I'm pretty sure the NUS are looking into the issue of student price reductions.
DAS - very off topic, but can I ask a slightly odd question? I know you're at Kent, and was wondering whether there was still a disproportionate number of Irish people there?
Essentially, during "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland, hundreds if not thousands of (Northern) Irish students made for University of Kent because it was the furthest geographical location with a university from Northern Ireland that lay within the British Isles.
The UlsterSoc used to be one of, if not the largest society in the University.
Protestants and Catholics could freely have sex, and did frequently by all accounts.
That's rather interesting actually, I didn't know that. It doesn't seem as though there is an Ulster Society anymore; there's a Catholic one but that's obviously nothing unusual at all.
I was expecting millions of asylum seekers/sex tourists but haven't actually noticed them milling. What I have noticed is a high number of Chinese people. There's loads of Chinese students but in the city as well. If you go into Burger King, it takes about three days for them to understand your order. I think Kent has one of the highest populations of foreign students anyway.
Disclaimer: I am well aware this is a massive generalisation
Er, I'd much rather go without all of the BBC channels and not pay the licence. I've never used the interactive stuff - once, to see what it was all about. None of my family use the interactive stuff, and no one else I know use the interactive stuff. To me its just an annoying little red dot in the corner of the screen that makes me get up and press the back up button.
I only ever watch Eastenders sometimes on BBC One, but I wouldn't miss it. BBC dont OWN my TV do they? They didn't pay for it did they? I'd like them to cut those damned BBC channels off my TV and they can shove their licence where the sun dont shine. It's just another company trying to squeeze money out of you.
And yes, I have Sky Digital, yes I pay £40 a month. Why? Because at least I have the choice. If I don't want Sky no more, I can have them cut me off and thats the end of it. Why cant you do that with the BBC? Because they're money-grabbing penny-sucking bunch of ...... by the way I saw a new version of their logo in the city the other night it was rotated 90° CW and each block was a different colour, yellow red and blue.
It looked SOOOO crap, something I would've done several years ago while under the influence of some extremely toxic chemicals. Dunno what it was advertising though, something about 6 new channels?
Anyway why am I shouting? I dont pay for a TV Licence
Anyway, you know the B&W licence is much much cheaper, who on earth has a black and white TV in this day and age?? If you bought a B&W TV licence, then a few months later got a Colour TV from a friend’s house, would you have to pay out for a Colour Licence?? How do they know if you've got a black and white TV? Do U have to prove it before buying the B&W licence?? I wonder if anyone has ever got away with only paying for a B&W licence but really had a colour TV?
Yes, it is ludicrous to maintain the two tiered system - and indeed since the number of B/W licences must surely be tiny now (remember, genuine use of a B/W licence means you can only have B/W analogue TV's, no VCR, no STB, no nothing else. That in itself is unlikely, but added to that since B/W TV's are now only available new in the form of small 5" battery sets, it makes genuine use of a B/W licence even more unlikely and even more ludicrous to keep the system on), are colour licence payers actually funding the cost of keeping the two tier system going? If so, it's about time to get rid of it and reduce the licence.
But, since a two tier infrastructure exists, a much more productive use of it would be splitting licences into analogue only and analogue/digital licences - why should viewers without digital TV fund BBC services which they can't receive? (in fairness to them the BBC did want to do this, but the government didn't)
As for how the B/W licence works, you don't have to prove that you only have B/W equipment, but you do have to sign a binding declaration to say that you do, and if subsequently that turns out to be false it will be used against you. You're probably safer with no licence at all than with falsely holding a B/W one
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Secondly, I didn't mean that the money would be used to develop encryption to scramble signals for viewers outside the uk, but instead encryption in the sense of MPEG 2 etc.
You mean coding and compression then?
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My argument is not that the Licence should be scrapped - in fact, quite the opposite. But charging every student the full price is ludicrous. In my corridor alone, if everyone had a TV, the income generated would be approximately £1089.00. Add that to the next ten corridors. Now add that to all the corridors. Now add that to all the corridors in all colleges in my university. Now add that to all the universities.
Yep, and it doesn't even need to be in halls. If 4 students live in a student house and each student has their own contract, then TV Licencing will expect 4 licences from that house - quadrupling what they would take if it was a domestic 4 bed house even though the property is usually identical except for each resident being on a separate contract.
And to put my own figures into the ring, when I was in halls I lived in modern ones with cluster flats of 6 (btw, Plymouth's halls are better than any others I've seen). Each block of the hall contained 8 of these flats. My hall had 10 blocks, making for a total of 480 rooms. TV Licencing expected every single room to be individually licenced, so from 1 single hall they took up to £53,760 (the fee was £112 at the time) from buildings occupying a site that is barely 100x50 metres (if that).. Consider that next to that me there was another hall with 240 rooms, and beyond that one with 500 rooms, and beyond that another one with 200 rooms, the total licence fee revenue from just the main part of the University of Plymouth's halls was £159,040, and that's before taking into account the 4 other halls located remotely, and the majority of students who aren't living in halls.
It is of course true that you are entitled to a rebate for the last 3 months, but that assumes you get a licence fee the instant you move in (which as everyone at uni will know, is far from top of the priority list with all the other stuff you have to sort out) and that your term dates do not spill over into a 10th month - I doubt very many people take this up, TV licencing just extract 3 months of licence revenue from millions of people not using it. To say nothing of having your uni address licencing for all the holidays and other occasions when you're not there.
