
Does anyone actually pay a fiver though nowadays with phone numbers freely available for almost everything online? Niche services that next to nobody uses tend to charge more when they're actually used for some odd reason.
I think you're ridiculously overvaluing the value of the BBC there. The BBC has a tiny selection of childrens output. I doubt many people would choose to pay £3.99 for news and current affairs when most people will get theirs free of charge online anyway.
MOTD alternatives on YouTube are increasingly popular free of charge. £3.99 for Wimbledon and the Snooker is a pisstake.
If your model was followed I expect the overwhelming majority of households would pay less than £14.60 per month. What proportion of households do you think would pay that or more? The truth is its just not that good value for money.
Perhaps perhaps not. Not working for you we get that hence my subscription model. I didn't say it was compulsory. It has the benefit of people paying for what they want instead of having to have, say, the Today Programme and the Archers, when they only listen to James O'Brien and Nick Ferrari on LBC.
Why should they pay the bbc isn't lbc a private company and not part of the bbc?
My point is that under my model you wouldn't have to pay for anything you didn't want to. It is a (voluntary) subscription model. Just that you don't have to take the whole lot you can pick and choose.
There's nothing wrong with a 'pick and mix' subscription model, but the BBC would lose a lot of money going down that route so I can't see them choosing to do that even if the licence fee were abolished.
Ask the question the other way round: would the licence fee be abolished even if the BBC moves to a subscription model? Television licences are not a uniquely British institution.
Yes the fee would be abolished if the BBC went subscription.
Television licences are something that if they didn't already exist today, you wouldn't invent them.
Even according to the list on your link most of Europe doesn't have a licence fee anymore, increasing numbers of nations like the Netherlands have abolished their TV licence.
I cancelled my tv license about 3 months back, primarily to save money. Haven't missed it much other than live sport. Have been exclusively watching Netflix and Prime.
I cancelled my tv license about 3 months back, primarily to save money. Haven't missed it much other than live sport. Have been exclusively watching Netflix and Prime.
The idea that the BBC is worth the same as Netflix and Prime combined is absolutely ludicrous.
I cancelled my tv license about 3 months back, primarily to save money. Haven't missed it much other than live sport. Have been exclusively watching Netflix and Prime.
Interesting. No radio, current affairs, BBC apps? No "How to Vaccinate the World" (on in an hour, R4)?
"Deaths strongly falling in Sweden" "OH sure, last week's deaths have been revised up by 100% but this week, this week cases are falling" "Oh sure, the last 2 weeks of cases have now been revised up to the extent that there is a new peak and sure testing levels are down by a third and positivity is still running at 10% but THIS WEEK. THIS WEEK DEATHS ARE FALLING"
I hadn’t realised Paton is now plugging directly into the Spiked truther network. Has that been going on for a while?
He'd started being approvingly cited by them a while ago thanks to his "Lockdowns don't have any effect, October/November was a pure coincidence" thought line. Actually publishing on Spiked is new I think but he's been clearly heading in that direction for a while.
The TV “license” is something out of the dark ages.
Put a modest tax on internet and mobile data.
Job done.
Or abolish the tax altogether and make it a voluntary subscription model.
People choose to subscribe to Netflix, or Disney, or Prime if they find it provides value for money. Why should the BBC be an exception to that? Maybe the BBC would be better quality if it needed to actually provide value to its subscribers.
As you know, I am in favour of a "module" subscription approach to the BBC.
Split it up into component parts. Say:
Sports News & current affairs Entertainment - drama Radio Weather Local Radio/TV Childrens Documentaries Films Comedies Box sets/back catalogue (done by BritBox now) Art & Culture Other?
And charge varying degrees for each with some logical bundles.
You'd need to get to £14.60 to be equivalent to the licence fee.
Curious how you would value that?
BBC Sport - what do they have nowadays? Snooker? Struggle to get anyone subscribing to that. News - Free. Sky, ITN, Facebook, YouTube - none of them charge I don't think there's a single subscription news channel out there. Entertainment, drama, documentaries, films, comedies, box sets, childrens - this is equivalent to Netflix. BBC is inferior to Netflix on these so maybe give it 70-75% of Netflix costs. £5 maybe per month? Weather - Free. Who in this country pays for weather? I can ask Google or Alexa the weather at any time free of charge.
No idea how to price up art and culture, or how popular it is.
Don't see how you can possibly justify £14.60 from that.
I wouldn't, the market would.
I would say £3.99 for news & current affairs £2.99 for childrens £3.99 for sport (MOTD, Wimbledon, and all the reports/red button/reviews I haven't looked at everything they cover) Art & Culture £1.99 Radio £2.99
But there would be some bundles which would make it more sensible. Perhaps more perhaps less.
Take a couple of quid off it all still you can get there or thereabouts.
You don't like the BBC so wouldn't pay a penny which is fine. It wouldn't be for you.
