-
@Rembrandt said in British Politics:
The Ministry of Justice figures from magistrate court appearances also state that in the past children as young as 10 were prosecuted along with a handful of those aged between 12 and 14.
Between 2008 and 2016, the figures state that more than 400 teenagers were proceeded against for TV licence evasion.
However, a TV Licensing spokesperson said that the official figures must be wrong as they “don’t prosecute people that young”.
“Our policy is to prosecute people aged 18 or over. We have reviewed this issue before and found around 10 cases where someone aged 17 – but no younger - had been prosecuted
They admitted that they had not contacted the department about the alleged error and the MoJ stood by its figures.
So they admit to prosecuting 10 under the age of 18 however they claim that the Ministry of Justice figures must be wrong because they don't prosecute people under the age of 18 (although have in the past to 17 year olds). MOJ stand by their figures.
Would be interesting to get to the bottom of it.
You never will. Its public servant bureaucracy.
There is a culture of arse-covering and never questioning superiors.
Believe me, when you are used to operating in a more open culture where you admit mistakes and aim to fix them, dealing with the public service in the UK is frustrating. The individuals you deal with can be OK but one mention of 'the Minister' and everyone plays pass the parcel.
You learn quickly that you can get a lot done if you frame stuff as solving an issue before the minister ever hears of it. -
DTT paid subscription shouldn't be difficult - they were around when DTT launched 23 years ago.. You could use a physical or software security token tied to an IP Address and/or MAC address (the BBC already logs these with iPlayer)
UHD via DTT or satellite is limited as it's very spectrum-hungry - and the available spectrum is getting getting used up quite quickly. Streaming gives more choice and is easier and cheaper to run.
The infrastructure outlay to change from old copper carrying the last mile is prohibitive. Very few FTTP households and the lucky ones are where Virgin have run coax to the house.
Openreach is aiming for 500mb to all homes by 2025 (IIRC) using a mix of Fibre & Gfast tech (gives speeds of 500-1000mb on the copper loop from the cabinet). Currently 10% of UK premises have FTTP access- expected to be 50% by 2025. Cost per premises for fibre delivery is now down to about £300 per premises and falling. Coax is. ancient tech and limited (and expensive) compared to fibre.
BBC don’t jail people who don’t pay for their service. That is a misinterpretation of the broadcast system
Actually they do - the BBC is responsible for prosecutions and contracts that to Capita to enforce it - including search warrants. Even if you never watch the BBC, the BBC still gets your money.
It's simply untenable in it's current form
-
@Crucial said in British Politics:
There is a culture of arse-covering and never questioning superiors.
Agree 110%
You are being too polite - you missed out incompetence & treating the public with indifference and/or disdain.
-
@Victor-Meldrew said in British Politics:
@Crucial said in British Politics:
There is a culture of arse-covering and never questioning superiors.
Agree 110%
You are being too polite - you missed out incompetence & treating the public with indifference and/or disdain.
I worked with some pretty competent and switched on stakeholders from govt departments. Everything worked well with good direction until a problem came up. Then they change.
As far as broadcasting went the public effect was actually the forefront of decision making, again except when the was a problem on the horizon and the focus became looking good for the minister.Par for the course with most govt departments in NZ too. Full of people titled “advisors” but never responsible.
-
@Victor-Meldrew the spectrum isn’t just getting full, it is shrinking. All the work I was on was to do with clearing a whole band by cramming and shuffling stuff around.
-
@Victor-Meldrew DTT subscription services are definitely possible. My point was that they require a set top box.
TVs May have inbuilt capabilities but not all are the same and getting manufacturers to agree to firmware protocols is a nightmare. Samsung still won’t even have inbuilt Freeview. -
@Crucial said in British Politics:
DTT subscription services are definitely possible. My point was that they require a set top box.
Not necessarily. You simply use a software token instead of a hardware token on existing STB's and TV's- as used on mobile banking apps. On older sets a CAM module could be used.
-
@Crucial said in British Politics:
@Victor-Meldrew said in British Politics:
@Crucial said in British Politics:
There is a culture of arse-covering and never questioning superiors.
Agree 110%
You are being too polite - you missed out incompetence & treating the public with indifference and/or disdain.
