Thanks to BJSAlba for these.
Of course, the real jokes of this week are undoubtedly the contenders, possible and impossible, for the Tory Party leadership. As they work hard to outbid each other on the “I did drugs. What can I say? I’m actually human, just like you ordinary run-of-the-mill lower and lesser folk”, something interesting has come to light.
The process for a visa for visiting the USA includes questions about drug use. Wee Govey’s recent admission with regard to the use of cocaine, could put him in breach of rules, which require applicants to state if they have ever violated laws related to possessing, using or distributing illegal drugs.
We may reasonably assume that on previous applications for USA visas, he will have lied about his drug use. And so he could conceivably be refused a visa to enter the USA.
Of course, if he were elected prime minister, that wouldn’t happen, which would also be an embarrassment in its own way because it would prove that there is one rule for those and such as those and one rule for… well, us.
But given that Gove is not the only one to admit to drug use, the UK could well end up with a prime minister who wouldn’t be able to visit their greatest ally. Donny!
Of course, the admission from the house elf is all the more embarrassing because, as English Education Secretary, Gove brought in legislation that allowed for the disqualification (and sacking) of teachers who were convicted of possessing class A drugs…all the while knowing that his wee nose was no stranger to these substances.
To be fair, school teachers are not prime ministers and vice versa! But still, maybe he needs to rethink his career plans.
or this bloke and his little lap dog…
…the dream team?
Maybe the others, given the age and disposition of the average voter in this contest, should have been a bit more careful about what they admitted to.
After all, whatever happened to the good old fashioned, if slightly dull, practice of admitting to running through a cornfield.
Oh yes, of course…she did that!
MUNGUIN'S NEW REPUBLIC 
Wouldn’t it be great if having gone abroad, Goves previous confessed misdemeanours excluded him from re-entry to the Yookay. Then we could be well rid of the wee shite, once and for all.
Sorted.
Unfortunately any tosser can come here and welcome, provided they’ve got the folding. Tossers already in residence like Gove come and go as they please and if they’re politicians, they can it would seem, confess to any crime and still keep their job.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m the last one to get self righteous about drugs. Not that I effer did any ossifer but even I know through the worst of my whiteys that there’s nothing cool or hard about taking them. What will we hear next? I smoked a fag once says Andrea Leadsom. I got it off Elvis and then we had a shag round the back of the refuelling tanker at Prestwick in 1958 so please elect me because I’m so much cooler than that wee pasty, bandy legged, Aberdonian git, Gove. He’s trying to con us that he’s English but he’s obviously a genetically inferior lying wee Scottish Fcuker.
All of this nonsense of course is based upon very little knowledge of the Gove drugs thing because I’m so utterly disinterested by it all and can’t be bothered to find out. I’ve seen a couple of tweets and 2+2=9. The soap opera that is British politics is tedium beyond description. My speculation fatigue increases exponentially and I’m now digging a big hole in my garden to bury my food and weapons cache for either:
a) The zombie apocalypse.
b) October the 31st.
I’m living in hope that it’s (a)
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‘Tiz the Tory Party leadership contest right now! It is very very hard to distinguish between that and the zombie apocalypse!
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Exactly!
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LOL.
I listened to Amber Rudd trying to criticise Gove and not criticise him this morning on radio.
She wants Jeremy Hunt, presumably because he’s offered her the Foreign Office or the Treasury (won’t be the Home Office because she was sacked from that for lying).
It’s quite funny listening to them pushing their own agenda but not criticising anyone else.
At least Boris seems to give off the message that he doesn’t give a stuff about the “just getting by”, and is going to give a big tax cut to the “getting by nicely”.
Jeremy Hunt has always sounded to me like he’s on something. So does Rory the Tory. Hadrian’s Wall!
The trouble is that there isn’t one single applicant that is worth a vote. They are all ghastly in their own way. It’s just that their ghastlinesses are all different.
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Re Gove and USA, it reminds me of a Not the Nine O’clock news sketch where Gorbachev lands in USA and was asked if he now or ever has been a member of the Communist party and then his plane rewinds its journey.
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LOL. 🙂
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For Gove to make his admission, methinks someone was about to expose him and he got in first.
I wouldn’t care if he took drugs if he wasn’t looking to punish others that did. Hypocritical goldfish tosser.
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Yes, I feel that way too.
Loads of people tried drugs and then moved on. That’s fine.
But this smarmy wee git allowed a change in regulations that meant that teachers in Eng;and could be sacked and have their registration revoked for doing it. Even if it were in the past.
If it applies to teachers, then why not cabinet ministers.
And yes, someone must have tipped him the wink that it was about to be released. I noticed that the Daily Mail, for which his wife works, was pretty vicious about him. Odd, I thought.
Jobs where you get sacked for taking Class A Drugs
Dr
Nurse
Police Officer
Fire Fighter
Athlete
Sportsman
Jobs to apply for if your a Coke head
UK Prime Minister.
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Agree, they’re all getting in the excuse before the rags decide to burn them.
I already see the escalation of the media’s tale against gove, rules are rules.
1) Must be on paper at least, male
2) Must be eton.
3) must be oxbridge.
4) must be rich or from old money.
5) Must be a true englandlander.
6) must be caucasian.
7) oh must be an mp.
Think that just about covers it.
The whole thing is totally undemocratic, the maybot lost the tory majority.
EU said, don’t waste the time, off on holiday, now a wee lottery show.
All meaningless, GE in the offing but mps don’t vote for turkeys or do they?
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I reckon there will have to be an election, and the world will go on laughing at the UK
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As we have to suffer this farrago for the next six weeks or so. I see one of the jokers, Johnson, is now promising tax cuts for the better off, the estimated £9.6bn cost to the treasury to be paid by ” savings to be made with a no deal Brexit”. Now where have we heard that before.