Look at directory enquiries. Was "free" (I think?) then went to 43p when it was deregulated and now is what through the 118 services? A fiver?
Does anyone actually pay a fiver though nowadays with phone numbers freely available for almost everything online? Niche services that next to nobody uses tend to charge more when they're actually used for some odd reason.
I think you're ridiculously overvaluing the value of the BBC there. The BBC has a tiny selection of childrens output. I doubt many people would choose to pay £3.99 for news and current affairs when most people will get theirs free of charge online anyway.
MOTD alternatives on YouTube are increasingly popular free of charge. £3.99 for Wimbledon and the Snooker is a pisstake.
If your model was followed I expect the overwhelming majority of households would pay less than £14.60 per month. What proportion of households do you think would pay that or more? The truth is its just not that good value for money.
Perhaps perhaps not. Not working for you we get that hence my subscription model. I didn't say it was compulsory. It has the benefit of people paying for what they want instead of having to have, say, the Today Programme and the Archers, when they only listen to James O'Brien and Nick Ferrari on LBC.
Why should they pay the bbc isn't lbc a private company and not part of the bbc?
My point is that under my model you wouldn't have to pay for anything you didn't want to. It is a (voluntary) subscription model. Just that you don't have to take the whole lot you can pick and choose.
There's nothing wrong with a 'pick and mix' subscription model, but the BBC would lose a lot of money going down that route so I can't see them choosing to do that even if the licence fee were abolished.
Not really. Perhaps people (and I'm one of them) don't want to pay for something they believe they have already paid for.
That is different from rebasing the entire BBC as a paid for service.
I like Britbox, it has just the sort of weird vintage series I enjoy discovering. I'm not sure I'll pay when my 6 month trial (with Orange) is over. I feel like there still needs to be more content. The selection of films is quite small, and there are some classic series missing that I think would be popular.
I cancelled my tv license about 3 months back, primarily to save money. Haven't missed it much other than live sport. Have been exclusively watching Netflix and Prime.
Interesting. No radio, current affairs, BBC apps? No "How to Vaccinate the World" (on in an hour, R4)?
That imo and only imo is a diminished experience.
If people want radio then let them pay for it.
Why should TV viewers be taxed to pay for radio? What an absurd notion.
I cancelled my tv license about 3 months back, primarily to save money. Haven't missed it much other than live sport. Have been exclusively watching Netflix and Prime.
We can see how people value the bbc
In us and canada where they cant receive the bbc but can get brit box they have 1.5 million subscribers, in the same area netflix has 146 million. For ever brit box viewer there are 100 netflix viewers. If the bbc offering was so brilliant as its proponents claim surely they would be doing better
I cancelled my tv license about 3 months back, primarily to save money. Haven't missed it much other than live sport. Have been exclusively watching Netflix and Prime.
The idea that the BBC is worth the same as Netflix and Prime combined is absolutely ludicrous.
I just find it strange that political geeks would not want to watch live tv news and current affairs.
I cancelled my tv license about 3 months back, primarily to save money. Haven't missed it much other than live sport. Have been exclusively watching Netflix and Prime.
Interesting. No radio, current affairs, BBC apps? No "How to Vaccinate the World" (on in an hour, R4)?
That imo and only imo is a diminished experience.
If people want radio then let them pay for it.
Why should TV viewers be taxed to pay for radio? What an absurd notion.
I couldn't give a toss about radio.
That is my point. It is BBC radio. Do you think it isn't funded by the LF?
I cancelled my tv license about 3 months back, primarily to save money. Haven't missed it much other than live sport. Have been exclusively watching Netflix and Prime.
The idea that the BBC is worth the same as Netflix and Prime combined is absolutely ludicrous.
I just find it strange that political geeks would not want to watch live tv news and current affairs.
What do you do on election night? PB?
Yes the internet trumps TV.
I watch live TV news. Sky typically, its not paid for by the licence fee last I checked. Yes a fee is legally requried but that's an absurdity I oppose.
Current affairs I don't watch on TV, I get my current affairs online.
Election night is one of the few times I watch the BBC, but I could just as easily watch Sky. Though yes PB trumps them both.
"Deaths strongly falling in Sweden" "OH sure, last week's deaths have been revised up by 100% but this week, this week cases are falling" "Oh sure, the last 2 weeks of cases have now been revised up to the extent that there is a new peak and sure testing levels are down by a third and positivity is still running at 10% but THIS WEEK. THIS WEEK DEATHS ARE FALLING"
I hadn’t realised Paton is now plugging directly into the Spiked truther network. Has that been going on for a while?
He'd started being approvingly cited by them a while ago thanks to his "Lockdowns don't have any effect, October/November was a pure coincidence" thought line. Actually publishing on Spiked is new I think but he's been clearly heading in that direction for a while.
