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MUNGUIN'S NEW REPUBLIC 
Don’t know if I’d buy the whole package, they do make some dross.
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The £25 million a year is probably a package deal, and it would cost more à la carte because someone would have to pick and choose – easier just to stream the whole thing. An SBC couldn’t chop any of it out anyway, as it would be accused of intellectual snobbery at best, and censorship at worst. Of course, DBV-T has dramatically multiplied the amount of – hm, how not to be offensive about it – pap and crap that can be delivered over the airwaves. Before we even get on to DVB-S. What she wants to watch should be left up to the end consumer.
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Just screen it all on one or two channels (I’m sure when I was in Dublin you could get BBC 1 and 2 on the hotel room tv).
Buy the package. As I say there are people who are enthralled by what I might call pap, and what might interest me might send someone else to sleep!
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Good to be back, Tris! Where was I? Yes, documentaries about reproductive practices among penguins are not for everybody, or even the faint-hearted and those of a nervous disposition, though I do have one friend who is a fellow enthusiast … or maybe it was just Munguin using up your pay-per-view subscription, not you. Anyway, no matter. As they say in France and various other places, “à chacun son goût”, which means that everyone tastes a little different, and has nothing to do with gout, which is “la goutte”, as everyone should know.
As I was saying, the revenue from TV licences sold in Scotland – sorry, the TV tax in Scotland – should go directly into Scottish broadcasting, and I would like to see to it raised instead from a small charge on a unit of electricity – which we would hardly notice after independence as we would no longer have to subsidize the National Grid by paying exorbitant levies for each MWh we put into it. It would also mean that if you disapprove of the SBC’s output, you could punish them by sitting in the dark with the TV off. Or maybe just turn the TV off and read or something.
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Munguin been watching penguin porn?
I’ll put him to bed with no supper!
🙂
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I’d drop EastEnders, pure brain dissolver, puerile pish.
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LOL. I’m not sure I’ve ever watched an episode. B ut everyone has heard of Dot Cotton.
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All soap operas are banned, in my house. If you’re interested in people, go out and talk to some.
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Good one.
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I am massive Eastenders fan. Watched it since the first episode. It’s not what it once was but it still goes well with my dinner. There, it’s out in the open now.
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Do you feel better?
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Yes, especially after today’s fix of typical life in the East End.
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Ah…. Hmm. Good. How is Dot Cotton? Still working down the launderette?
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Well, I guess you have to cater for all tastes. I don;t watch tv, except when I’m in someone else’s house, so I’m not much of an expert, but I wouldn’t mind seeing some of their nature programmes.
I’d[pay money not to have to watch some of the dreadful dross, but, what I consider dross is what some other people consider a great night’s entertainment.
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In answer to your question. What we do is read more, go to the cinema, go to concerts, speak to each other ( OK that’s just sometimes but we have been married a while ), watch DVD’s, listen to music, and well just lots of stuff. We do not miss the idiot box at all. When we stay in a hotel we put on the ipads not the telly.
You do not need it. You do not have to subsidise propaganda. You won’t miss it at all. Stop paying for it. Detune it. Get a netflix or a Prime sub if you want ( for less dosh). You can do without them – and their mini-me on STV.
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I think if you have a computer you probably don’t need the tv.
Mind there are a few older people in my block who kinda rely on the tv for entertainment.
To each his own.
But I really resent having to pay for a few channels that I wouldn’;t watch, in order to get ANY tv at all.
It’s just not right.
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It’s a weird thing, the TV license. I have to pay one here, too, to a company called Billag. I think it is around £300 a year. Yes, that’s what I said!
Billag is one of the least transparent organisations on the planet so nobody really knows where the money goes. Having watched some “prime” Swiss TV I can vouch that it isn’t getting spent on any of that. They also buy in UK, German, Austrian, French and Italian TV so maybe that adds up. Still, can’t believe it comes to £300 per head. Even if you don’t watch TV you still have to pony up the cash if you can receive anything in any form on any gadget.
From memory, I think Germany also has a TV license system. Just want to point out that the UK isn’t the worst offender at this.
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Hmmmm… fair enough. Mind you £300 is Switzerland is probably not as much as £150 in the UK. It’s some time since I was there but I seem to remember taking out a mortgage for ‘un café’ (Geneva), and my Swiss mate wouldn’t let me pay for anything else.
I reckon pretty much all tv is poorer these days as they have to provide 24/7 programming on most channels.
I remember reading that in Iceland there used to be no tv on a Wednesday, because the staff had to have one day off a week… and it shut down in August too, so that they could have a holiday.
I wonder if Swiss tv news is honest and truthful, or politically biased?
I’m imagining that each Canton/Half Canton has its own broadcaster?
