You may need a licence for your PC !
six-toes
Published Thursday 3rd March 2005 17:38 GMT
The BBC licence fee could eventually replaced by a tax on having a PC
instead of owning a TV, according to a Green Paper delivered this week.
The government plans to retain the license fee for at least ten years
but ministers are looking ahead to a time when high-speed broadband
connections routinely deliver digital television channels to the
nation's homes. In that event a fee based on television ownership could
become redundant and the government could look at other ways to raise
revenue, from subscriptions to taxing other access devices.
In a statement to Parliament this week, Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell
said that "the changes in TV technology that will soon result in a
wholly digital Britain... perhaps the greatest challenge the BBC has
ever faced." The Times reports that a legal loophole means consumers
could watch television or listen to radio over the net without having
to pay a license fee, leaving the BBC with a funding shortfall that
could run into the millions.
A Department for Culture, Media and Sport Green Paper on the BBC's
long-term future proposes an end of the traditional license fee and
"either a compulsory levy on all households or even on ownership of PCs
as well as TVs". It cautions that these fees might be tough to enforce.
Ministers are also consulting about the possibility of introducing a
subscription model.
The Government reckons changes to the license fee will not be needed
until 2017, when the BBC's next royal charter expires. However unnamed
sources at the Department for Culture told The Times that the
government would act earlier if viewing TV on the net became a hit with
consumers. In August 2004, the BBC broadcast video clips from the
Olympic Games over the net as an experiment. Six million UK homes
currently have broadband connections, a figure that can only grow over
time, spurring demand for innovative service like broadcasting over the
internet. The majority of UK households will be watching TV over the
internet by 2012, regulator Ofcom predicts. ®
*******************************
its time to stop susidising the BBC behemoth ,its a gravy train
Gordon
| In a statement to Parliament this week, Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell
Aren't the words "Culture" and "Tessa Jowell" in the same sentence an
oxymoron?
--
Interim Systems and Management Accounting
Gordon Burgess-Parker
Director
www.gbpcomputing.co.uk
Dave
"Gordon" <gord...@yahoo.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
news:38p5lsF...@individual.net...
> six-toes wrote:
> | In a statement to Parliament this week, Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell
>
> Aren't the words "Culture" and "Tessa Jowell" in the same sentence an
> oxymoron?
Yeah, "culture" is the oxy bit and "Tessa Jowell" is the moron bit. :)
blackhole...@the_skip.invalid
<gord...@yahoo.co.uk.invalid> wrote:
>six-toes wrote:
>| In a statement to Parliament this week, Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell
>
>Aren't the words "Culture" and "Tessa Jowell" in the same sentence an
>oxymoron?
However I like the idea of Tessa Jowell and sentence in the same
sentence! Just how much is mere detail, the more the better maybe?
--
astro
Reg Edwards
radio programs are available only on the Internet, the government will have
tight control over those powerful sources of information in both directions.
Why do you think the government encourages rapid expansion of the Internet
at every opportunity?
John Perry
>By John Leyden
>Published Thursday 3rd March 2005 17:38 GMT
>
>The BBC licence fee could eventually replaced by a tax on having a PC
>instead of owning a TV, according to a Green Paper delivered this week.
This is a great idea to help employment in this country so don't knock
it. The PC licences will be averaging £20 per year for each one.
Exact rules will be worked out but there will be price bands depending
on your income so it is rather like income tax/council tax. There will
be 5 bands ranging from £5 per PC to £50 per PC.
A self assessment form will be completed by each PC owner for each PC
(rumoured to be about 10 pages) and the answers will all be checked by a
new Labour PC Department that will be staffed with some 2,000 people.
Annual returns will be required. ISPs will provide details of all
account owners; computer suppliers and parts suppliers will provide
details of components bought that will go into a new database of PC
ownership, set to cost some £50 million.
Then there will the extra 1,000 PC inspectors that will be employed to
check on houses that appear not to have a PC.