No he started off by correctly highlighting a deficiency in the way the government (and the media) were reporting the daily numbers, and why he was quoted here....then it went downhill into nothing to see, lockdowns are bad, etc, and I don't think any regular poster then went near his tweets.
I cancelled my tv license about 3 months back, primarily to save money. Haven't missed it much other than live sport. Have been exclusively watching Netflix and Prime.
Interesting. No radio, current affairs, BBC apps? No "How to Vaccinate the World" (on in an hour, R4)?
That imo and only imo is a diminished experience.
I don't think I've listened to the radio or radio talking heads for a few years. Too often the "experts" are a bunch of political hacks with an agenda to push. Not always, of course. At least with the newspapers I know going in what the agenda is and it isn't cloaked under impartiality rules that no one pays attention to.
The TV “license” is something out of the dark ages.
Put a modest tax on internet and mobile data.
Job done.
Or abolish the tax altogether and make it a voluntary subscription model.
People choose to subscribe to Netflix, or Disney, or Prime if they find it provides value for money. Why should the BBC be an exception to that? Maybe the BBC would be better quality if it needed to actually provide value to its subscribers.
As you know, I am in favour of a "module" subscription approach to the BBC.
Split it up into component parts. Say:
Sports News & current affairs Entertainment - drama Radio Weather Local Radio/TV Childrens Documentaries Films Comedies Box sets/back catalogue (done by BritBox now) Art & Culture Other?
And charge varying degrees for each with some logical bundles.
You'd need to get to £14.60 to be equivalent to the licence fee.
Curious how you would value that?
BBC Sport - what do they have nowadays? Snooker? Struggle to get anyone subscribing to that. News - Free. Sky, ITN, Facebook, YouTube - none of them charge I don't think there's a single subscription news channel out there. Entertainment, drama, documentaries, films, comedies, box sets, childrens - this is equivalent to Netflix. BBC is inferior to Netflix on these so maybe give it 70-75% of Netflix costs. £5 maybe per month? Weather - Free. Who in this country pays for weather? I can ask Google or Alexa the weather at any time free of charge.
No idea how to price up art and culture, or how popular it is.
Don't see how you can possibly justify £14.60 from that.
I wouldn't, the market would.
I would say £3.99 for news & current affairs £2.99 for childrens £3.99 for sport (MOTD, Wimbledon, and all the reports/red button/reviews I haven't looked at everything they cover) Art & Culture £1.99 Radio £2.99
But there would be some bundles which would make it more sensible. Perhaps more perhaps less.
Take a couple of quid off it all still you can get there or thereabouts.
You don't like the BBC so wouldn't pay a penny which is fine. It wouldn't be for you.
Look at directory enquiries. Was "free" (I think?) then went to 43p when it was deregulated and now is what through the 118 services? A fiver?
Does anyone actually pay a fiver though nowadays with phone numbers freely available for almost everything online? Niche services that next to nobody uses tend to charge more when they're actually used for some odd reason.
I think you're ridiculously overvaluing the value of the BBC there. The BBC has a tiny selection of childrens output. I doubt many people would choose to pay £3.99 for news and current affairs when most people will get theirs free of charge online anyway.
MOTD alternatives on YouTube are increasingly popular free of charge. £3.99 for Wimbledon and the Snooker is a pisstake.
If your model was followed I expect the overwhelming majority of households would pay less than £14.60 per month. What proportion of households do you think would pay that or more? The truth is its just not that good value for money.
Perhaps perhaps not. Not working for you we get that hence my subscription model. I didn't say it was compulsory. It has the benefit of people paying for what they want instead of having to have, say, the Today Programme and the Archers, when they only listen to James O'Brien and Nick Ferrari on LBC.
Why should they pay the bbc isn't lbc a private company and not part of the bbc?
My point is that under my model you wouldn't have to pay for anything you didn't want to. It is a (voluntary) subscription model. Just that you don't have to take the whole lot you can pick and choose.
There's nothing wrong with a 'pick and mix' subscription model, but the BBC would lose a lot of money going down that route so I can't see them choosing to do that even if the licence fee were abolished.
Not really. Perhaps people (and I'm one of them) don't want to pay for something they believe they have already paid for.
That is different from rebasing the entire BBC as a paid for service.
I like Britbox, it has just the sort of weird vintage series I enjoy discovering. I'm not sure I'll pay when my 6 month trial (with Orange) is over. I feel like there still needs to be more content. The selection of films is quite small, and there are some classic series missing that I think would be popular.
As I said, I've just paid £11.50 to Prime to watch an old BBC series so actually I am going against what I said (not wanting to pay for something I believe I've already paid for).
But that one series, at £11.50 for eight episodes is 80% of my monthly LF.
I cancelled my tv license about 3 months back, primarily to save money. Haven't missed it much other than live sport. Have been exclusively watching Netflix and Prime.