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I don’t watch enough Swiss TV to really know much about it.
Each Canton has a local station. The are really, really low budget. I can’t imagine they get many viewers but that is likely where the budget goes.
There are two national stations. Saturday night prime time is usually some schlager music or people playing a game of cards called Jass. A truly astonishing spectacle in the 21st century.
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LOL It sounds better than Ant and Dec and I’m a Z lister has been… Don’t get me out of here too quick. I really need the money.
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The British Propaganda Channel or EBC take a bit less than the £350 Million. Since 2014 they have lost a minimum of £20 million per year, and rising, in tv taxes through non-payment and probably more since the tories stoped paying for the over 75s.
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Well, I stopped paying, but in fairness I also stopped watching. I had a tv in my living room that I had forgotten how to switch on, so I disconnected it and stopped paying for it.
I hope there are many more who did the same…well, I know there are.
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Yeah, I don’t have one either. Better for the sanity and the blood pressure too.
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Agreed.
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The Tories were going to sell off the BBC until indyref1 when they realised it’s true value to the British state.
Not only would they lose revenues but they would have to find another outlet for their propaganda.
Much better to have Scots pay for all that.
Since,as far as I know,the tv license is just another tax for HM treasury,there is now no reason why it can’t be collected here in Scotland.
We should be collecting all taxes and revenues in Scotland so that the debate about public services can put to bed.
However,for that reason,Westminster will never agree.
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I agree, all taxation is Scotland should be decided in Scotland. As far as I know it is so in Greenland and the Faroe Islands.
I though WE were going to get the best ever devolution.
Another lie.
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Why are you deducting the income from RTE? That should add to the total that the BBC aren’t spending!
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What we meant was if you take the money BBC already spends on the infrastructure, and assume that the BBC would sell us its programmes for the same amount it sells them to the Republic, and deduct it from what we already pay to London, then that is the extra money we would have for running a broadcast service.
Personally, of course, I’d be happy not to have a state broadcaster.
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I don’t want a State broadcaster either, but I’d sorely miss a PROPER Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio, i.e., broadcasters that are free of State control. To be truly free, they also need a guaranteed source of income that the State can’t take away from them. That was the consideration that underlies my notion of a precept on electricity charges to fund public-service broadcasting, which would be hypothecated / ring-fenced for that purpose alone and not go into consolidated revenue in the Treasury.
Just by the way, I do hope that after independence the rates we pay for electricity will be the same whether we are in the old Hydro or SSEB areas created by the Electricity Reorganization (Scotland) Act of 1954. Energy (electricity, coal, oil, gas) is basically a reserved matter – perhaps because we have so much of it – and that really, really needs to change.
I have yet to hear any persuasive justification for the excessive charges levied by the National Grid on the power fed into the grid in Scotland, or for the division of Scotland into two different power supply areas. Of course I don’t suspect for one moment that they’re a scam perpetrated on us to the detriment of our economy and our personal finances. No, I don’t suspect, I know they are, just as I know the BBC’s TV tax is a scam designed to make us pay for the propaganda which they make for us to consume.
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I’d like to see electricity and gas re-nationalised and provided as a service rather than a profit making concern. All over Scotland
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Agreed. We managed to keep water that way, and then here in Scotland we would obviously like to get Scotrail out from under foreign ownership – of course, we’re not alone in this, our confrères down south increasingly want their railways back too.
The Scottish Parliament has no significant control over the rail network over and above rebuilding bits of it entirely within Scotland. Infrastructure ownership and maintenance is outwith our control too. It’s rather an insult for Westminster to act as if we’re not even capable of running our own railways… I rather think that if we had had proper control over our railway system for the past 20 years, we would have seen quite a few more improvements than we have, and sooner.
There’s an argument for treating internet access / broadband as a utility too, because it is fast becoming a necessary adjunct to our participation in the life of our nation. Telecoms too should not be the responsibility of Westminster. Maybe they think that if we had control over the telecoms system, we hairy-legged wee Jockanese might cut the telecoms links that Britnat TV and Radio need to keep the Establishment propaganda flowing… after all, for a long time now rebellions have typically kicked off with the insurgents occupying the premises of State radio and TV, and taking control of the telephone exchanges…
Here’s another thought. Currently, Westminster extracts money from us to run these things for us. If we did them ourselves, the money would (a) be spent in Scotland, generally speaking, and (b) in a sane world the expense of doing it ourselves should be set against the amount Westminster says we owe it – the famous £15 billion black hole… and if the current Conservative and Unionist Party propaganda operation called the Scotland Office could be booted out of the premises it currently occupies into Scottish Conservative Party Headquarters where it belongs, that would be another £4.6 million a year in staffing costs saved that we could spend on sweeties, and there must be plenty of demand for advantageously located office space in central Edinburgh to give us a wee bit more dinner money. Or icing on the cake.
