• markovs_gun@lemmy.world
    421·
    6 days ago

    I’m really glad I didn’t have to see the word cunt here that would have really ruined my day

        • Jade@programming.dev
          17·
          6 days ago

          Nope. You can just plug your TV into the aerial to get BBC + free channels. Netflix and whatever costs extra tho

          • MacN'Cheezus@lemmy.todayOP
            21·
            6 days ago

            I’m surprised that according to the website, they actually let you get away without a license if you only use commercial streaming services and don’t watch any BBC content. In Germany, that excuse doesn’t fly. As long as your device has the capacity to receive aerial broadcast, you have to pay, whether you watch it or not is irrelevant.

            • Knuschberkeks@leminal.space
              7·
              6 days ago

              afaik in Germany you even have to pay if you have no device that to receive anything. Every household has ro pay wirth a few exeptions.

              • MacN'Cheezus@lemmy.todayOP
                10·
                6 days ago

                Pretty sure not owning ANY broadcast receiving devices is the only way to get around it, but that’s extremely difficult to accomplish. Keep in mind radio counts as well (though you can be eligible for a reduced rate if you only have radio access and no TV), including the one in your car, your stereo, or your alarm clock. Owning a TV with no antenna hooked up does not count either, since it’s trivial to do so, and you could just be hiding an antenna in your attic or your basement.

                Basically, the only way to legally skirt the fee is to live under a bridge or in a forest without any electronic devices besides a flash lamp.

            • Shadowedcross@sh.itjust.works
              3·
              6 days ago

              In theory, but the BBC has been known to harass people into paying, even pressuring you into letting them into your house even though they don’t have the right to do so.

            • Darren@sopuli.xyzEnglish
              3·
              5 days ago

              Yes, and it’s ad-riddled nonsense.

              The BBC runs no adverts, save for trailers of its own stuff.

              • Bobby Turkalino@lemmy.yachts
                1·
                5 days ago

                Yeah and even cable/satellite, paid services, are ad-riddled lol. Always kills me how the older generations criticize us for being financially irresponsible when they’re paying to watch a service that’s 20-25% ads

        • Deceptichum@quokk.auEnglish
          2·
          6 days ago

          Do people elsewhere in the world pay for “cable” tv? I know we had a version here in Australia but it was so rare, no one really used it.

          • Bobby Turkalino@lemmy.yachts
            8·
            6 days ago

            It was pretty big over here in the US, and still is with Gen X and older. Nowadays, pretty much the only reasons to get it are if you’re a sports fan or enjoy brainrot 24/7 news networks

    • funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works
      301·
      6 days ago

      Americans fund public TV and radio infrastructure through taxes, Brits just make it opt-out if you meet certain criteria by labeling it as a license.

      You tell me which has more “freedom.”

          • lessthanluigi@lemmy.sdf.org
            7·
            6 days ago

            Sometimes I forget how much freedoms we have in Washington State. The only thing is strict gun laws, but it’s mostly background checks and limited magazine sizes

            • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
              4·
              6 days ago

              Limited mag sizes are a legit issue, but NICs checks are federal.

              The only thing limited mags are effective against is the possibility to have more rounds in a home defense situation (which is really only a problem if there are multiple invaders, but of course there usually are, that’s not usually a solo activity).

              Their stated objective (to reduce the amount of rnds/mag so mass shooters are less effective) is complete hogwash, magazines can be changed in one literal second, and sometimes the shooters even prefer the 10-20rnd mags because the standard 30s are harder to hide. Changing mags is only a problem when someone is returning fire, if you’re completely unimpeded you might as well have a damn lever action.

              • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
                4·
                5 days ago

                And it’s not like mass shooters are law abiding citizens except in the small area of murdering random people… They can easily drive one state over to Idaho and get whatever they want, and if they’re out, continue south to Utah or east to Montana. Nobody is going to check your car on the way back…

                I grew up in WA, and everyone got around whatever law they didn’t like. Want to blow up big fireworks but your town doesn’t allow it? Go to the local res, hide them under a blanket in the car, and be a very law abiding citizen on the way home (and blow them up in a random neighborhood). Before weed was legal, people would just grow it in the forest on public land, which was literally everywhere.

                The mag law just exists to piss off law abiding citizens and is the same “save the children” BS excuse that’d being used to effectively ban porn and other things across the country. Solve the problem another way.

                • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
                  2·
                  5 days ago

                  Tbh you don’t even have to drive, you can 3d print standard capacity magazines and then use a spring, which you can buy in any state, or cannibalize one from another mag (certain mags that can be legally bought in restricted states work too, but a man has to keep some secrets).

                  But also yeah driving works too, and plenty people have done it.

                  I grew up elsewhere, but have similar experiences regarding weed, fireworks, and more. Laws don’t stop people from doing anything they’re significantly intent on doing in my experience.

                  Totally agree, and I extend that to all the pointless feature bans. Their true purpose is for politicians to posture for reelection lol, same with the anti-porn bullshit, just different politicians.

    • rtxn@lemmy.world
      241·
      6 days ago

      The early idea was to support the state-owned and state-operated channels through taxes. Then the channels got privatized and now the taxes are going straight into the pockets of The Brexit Bunch. I mean why would they voluntarily cut off a money source that people were already paying.

      • UncleGrandPa@lemmy.worldEnglish
        28·
        6 days ago

        In San Diego they had a toll bridge… once it was paid for they kept the toll. When asked why they were still charging a toll… They said the toll booths still cost money to run. They had to be sued for the toll to stop

        • nialv7@lemmy.world
          10·
          6 days ago

          Having to charge toll because they need money to run the toll booths is the most Kafkaesque thing I have heard in a while.

    • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de
      14·
      6 days ago

      This is/was a thing in many other European countries too.