Interesting. No radio, current affairs, BBC apps? No "How to Vaccinate the World" (on in an hour, R4)?
That imo and only imo is a diminished experience.
If people want radio then let them pay for it.
Why should TV viewers be taxed to pay for radio? What an absurd notion.
I couldn't give a toss about radio.
That is my point. It is BBC radio. Do you think it isn't funded by the LF?
I think it shouldn't be.
If you want to have a radio subscription then pay for it. Good for you.
Curious how popular that would be. Not very is my guess.
I cancelled my tv license about 3 months back, primarily to save money. Haven't missed it much other than live sport. Have been exclusively watching Netflix and Prime.
The idea that the BBC is worth the same as Netflix and Prime combined is absolutely ludicrous.
I just find it strange that political geeks would not want to watch live tv news and current affairs.
What do you do on election night? PB?
Yes the internet trumps TV.
I watch live TV news. Sky typically, its not paid for by the licence fee last I checked. Yes a fee is legally requried but that's an absurdity I oppose.
Current affairs I don't watch on TV, I get my current affairs online.
Election night is one of the few times I watch the BBC, but I could just as easily watch Sky. Though yes PB trumps them both.
So that's cool. You are breaking the law because you watch live tv news which counts as live tv and hence you need a licence fee. But you have decided that such a law doesn't apply to you.
As for election night, I see that you don't like the BBC apart from when you do.
I cancelled my tv license about 3 months back, primarily to save money. Haven't missed it much other than live sport. Have been exclusively watching Netflix and Prime.
Interesting. No radio, current affairs, BBC apps? No "How to Vaccinate the World" (on in an hour, R4)?
That imo and only imo is a diminished experience.
I don't think I've listened to the radio or radio talking heads for a few years. Too often the "experts" are a bunch of political hacks with an agenda to push. Not always, of course. At least with the newspapers I know going in what the agenda is and it isn't cloaked under impartiality rules that no one pays attention to.
99% of talking heads invited on have an agenda that they want to push, and of course (although the BBC would deny it) they along with Sky have gone down the CNN / Fox route, by having on people who will have a big row with one another for 5 mins on a topic, while the presenter interrupts all the time. Lots of heat, rarely much light.
There are now much better outlets who do long form interviews and allow the guest to speak.
I cancelled my tv license about 3 months back, primarily to save money. Haven't missed it much other than live sport. Have been exclusively watching Netflix and Prime.
The idea that the BBC is worth the same as Netflix and Prime combined is absolutely ludicrous.
I just find it strange that political geeks would not want to watch live tv news and current affairs.
What do you do on election night? PB?
Yes the internet trumps TV.
I watch live TV news. Sky typically, its not paid for by the licence fee last I checked. Yes a fee is legally requried but that's an absurdity I oppose.
Current affairs I don't watch on TV, I get my current affairs online.
Election night is one of the few times I watch the BBC, but I could just as easily watch Sky. Though yes PB trumps them both.
There are also lots of online live broadcasts on election night not done by the bbc. As to current affairs and documentaries plenty of those online too also not done by the bbc but done by people who actually know what the fuck they are talking about
Excellent article; and obviously true. However there is still important statistical analysis to be done. Keeping it simple, In FPTP with 600 seats and two parties including one speaker you can win majority by winning 300 seats by one vote and getting no votes in the other 300 (299 with the speaker). That is a majority in which the winners have just over 25% of the votes and the other party has just under 75%. Clearly nothing like that happens, but it is still mathematically true.
And as a result parties are interested in how to win the largest number of seats with the smallest number of votes, and boundary changes are a weapon in that contest.
Having said that Labour's real problem needs solving as well, which is that outside its increasingly random special interest groups there are few positive reasons for voting for them while a nation looks at them hopefully.
I cancelled my tv license about 3 months back, primarily to save money. Haven't missed it much other than live sport. Have been exclusively watching Netflix and Prime.
The idea that the BBC is worth the same as Netflix and Prime combined is absolutely ludicrous.
I just find it strange that political geeks would not want to watch live tv news and current affairs.
What do you do on election night? PB?
Yes the internet trumps TV.
I watch live TV news. Sky typically, its not paid for by the licence fee last I checked. Yes a fee is legally requried but that's an absurdity I oppose.
Current affairs I don't watch on TV, I get my current affairs online.
Election night is one of the few times I watch the BBC, but I could just as easily watch Sky. Though yes PB trumps them both.
So that's cool. You are breaking the law because you watch live tv news which counts as live tv and hence you need a licence fee. But you have decided that such a law doesn't apply to you.
As for election night, I see that you don't like the BBC apart from when you do.
What are you talking about? I pay my licence fee.
I don't want to, I campaign against it, but I do.
Yes I do (very rarely) watch the BBC. I pay through the nose for it so why shouldn't I? I just recognise how rarely I do and what terrible value for money it is, which is why many others are cancelling. Good for them.