They (we all know who I mean by “They”) are scared stiff that people here will wake up to the fact that we really, really do not need Them, that we could do it much, much better ourselves, and it would not cost us an arm and a leg to do it either – instead it would be significantly cheaper and more beneficial to our economy (and for job opportunities here). It could hardly be more expensive than the way we’re doing it now. BBC Shortbread is just one example of this.
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The things we do run tend to be better run. I agree with you about rail and telecoms.
Of course the Tories seem to think that we do run these things.
Scotrail is doing better than its English counterparts, but it still has to put up with rails owned and maintained by the UK infrastructure firm.
The times I have been late on a train have all been failures in signalling (UK), bridges (UK) and Virgin Trains (UK).
I note that Humza is looking at re-nationalisation. It must be the easiest one to do. Just don;t renew the contract and let the government take over, but I understand that, at present it would be illegal.
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Woodyatt and Dyer 250 bags o sand yore avin a larff incha.
How do we find out what the treacherous Glen Campbell and Sarah Smith are making. We could construct a Pacific Quay league table which compares wages to the amount of dislike we feel toward each of them.
Oh god I can’t believe I said ‘the treacherous Glen Campbell’, I’m beginning to sound like Niko. It’s not contagious is it?
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You need to keep away from him.
A lot of the people are paid through companies and technically freelance for the BBC. Their salaries are not included., because technically they don’t work for the BBC.
I heard that that’s the way Union Jack Bird is paid. Means that they pay less tax too.
I doubt anyone in Scotland is paid what that muppet Chris Evans gets.
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We had a lorry load of LabLib MPs and for 13 years a Labour government in Westminster with huge majority. Many of those Labour MPs from Scotland were in very high office, from PM to senior Ministers.
They did nothing to devolve broadcasting to Holyrood, they opposed it. Worthless Brit/Labour Party grubby self servers. The Scots could not be given power, they might use it.
Power will never be de-centralised from Westminster, they have too much to lose. When they control it then all the mistakes are easy to cover up.
Curiously the newspapers in Scotland are exclusively(almost) Tory owned, rightwing outlets. They serve themselves and the UK state.
Why is it curious, because in a supposedly left wing country ‘we’ve’ let them decide ‘our’ views for so long.
We bear responsibility for what we are willing to put up with.
I cancelled the TV licence 0ver 3 years ago and don’t read the papers any more.
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It is good for us to stop relying on mainstream meeja, and to have to make the effort to find out for ourselves. To anyone who says to me that no longer watching TV or reading the newspapers (well, I read The National) means that I must be spectacularly ill-informed about the world around me, I say that I took that course of action precisely in order to become better informed, as it had been so long so I learned anything true from those sources. It’s not that we don’t consume media output, it’s that we do it intelligently and with (ahem) impeccable taste and discrimination.
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Us cool people who get our information from the interweb thingy! 🙂
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Of course the newspapers in Scotland are owned either in London or In France, USA, Sark, or Russia.
Only DC Thomson in Scotland (P&J and Courier) are Scottish, and they are hard right Tory.
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The BBC isn’t a golden standard for impartiality and sensible allocation of resources? You surprise me… 😛
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A bit like tarnished silver… or more likely rusty tin. Where have you been?
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But I’d add, if the BBC really was biased in favour of ‘no’/’better together’ wouldn’t they be spending more money in Scotland so as to avoid handing you nats a grievance ticket?
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Probably not.
Academic study during the Scottish referendum showed that they were biased, but that’s not really surprising given that they are a royal charter organisation duty bound to protect the union.
If it’s in their charter, then they MUST do it.
But it is also incumbent on them to report accurately the news. I”m not convinced they do that, whether it is about Scotland, or Corbyn, or the Middle East… and presumably many other things.
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I hear the britnat bbc is “reporting” the latest story about Scotland and Wales being refused money when the DUP gets millions. Apparently, according to the bbc, we in Scotland must be grateful for the crumbs of so-called “city deals”. The britnat bbc in Scotland is beyond redemption. Don’t pay the bbc tax. Let britnats pay for britnat propaganda.
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Hear hear.
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Re Railways, bridges etc. and Westminsters attitude to Scotland.
The Claim of Scotland -H.J. Paton, chapter 8 The Take-Over Bid – well worth a read. WOS covered it a few years back so it should be in the archives.
Health warning – not recommended if you suffer from high blood pressure.
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I’ll look for it, Shinty.
As far as I know the blood pressure is pretty much OK, so I should be able to read it 🙂
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