      In Austria it used to be (not long ago, a few years at most) that only people who owned a TV needed to pay it, not anymore, now every household has to pay it, so it is basically a household tax.

      • алсааас [she/they]@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        9·
        6 days ago

        It’s not a tax tho? At least not in Germany. It’s going directly to the state-broadcasting service but unconditionally; the idea being it’s harder to influence the content or threaten them with cutting off their funding.

        • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de
          3·
          6 days ago

          This is also the case in Austria according to https://orf.beitrag.at/faq/allgemein so whether to call that a “tax” or not is purely a terminological question. It used to be that this was only required for owning a TV, but this was hard to enforce because there was no automatic legal requirement to let inspectors into one’s home and companies started to produce TVs without a TV tuner (i.e. could only stream from the Internet) to get around this.

  • Aeao@lemmy.world
    6·
    4 days ago

    My morning as a Texan

    Knock on the door… I open the door with my 1911 cocked locked and ready to rock.

    It’s a sheriff with his own drawn. He goes to shoot my dog but the dog pulls a beretta. We laugh at the dog for his immigrant gun.

    Sheriff tells me there’s trouble at the watering hole so I ride out to grab bubba.

    I shoot my horse because I was pretty sure it hurt its leg later and grab one of the many spares roaming around…

    Head to the watering hole to see an Italian man in a native headdress…

    Shoot him because it was my right as an American

    It was my Pa.

  • maxwells_daemon@lemmy.worldEnglish
    18·
    5 days ago

    Oi, you got yer internet licence, mate? Can’t be crackin’ these jokes if you ain’t a proper grown-up, innit?

  • thearch@sh.itjust.works
    4·
    4 days ago

    honestly, the sleeping licence and tv licence are one thing, but an unregistered butterknife? that’s just asking for trouble. where’s the respect for law and order?

  • daggermoon@lemmy.world
    3·
    5 days ago

    Do y’all brits actually pay for the license? Can you be arrested for not paying it? How does it work exactly?

    • Log in | Sign up@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      5 days ago

      Do y’all brits actually pay for the license?

      Licence. (Lisense is a verb in British English.)

      Yes. It funds the BBC which is public service broadcasting, usually very high quality and has no advertisements. You aren’t allowed to watch BBC or any live television whatsoever in the UK without a TV licence.

      Can you be arrested for not paying it?

      Not any more. It’s now a civil rather than criminal offence. The conservatives didn’t like that they even today tend to report facts alongside opinions, so they threatened to remove the licence fee. Instead they made of civil rather than criminal, so non payment is only punishable by a fine, which of course means it’s only illegal for poor people who can’t gamble the fine.

      They used to send detector vans round to addresses that don’t have a licence for enforcement. The ads said they could tell if you were watching telly. I suspect they detected aerials, but that was in the days of Cathode Ray Tubes, and maybe you can detect them being on, I don’t know.

      How does it work exactly?

      They just send a bill to everyone in the post, warning of the consequences of non payment. You can pay by direct debit for less paperwork. Compliance is pretty high. It used to be higher before the conservatives started meddling.

      The conservatives would love to get rid of the BBC and the NHS but they know it would be an absolute disaster for them politically because the people love them, flawed as they are, so they just underfund them badly and then complain about how bad they are.

      +++

      That strategy initially worked with the trains, which the conservatives privatised in the 1980s on the grounds that the reliability was poor and the rolling stock was badly out of date, but after a few decades of privatised rail, the promise of competition driving up quality and driving down prices has proven very hollow indeed, and now nationalisation is popular in every demographic group including conservative voters.

      The East Coast Main Line went bust so many times that no commercial operators would touch it and the government was forced to step in. The civil servants were told to look for efficiency savings and make it more commercially viable, but when they did that it became the most reliable and punctual line in the UK with the best customer satisfaction, and cost far less in subsidies than the privatised lines. Who knew that extracting the most money possible for shareholders would drive down quality whilst driving up prices and government costs?

      The current labour government is nationalising rail on the cheap by simply not renewing the franchises when they expire. Manchester’s buses have come back under local authority regulatory control. Some things are getting better under labour, but some things are not and the prime minister seems to think that Biden is the best example to follow in many ways.

      • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.works
        5·
        5 days ago

        The ads said they could tell if you were watching telly. I suspect they detected aerials, but that was in the days of Cathode Ray Tubes, and maybe you can detect them being on, I don’t know.

        You can absolutely detect a CRT from outside. A CRT is basically a small particle accelerator with a magnetic deflection system, inside an unshielded plastic (or wooden, if you go back far enough) box. Of course, it will need to be turned on, just the presence of a TV doesn’t show up. It’s probably a fair bit harder to actually detect which house the signal comes from, but you can solve that with a big enough directional antenna. With analog TV, you might even be able to detect which channel they’re watching, based on the exact frequency, which makes it easy to tell a TV from a computer monitor too.

        Basically, if you’re converting an analogue radio signal into a picture, you’re using that frequency. And any leaks would be detectable by another antenna. From that point, it’s “only” a matter a building the right antenna, aiming it correctly and filtering out the stuff that comes from other directions.

        Spotting a flatscreen/LCD/TFT or really, any non-analog TV is probably a LOT harder, and distinguishing between a TV recieving a signal and computer monitor seems (to my lay skills) pretty much impossible.

        • ulterno@programming.devEnglish
          3·
          5 days ago

          Yeah, considering that the TV has enough noise to be heard by the human ear, it doesn’t seem far fetched that specialised equipment can tell much more about it.

          heard by the human ear

          I mean the screen, not the audio output from the speakers

      • Ricaz@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        3·
        5 days ago

        It works more or less the same in Denmark, except we now switched to paying it over our taxes automatically