I cancelled my tv license about 3 months back, primarily to save money. Haven't missed it much other than live sport. Have been exclusively watching Netflix and Prime.
Interesting. No radio, current affairs, BBC apps? No "How to Vaccinate the World" (on in an hour, R4)?
That imo and only imo is a diminished experience.
I don't think I've listened to the radio or radio talking heads for a few years. Too often the "experts" are a bunch of political hacks with an agenda to push. Not always, of course. At least with the newspapers I know going in what the agenda is and it isn't cloaked under impartiality rules that no one pays attention to.
Fair enough. I'm just saying that imo BBC radio has a value.
I cancelled my tv license about 3 months back, primarily to save money. Haven't missed it much other than live sport. Have been exclusively watching Netflix and Prime.
Interesting. No radio, current affairs, BBC apps? No "How to Vaccinate the World" (on in an hour, R4)?
That imo and only imo is a diminished experience.
I don't think I've listened to the radio or radio talking heads for a few years. Too often the "experts" are a bunch of political hacks with an agenda to push. Not always, of course. At least with the newspapers I know going in what the agenda is and it isn't cloaked under impartiality rules that no one pays attention to.
Fair enough. I'm just saying that imo BBC radio has a value.
Then you should be happy to pay for it. Good for you.
The extraordinary thing about the BBC is how little money it makes from its commercial activities. This should be massively ramped up so eventually it is paying us.
The extraordinary thing about the BBC is how little money it makes from its commercial activities. This should be massively ramped up so eventually it is paying us.
If it had anything worth commercialising maybe it might.
Netflix produces far more output than the Beeb does at a fraction of the price. The Beeb has missed the boat.
The BBC is on my list of things that I thought would always be there but which I now recognise will wither and die. I find that sad.
The BBC has enriched the nation and been widely trusted and admired across the world, giving the UK great cultrural influence
Furthermore, I find it bizarre that the principal architect of its demise has been the Conservative Party, a party whose very name implies it is there to conserve the best of our national heritage.
Apparently not. The BBC has been hampered over many years in expanding its gobal reach and power by the Tory party in the interest of pursuing their private enterprise ideology (aka more money for the rich).
I cancelled my tv license about 3 months back, primarily to save money. Haven't missed it much other than live sport. Have been exclusively watching Netflix and Prime.
Interesting. No radio, current affairs, BBC apps? No "How to Vaccinate the World" (on in an hour, R4)?
That imo and only imo is a diminished experience.
I don't think I've listened to the radio or radio talking heads for a few years. Too often the "experts" are a bunch of political hacks with an agenda to push. Not always, of course. At least with the newspapers I know going in what the agenda is and it isn't cloaked under impartiality rules that no one pays attention to.
Fair enough. I'm just saying that imo BBC radio has a value.
Fair enough, but for me and for the majority of the nation it holds little to no value, as can be seen by dwindling listeners. Especially among younger people. Spotify as completely destroyed the BBC by being better at the job and it's got podcasts as well and is taking over the talking heads part of the market too.
People will pay for something that's worth the money, if the BBC thinks it's worth the money then it should have no trouble with making the licence fee optional and locking BBC TV behind a subscription wall. The trouble they have is that they know it loses them 50-60% of their licence fee income overnight becuase there are too many people who won't pay for it. I'd have no trouble losing BBC1/2/4/News from my Sky EPG and buying a monthly subscription to "BBC Entertainment" for £4-6 if they withdrew licenced programming from Netflix as part of the deal. I'd probably completely dump Sky and go all streaming. I can live without MOTD and the terrible News programming.
I cancelled my tv license about 3 months back, primarily to save money. Haven't missed it much other than live sport. Have been exclusively watching Netflix and Prime.
Interesting. No radio, current affairs, BBC apps? No "How to Vaccinate the World" (on in an hour, R4)?
That imo and only imo is a diminished experience.
If people want radio then let them pay for it.
Why should TV viewers be taxed to pay for radio? What an absurd notion.
I couldn't give a toss about radio.
That is my point. It is BBC radio. Do you think it isn't funded by the LF?
If you want to have a radio subscription then pay for it. Good for you
Gah! That is my entire point.
You should be able to buy the BBC radio on a subscription model.
How popular? No idea but there will be millions of takers at a price.
I cancelled my tv license about 3 months back, primarily to save money. Haven't missed it much other than live sport. Have been exclusively watching Netflix and Prime.
Interesting. No radio, current affairs, BBC apps? No "How to Vaccinate the World" (on in an hour, R4)?
That imo and only imo is a diminished experience.
I don't think I've listened to the radio or radio talking heads for a few years. Too often the "experts" are a bunch of political hacks with an agenda to push. Not always, of course. At least with the newspapers I know going in what the agenda is and it isn't cloaked under impartiality rules that no one pays attention to.