I worked with some pretty competent and switched on stakeholders from govt departments. Everything worked well with good direction until a problem came up. Then they change.
As far as broadcasting went the public effect was actually the forefront of decision making, again except when the was a problem on the horizon and the focus became looking good for the minister.Par for the course with most govt departments in NZ too. Full of people titled “advisors” but never responsible.
Years ago, we pitched for some work with the NHS (helpliine processes & service metrics) and gave them a detailed proposal after meeting with their people. We were staggered at the incompetence and ignorant management we saw at all levels. Saw similar things when engaging on HS2 with the DfT & HS2 Ltd. The original budget was £13Bn...it's now £106Bn*
In both cases the overriding impression i got from the civil service managers was a high level of incompetence, arse-covering and a contempt for the general public
PS* I agree about advisors - but civil servants choose and manage them. A well-known engineering consultancy was handed £5m to cost a viaduct across a large body of water for HS2. They estimated the cost to build it at £56m. Detailed engineering design has shown the cost to be £850m...
-
@Victor-Meldrew said in British Politics:
@Crucial said in British Politics:
DTT subscription services are definitely possible. My point was that they require a set top box.
Not necessarily. You simply use a software token instead of a hardware token on existing STB's and TV's- as used on mobile banking apps. On older sets a CAM module could be used.
My understanding (and I could be wrong) is that while a software token may grant decoding it won’t provide a GUI. There’s no way the beeb would go down the paid route without their own interface
-
@Crucial said in British Politics:
There’s no way the beeb would go down the paid route without there own interface
iPlayer provides any GUI- already requires (like Netflix) sign-in and email verification, logs your IP and uniquely identifies the device you're using - and is linked to the TV licencing database. (check out their T&C's)
The BBC has said it expects most of its output to be watched streamed rather than on traditional channels in the next few years. Then Netflix et al will be competing with them head-on.
-
@Victor-Meldrew said in British Politics:
@Crucial said in British Politics:
There’s no way the beeb would go down the paid route without there own interface
iPlayer provides any GUI- already requires (like Netflix) sign-in and email verification, logs your IP and uniquely identifies the device you're using - and is linked to the TV licencing database. (check out their T&C's)
The BBC has said it expects most of its output to be watched streamed rather than on traditional channels in the next few years. Then Netflix et al will be competing with them head-on.
And we get back to the infrastructure argument again. There’s no way that they will be allowed to not provide a service over terrestrial broadcast.
-
Daily Mail reporting that Johnson is going to sell off Channel 4:
-
@sparky said in British Politics:
Daily Mail reporting that Johnson is going to sell off Channel 4:
Good. That should raise about 30 quid.
-
@sparky said in British Politics:
Daily Mail reporting that Johnson is going to sell off Channel 4:
Not really surprising.
Channel 4 seems to run by a bunch of fruitcakes who seem to think it good business and editorial sense to make up quotes putting BoJo in a bad light, publicly calling him "a proven liar" and having, as it's current affairs anchor, a bloke who likes to chant "Fcuk the tories" at music festivals.
And then expecting them to taken seriously when they say they aren't biased...
-
@Victor-Meldrew said in British Politics:
@sparky said in British Politics:
Daily Mail reporting that Johnson is going to sell off Channel 4:
Not really surprising.
Channel 4 seems to run by a bunch of fruitcakes who seem to think it good business and editorial sense to make up quotes putting BoJo in a bad light, publicly calling him "a proven liar" and having, as it's current affairs anchor, a bloke who likes to chant "Fcuk the tories" at music festivals.
And then expecting them to taken seriously when they say they aren't biased...
Well, he is a proven liar several times over but apart from that I'm with you all the way. If you add on to their obvious bias the fact that in general they make shit TV, their relevance diminishes even more.
-
Great article, again, from the spectator:
-
@MajorRage said in British Politics:
Great article, again, from the spectator:
She's awesome and the hypocrisy from wokeists so blatant.
"If you have brown skin and/or a vagina you must think this way"- this from the crowd who can't stop telling everyone how anti-racist and anti-sexist they are. I reckon most are cottoning on to this now as wokeology collapses.
British Politics