So as well as providing income to help the health service, we will
provide employment for over 3,000 more people.
Seems a good idea to me;-)
--
John...@redoak.co.ukNOSPAM (delete NOSPAM)
www.redoak.co.uk www.eze-buy.co.uk
thoss
<John...@redoak.co.ukNOSPAM> writes
I think your estimates of staff numbers are low by a factor of at least
10.
When I reach 75 I will get my TV licence free. If this new system comes
in in 2017 I will be 85. Will my PC licence be free then?
--
Thoss
John Perry
Doubt it, I am sure this Labour government could milk their tax and
spend policy a bit further. You would have a tapering relief with age,
20% off for each year above 65, and you would have to complete a
questionnaire each year.
You may be right about the employment estimates - Just think, Blair
could announce the creation of some 50,000 new jobs under their
government! But he wouldn't announce it once, it would be done 3 or 4
times to create the illusion he had created some 150,000 to 200,000 new
jobs!
John
You forgot to mention the PC detector vans
--
John Clark
John
writes
I would assume this would be correct. Otherwise it is Age Discrimination
under the DDA, and you should be able to sue under the Human Rights Act.
QUESTION: What about PC networks running under NATs on a fixed IP?
Can these people have 26 peer-to-peer networked PCs that
look to the internet like 1 PC?
--
John Clark Constipation is the thief of time, but diaorrehia waits
for no man!!
Ivor Jones
"John" <fred...@consltec.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:UtZxQtAY...@consltec.demon.co.uk...
[snip]
> QUESTION: What about PC networks running under NATs on a fixed IP?
> Can these people have 26 peer-to-peer networked PCs that
> look to the internet like 1 PC?
If you run a NAT router how will anyone be able to tell what you have
behind it..?
Ivor
PS not sure I like the sound of this, it has the ring of Big Brother about
it to me...
Mark McIntyre
<fred...@consltec.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>QUESTION: What about PC networks running under NATs on a fixed IP?
> Can these people have 26 peer-to-peer networked PCs that
> look to the internet like 1 PC?
As someone else pointed out, there are technical ways to determine the
count of network devices behind a firewall, based on detailed
examination of the TCP headers.
However thats likely to be irrelevant as any rule would probably work
like TV licensing (as many TVs as you like in one premises) and anyway
it would be unable to differentiate between (say) PCs, networked
printers & printservers, NAS/SAN devices, routers, and so on.
Nigel Wade
> "six-toes" <sixty...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>By John Leyden
>>Published Thursday 3rd March 2005 17:38 GMT
>>
>>The BBC licence fee could eventually replaced by a tax on having a PC
>>instead of owning a TV, according to a Green Paper delivered this week.
>
> This is a great idea to help employment in this country so don't knock
> it. The PC licences will be averaging £20 per year for each one.
>
There is already a tax on nearly every PC sold. This is the Windows Tax.
Although the original Window Tax was repealed in 1851, it was in fact
surrepticously re-introduced in 1983. In order to disguise the fact that it
is a tax it is collected by a foreign agency.
It is a true stealth tax in that the vast majority of people who pay it are
unaware that they are paying it at all. They have been deceived into
thinking that the Windows on their PCs are free, but this is not true. A
charge is levied for each installation, but the cost is hidden in the
purchase price. If you want to upgrade your Windows, for example to provide
better insulation and reduced loss of information, you begin to see the
level of taxation.
--
Nigel Wade
anticor...@msn.com
simply just started their own ISP (with a 10 pound monthly fee) and
just not let users of outside ISPs access the TV feeds? That sounds
good to me...just as long they don't try to monopolize the ISP field by
forcing other ISPs to go out of business.
And while they're at it...why not just make the BBC TV channels
subscription-only on cable and satellite? That way, people who actually
WANTED to watch the BBC could simply pay an extra $10/month on their
cable/satellite bills, and people who DON'T want to watch the BBC do
not have to pay for it.