Fair enough. I'm just saying that imo BBC radio has a value.
Just been on a webinar on distribution of these vaccines by air - very interesting logistical challenges ahead -and a potential very useful revenue stream for air carriers in terms of keeping their fleets employed
I cancelled my tv license about 3 months back, primarily to save money. Haven't missed it much other than live sport. Have been exclusively watching Netflix and Prime.
The idea that the BBC is worth the same as Netflix and Prime combined is absolutely ludicrous.
I just find it strange that political geeks would not want to watch live tv news and current affairs.
What do you do on election night? PB?
Yes the internet trumps TV.
I watch live TV news. Sky typically, its not paid for by the licence fee last I checked. Yes a fee is legally requried but that's an absurdity I oppose.
Current affairs I don't watch on TV, I get my current affairs online.
Election night is one of the few times I watch the BBC, but I could just as easily watch Sky. Though yes PB trumps them both.
So that's cool. You are breaking the law because you watch live tv news which counts as live tv and hence you need a licence fee. But you have decided that such a law doesn't apply to you.
As for election night, I see that you don't like the BBC apart from when you do.
What are you talking about? I pay my licence fee.
I don't want to, I campaign against it, but I do.
Yes I do (very rarely) watch the BBC. I pay through the nose for it so why shouldn't I? I just recognise how rarely I do and what terrible value for money it is, which is why many others are cancelling. Good for them.
I agree that BBC TV is terrible, and not value for money. The paradox is that BBC radio is in many ways good, though not as good as it ought to be, - and there is no decent quality alternative anyway - and very convenient. And it is currently free. To me it alone is worth the licence.
The other thing about BBC TV is that occasionally either for news or event coverage (and IMHO election nights) it has the edge because of its range and reliability and (even) caution. Its (relative) commitment to neutrality and truth is important. I think like without BBC would be much worse.
Is there anyone else in radio who would produce the World Service or, say, Tim Harford?
Excellent article; and obviously true. However there is still important statistical analysis to be done. Keeping it simple, In FPTP with 600 seats and two parties including one speaker you can win majority by winning 300 seats by one vote and getting no votes in the other 300 (299 with the speaker). That is a majority in which the winners have just over 25% of the votes and the other party has just under 75%. Clearly nothing like that happens, but it is still mathematically true.
And as a result parties are interested in how to win the largest number of seats with the smallest number of votes, and boundary changes are a weapon in that contest.
Having said that Labour's real problem needs solving as well, which is that outside its increasingly random special interest groups there are few positive reasons for voting for them while a nation looks at them hopefully.
That highlights the difficulty in managing (there's a nice neutral word for the tapes) electoral boundaries.
Ideally, you want to just win as many seats as possible. So don't waste too many votes on showy huge majorities or on near misses. But to do that, you need to know what share of vote you are expecting. Get that wrong and all those seats you planned to win by 3 % turn into seats you have lost by 1 %.
The BBC is on my list of things that I thought would always be there but which I now recognise will wither and die. I find that sad.
The BBC has enriched the nation and been widely trusted and admired across the world, giving the UK great cultrural influence
Furthermore, I find it bizarre that the principal architect of its demise has been the Conservative Party, a party whose very name implies it is there to conserve the best of our national heritage.
Apparently not. The BBC has been hampered over many years in expanding its gobal reach and power by the Tory party in the interest of pursuing their private enterprise ideology (aka more money for the rich).
Rant over.
The time that the BBC should have become pre-eminent in world broadcasting was during the 1997-2010 rein of Labour. But that would have left New Labour exposed to the wrath of Rupert.
"Deaths strongly falling in Sweden" "OH sure, last week's deaths have been revised up by 100% but this week, this week cases are falling" "Oh sure, the last 2 weeks of cases have now been revised up to the extent that there is a new peak and sure testing levels are down by a third and positivity is still running at 10% but THIS WEEK. THIS WEEK DEATHS ARE FALLING"
I went through his updates from the last week in November to the end of December. On Sweden: Nov 24 The increase in cases seems to have stabilised though still day-to-day ups & downs. Similarly with ICUs. Possibly deaths too, though harder to evaluate given lag in reporting.
Dec 1 Update to Sweden. The increase in new positive tests looks to have levelled off over the past week. Similarly new ICUs & possibly deaths too, though harder to tell given how much backdating there tends to be. Dec 8
Update to Sweden. Over past week: new positive tests have crept up a bit quite a bit of backdating of deaths with a peak of 65 so far on 24 Nov (April peak was 115). ICU trend largely flat (as it has been for about 3 weeks), though with significant day-to-day variation.
Dec 15 Update to Sweden. Positive tests increasing after the late-Nov plateau. ICUs & deaths (allowing for backdating) look more stable at the moment, perhaps reflecting that plateau in positive tests from a couple of weeks ago?