My big issue with students having to pay a licence is that they do not legally live at their term address, it is just a correspondance address. For all official purposes you must use your home address. The only exception to this is for TV licencing purposes, where your address suddenly becomes your official place of residence to be licenced (and in some cases, licenced more than once due to the way the landlords have prepared the contracts - fortunately we always got the landlords to draw up a combined contract for us to stop this scandalous rip off - although they're even trying to change that and hope to be allowed to recognise a room with a lock which only 1 student has a key to as being a separate address in spite of what the contract might say - TV licencing are now just flouting the law to try and protect their revenue from students). But if your term address has no legal status, then so long as your home address is licenced, why should students have to pay again? IMO, students shouldn't just pay a reduced licence fee, they shouldn't pay one AT ALL.
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In a way I agree, but with 18 different transponders used to broadcast each BBC ONE region on sky, surely one transponder broadcasting a totally unique channel is justifiable? Especially considering that some of it is also screened on BBC TWO.
There's a bit more too it than transmission space (and btw they don't use a separate transponder for each region - they use 3 or 4). BBC4 isn't just another stream, it's a complete broadcasting operation with costs to match.
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As mentioned earlier, I and many others believe that BBC Four is certainly worth the money, and would honestly argue that after it's recent programming achievements, deserves more.
You don't need a separate channel to showcase highbrow or risky programming. All they needed to do was stick a regular slot on BBC2 to show it (such as the slots that are used for rebroadcasting virtually everything of worth on BBC4 anyway). I'm not at all averse to this type of programming, but I firmly believe that demand for the channel is not high enough to justify it. Come on, the ratings are so bad that at times they don't register any viewers at all. Minority audiences do need to be catered for I agree, but catering for them means giving them programming for their tastes, it does not mean giving them a complete broadcasting operation. If it did, then there would be hundreds of minority BBC channels. Indeed, can I have one? I was a big fan of 70's/80's Aussie soap Prisoner. It puts me in a minority, but more people watched it in the middle of the night on C5 than have ever watched BBC4, so can I have BBC5, a channel showing back to back Prisoner all day? No? But why not? I'm a minority audience which needs catering for.
Seriously, it's ludicrous that BBC4 exists (especially when it did replacing a GENUINE public service, BBC Knowledge, which costs peanuts to run and was the only FTA channel to provide stimulating programming in daytime), and just because it's catering for the high brow minority audience, they doesn't suddenly make it some sort of cultural treasure, it's still at the end of the day a channel without an audience. If it was a commercial channel it would be unviable, and whilst I'm not suggesting the BBC should plump for lowest common denominator every time, viewing figures this bad do have to be taken into account. BBC4 should go (along with CBBC channel, BBC7 and BBC Asian Network).
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I really think a government review of the BBC's expenses is justified, because nobody's really sure what they do with all of their money and nobody's really sure if it's something that the majority of British people want them to do.
Agreed. The BBC's finances should be entirely transparent. Even to the points that their accounts should be published on the web for review by every licence payer to see, if they're spending my money, I should be able to see where every penny of it gets spent. I'd be interested to know how many do nothing but highly paid figureheads there are in the BBC's management.
Seriously, it's ludicrous that BBC4 exists (especially when it did replacing a GENUINE public service, BBC Knowledge, which costs peanuts to run and was the only FTA channel to provide stimulating programming in daytime), and just because it's catering for the high brow minority audience, they doesn't suddenly make it some sort of cultural treasure, it's still at the end of the day a channel without an audience. If it was a commercial channel it would be unviable, and whilst I'm not suggesting the BBC should plump for lowest common denominator every time, viewing figures this bad do have to be taken into account. BBC4 should go (along with CBBC channel, BBC7 and BBC Asian Network).
Hmm, In my house my sister watches CBBC channel every afternoon, my mum watches BBC3 in the evenings (Liquid News etc) and I watch programmes on BBC4, I am a music student at uni and find many programmes on BBC4 very interesting and useful which would not be there should the BBC do what you suggest. Everyone complains how the BBC are obsessed with raitings and yet they keep channels which do not have high ratings going - this argument doesnt carry really!
Something that is very popular is the two week broadcast of the Proms during the summer on BBC4, this brought in some of the highest ratings that BBC4 has had, this sort of broadcast would not be possible without BBC4. Isnt the BBC fundamentaly meant to cater and provide that which would not be viable in the commercial world?
In my opinion BBC4 will only become more succesful if it broadcasts all day, doing what BBC Knowledge did during the day and do what it does now in the evenings. I know this cannot happen as due to restrictions on bandwidth, but surely somebody can make this happen one day.
In my opinion BBC4 will only become more succesful if it broadcasts all day, doing what BBC Knowledge did during the day and do what it does now in the evenings. I know this cannot happen as due to restrictions on bandwidth, but surely somebody can make this happen one day.
Absolutely. Although it would probably be impractical on Freeview, I really can't understand why this doesn't happen on sky. Even repeating the previous nights programming would be better than NOTHING! Also, it would, in effect, double the 'value' of the channel; most probably gaining equal or more viewers in the day because it would be the only intellectual choice available.
Finally, I totally agree that the B&W license should be abolished: it is an incredibly easy way to evade paying the full amount, and therefore should be abolished immediately.
[Something that is very popular is the two week broadcast of the Proms during the summer on BBC4, this brought in some of the highest ratings that BBC4 has had, this sort of broadcast would not be possible without BBC4.
I've been able to listen to the proms on Radio 3 for years.
I'd actually be interested to see everyone who has contributed to this thread state whether they personally pay the tv licence. No, not mummy and daddy - YOU.
Because they're money-grabbing penny-sucking bunch of ...... by the way I saw a new version of their logo in the city the other night 
it was rotated 90° CW and each block was a different colour, yellow red and blue.