Dec 22 Update for Sweden. Positive tests still increasing though relatively slowly & with ups & downs. Despite that, ICUs averaged a fairly steady 24 / day since end of Nov. Deaths also fairly stable since end of Nov (with day-to-day ups & downs), even allowing for backdating.
Dec 30 Update for Sweden. Obvious caveat: Christmas effects make trends hard to interpret. 7-day ave of positive tests well below 23 Dec peak, but may still be some post-Christmas catch up to come. ICUs & deaths still not reflecting the increase in positive tests seen during December.
I've got to say that if I'd been following just him, I'd not have realized that December saw the surge in the second wave deaths in Sweden to a worse place than the worst of the first wave there, and a per capita death toll through December worse than that in the UK.
He seems to have unaccountably failed to notice any of that.
The extraordinary thing about the BBC is how little money it makes from its commercial activities. This should be massively ramped up so eventually it is paying us.
If it had anything worth commercialising maybe it might.
Netflix produces far more output than the Beeb does at a fraction of the price. The Beeb has missed the boat.
Chicken and egg situation. It hasn't had to monetise, so it doesn't make much monetisable content (at the moment). It would be good for the BBC to have to make stuff that for the most part people actually want to pay for.
The BBC is on my list of things that I thought would always be there but which I now recognise will wither and die. I find that sad.
The BBC has enriched the nation and been widely trusted and admired across the world, giving the UK great cultrural influence
Furthermore, I find it bizarre that the principal architect of its demise has been the Conservative Party, a party whose very name implies it is there to conserve the best of our national heritage.
Apparently not. The BBC has been hampered over many years in expanding its gobal reach and power by the Tory party in the interest of pursuing their private enterprise ideology (aka more money for the rich).
Rant over.
It is more that broadcast tv in total is a dinosaur these days. In an on demand world people want things when they want them not when someone chooses to broadcast them. It is as simple as that. The old model is people had to fit themselves around a broadcasters schedule, these days people want things to fit around their schedule
Comments
Indian bookmakers are well known for their probity.
I think if you get your model implemented it would devastate the BBCs finances precisely because people would deem its not worth paying for most of the dross they currently get taxed for.
If your model was implemented do you think the BBCs revenue would go up, down or stay the same?
45 mins and 23 overs would indicate India have bowled incredibly slowly (Maybe they have)
Analogue broadcasting is a classic example of a public good, while education fails on both counts (if the class is full then that stops the next student who wants to join getting in, and schools can certainly exclude students if they need to).
Modern digital broadcasting is only a public good if the ability to exclude is deliberately removed: a subscription model is easy to build in which makes it excludable unless (like the BBC with the system we use in the UK) you don’t build it into the basic specifications.
In the 80s I rode for my university team in France (and occasionally as a stagiaire for the Système U team) and we used to take massive amounts of steroids in training and inject ourselves with OTC amphetamines (acquired from Italy) in competition.
The are current riders in the pro peloton who have been up Madone faster than Lance when he was on HGH, EPO, testosterone, insulin and blood bags...
At least, so I thought. Feel free to show I’m wrong.
https://twitter.com/GeorgeDobell1/status/1358720076015427584
says it all really
https://twitter.com/dawnhfoster/status/1358523630423060485?s=21
ETA link to Wikipedia on television licences across Europe and beyond:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licence
And the government has had a good month. Their approach to vaccines has paid off- even if I think the consequences of that have been exaggerated. The B-thing hasn't lead to instant disaster. Liz Tuss's trade deals sound good.
Question is- is this a change in the climate, or the calm before the storm? The cabinet is still stuffed with people who are broadly incompetent and frankly rather sleazy. The Britannia Unchained agenda might not be popular when it becomes concrete. Whilst a lot of the bills for Covid will capitalised as funny money, the economics of the next few years still look grim.
But it’s a doubtful strategy. There are plenty of other bowlers India can call on.
That is different from rebasing the entire BBC as a paid for service.
Really
Television licences are something that if they didn't already exist today, you wouldn't invent them.
Even according to the list on your link most of Europe doesn't have a licence fee anymore, increasing numbers of nations like the Netherlands have abolished their TV licence.
Ashwin gets a 6-fer. He can thank Root for that.
And never been so pleased to see England all out
But why give India the satisfaction of bowling them out?
That imo and only imo is a diminished experience.
Why should TV viewers be taxed to pay for radio? What an absurd notion.
I couldn't give a toss about radio.
In us and canada where they cant receive the bbc but can get brit box they have 1.5 million subscribers, in the same area netflix has 146 million. For ever brit box viewer there are 100 netflix viewers. If the bbc offering was so brilliant as its proponents claim surely they would be doing better
What do you do on election night? PB?
India 16.5
England 2.46
Draw 1.85
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/cricket/market/1.178000173
I watch live TV news. Sky typically, its not paid for by the licence fee last I checked. Yes a fee is legally requried but that's an absurdity I oppose.
Current affairs I don't watch on TV, I get my current affairs online.
Election night is one of the few times I watch the BBC, but I could just as easily watch Sky. Though yes PB trumps them both.
But that one series, at £11.50 for eight episodes is 80% of my monthly LF.
If you want to have a radio subscription then pay for it. Good for you.
Curious how popular that would be. Not very is my guess.
As for election night, I see that you don't like the BBC apart from when you do.
There are now much better outlets who do long form interviews and allow the guest to speak.
Yes, England should be favourites to take the wickets, so long as it doesn’t rain.
It is a race against destroying the economy.
That is what a lot of idiots don't seem to get. Its sad to see the EU Commission are amongst those idiots.
And as a result parties are interested in how to win the largest number of seats with the smallest number of votes, and boundary changes are a weapon in that contest.
Having said that Labour's real problem needs solving as well, which is that outside its increasingly random special interest groups there are few positive reasons for voting for them while a nation looks at them hopefully.
I don't want to, I campaign against it, but I do.
Yes I do (very rarely) watch the BBC. I pay through the nose for it so why shouldn't I? I just recognise how rarely I do and what terrible value for money it is, which is why many others are cancelling. Good for them.
Profoundly stupid woman.
Netflix produces far more output than the Beeb does at a fraction of the price. The Beeb has missed the boat.
The BBC has enriched the nation and been widely trusted and admired across the world, giving the UK great cultrural influence
Furthermore, I find it bizarre that the principal architect of its demise has been the Conservative Party, a party whose very name implies it is there to conserve the best of our national heritage.
Apparently not. The BBC has been hampered over many years in expanding its gobal reach and power by the Tory party in the interest of pursuing their private enterprise ideology (aka more money for the rich).
Rant over.
Otherwise I’ll think those Justice for Salmond t shirts are a load of hypocritical bullshit.
People will pay for something that's worth the money, if the BBC thinks it's worth the money then it should have no trouble with making the licence fee optional and locking BBC TV behind a subscription wall. The trouble they have is that they know it loses them 50-60% of their licence fee income overnight becuase there are too many people who won't pay for it. I'd have no trouble losing BBC1/2/4/News from my Sky EPG and buying a monthly subscription to "BBC Entertainment" for £4-6 if they withdrew licenced programming from Netflix as part of the deal. I'd probably completely dump Sky and go all streaming. I can live without MOTD and the terrible News programming.
You should be able to buy the BBC radio on a subscription model.
How popular? No idea but there will be millions of takers at a price.
Same with other modules.
The other thing about BBC TV is that occasionally either for news or event coverage (and IMHO election nights) it has the edge because of its range and reliability and (even) caution. Its (relative) commitment to neutrality and truth is important. I think like without BBC would be much worse.
Is there anyone else in radio who would produce the World Service or, say, Tim Harford?
Ideally, you want to just win as many seats as possible. So don't waste too many votes on showy huge majorities or on near misses. But to do that, you need to know what share of vote you are expecting. Get that wrong and all those seats you planned to win by 3 % turn into seats you have lost by 1 %.
On Sweden:
Nov 24
The increase in cases seems to have stabilised though still day-to-day ups & downs. Similarly with ICUs. Possibly deaths too, though harder to evaluate given lag in reporting.
Dec 1
Update to Sweden. The increase in new positive tests looks to have levelled off over the past week. Similarly new ICUs & possibly deaths too, though harder to tell given how much backdating there tends to be.
Dec 8
Update to Sweden. Over past week: new positive tests have crept up a bit quite a bit of backdating of deaths with a peak of 65 so far on 24 Nov (April peak was 115). ICU trend largely flat (as it has been for about 3 weeks), though with significant day-to-day variation.
Dec 15
Update to Sweden. Positive tests increasing after the late-Nov plateau. ICUs & deaths (allowing for backdating) look more stable at the moment, perhaps reflecting that plateau in positive tests from a couple of weeks ago?
Dec 22
Update for Sweden. Positive tests still increasing though relatively slowly & with ups & downs. Despite that, ICUs averaged a fairly steady 24 / day since end of Nov. Deaths also fairly stable since end of Nov (with day-to-day ups & downs), even allowing for backdating.
Dec 30
Update for Sweden. Obvious caveat: Christmas effects make trends hard to interpret. 7-day ave of positive tests well below 23 Dec peak, but may still be some post-Christmas catch up to come. ICUs & deaths still not reflecting the increase in positive tests seen during December.
I've got to say that if I'd been following just him, I'd not have realized that December saw the surge in the second wave deaths in Sweden to a worse place than the worst of the first wave there, and a per capita death toll through December worse than that in the UK.
He seems to have unaccountably failed to notice any of that.