No doubt the rest of the most obnoxious, cruel, uncaring, bunch of brain dead idiots ever assembled will be trying to outdo each other with scenarios, none of which will be attainable, to try to convince the equally stupid Tory M.Ps, and then the rapidly expiring members of their party, to vote them to be their leader, and by default, Prime Minister.
I know that I’m repeating myself, but if anyone in Scotland believes any of these contenders give a monkeys about us, then ” their heid zips up the back”.
I couldn’t care less what the opinion polls say, we must take our next opportunity, and soon, otherwise we condemn future generations of Scots to a life ruled by an increasingly ugly Westminster administration who will try, and probably succeed, in side-lining the Scottish Parliament, making us subservient to a U.K Government in Scotland, under the control of a Quisling, whose sole objective will to be continue the asset-stripping of our country which has been going on for centuries. Not for me.
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I suppose that they are appealing to a tiny part of the population.
Nothing that they promise is actually going to happen.
There will almost certainly have to be an election.
We’re just wasting more precious time with internal squabbles about who took what drug.
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Just seen this:
National tax guru is clear that Tory leadership candidates are throwing responsible management of national finances to the wind to appeal to tiny selectorate
Either they will break these promises or they will destroy the economy
First f**k business; now f**k public finances.
Paul Johnson
@PJTheEconomist
· 2h
Tax and spending promises by leadership candidates:
– Raab: £30bn+ tax cut;
– Hunt: £20bn+ more spending on defence;
– Johnson: £10bn tax cut;
– Gove: abolish VAT;
Me in @thetimes (link: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/promises-promises-tory-leadership-candidates-are-horrifying-whitehall-xf9n92cmc) thetimes.co.uk/edition/busine… on lack of seriousness. What are their actual fiscal strategies?
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It’s time we asked those Scots who voted No to self determination,which one of these creatures would be their preference for Scotland’s next PM and why?
Of course,they may well say that it is nothing to do with them and that they don’t really care so long as their present lifestyle continues.
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Good idea.
This is what you have left us with… and a pretty sad looking lot they are.
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Although I do understand the language issue on that side of the pond, calling a wheat field a cornfield still takes a LOT of getting used to.
In the 400 years that have elapsed since Brits and Europeans discovered what the colonists called Indian Corn in North America, they have had more than enough time to adjust to American usage. 😉
I like the fingers just visible under the sleeves of Trumpy’s tailcoat.
However, otherwise sensible media and entertainment personalities in the States have persisted in calling Trumpy’s poorly fitting white waistcoat and tailcoat a “tux.” I say that people who don’t know the difference between black tie tuxedo and white tie full dress attire should not be laughing about the matter. This error would surely never happen on the BBC.
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Aye Danny
Two nations!!!!!!, separated by a language called english, with words stolen from many tongues.
Maize for us is corn so we use wheat to distinguish it from what you call indian corn, maybe just Fat grass.
Pavements and sidewalks, pavements and roads. Fenders and wings, trunks and boots, the list goes on.
Especially erasers and rubbers.
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Dave…….From the American republic, just a few comments and suggestions:
I suppose that actually straightening out the “maize” vs “corn” issue would requiring rewriting a lot of history about the Corn Laws. I’ve heard that you do have popcorn (rather than popmaize), but that your popcorn is often slathered with a sweet sticky caramel liquid, instead of a light sprinkling of salt and melted butter which is the (correct) American way to serve it. 😉
Some British English words make sense. “Holiday” seems somewhat more sensible than the American “vacation,” although it immediately runs up against the American “holiday” as a national day of observance, when most people get a day off from work. The Brits seem to have resolved the holiday problem with the term “bank holiday,” although at first sight it made me wonder why the Brits made such a big issue about banks being closed.
For the record, I do think that “telly” is WAY too cutesy and should be replaced with the good solid sensible American “TV.”
High on the silliness scale (IMHO) is “torch” for a portable, battery-operated light. On the other hand, the American “flashlight” doesn’t really “flash,” although it once did back in the day to conserve old style batteries. So maybe “portable battery-operated light” is the best way to go these days.
Bonnets and boots (in an automotive context) also need to be retired due to the obvious cutesiness problem.
As you suggested, calling an eraser a “rubber” can be a distraction.
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Well, that’s that sorted, Dave LOL
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Well, it would only happen if the error would, in some way, reflect badly on the SNP or Scotland in general. They don’t much like us!
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Tris……Can you image the outrage if an SNP official showed up for for a white tie dinner at the palace wearing a tuxedo? 😉
White tie is very rare for a White House state dinner now. It was national news when the only white-tie state dinner during the DubYa Bush presidency was for the Queen’s state visit in 2007. That appears to have been the very last full dress affair held at the White House to date. Trumpy does much better in a tuxedo, although he still doesn’t button the jacket. (The Blue Room of the White House seen with Macron is not quite Buckingham Palace for photo ops.)
The WH state dining room only seats 120 guests (fewer than Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle), in an arrangement of circular tables, less formal than the single long tables seen at the palaces.
The attire was BLACK tie at the elder Bush’s 1991 dinner for the Queen. Angela Lansbury is seen the top table (# 12) just two chairs from the Queen.
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PS: I just realized that the guy between Angela Lansbury and the Queen is Prince Philip. Obvious that they would not fail to invite Phil to dinner, but I didn’t immediately recognize him. 🙂
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No, it’s not Danny. I don’t know who is is, but it’s not Phil.
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Tris…….I agree that it sure doesn’t look like Phil. But I wonder if they split up husbands and wives at state dinners. Maybe Phil was seated at another one of the circular tables. The guy has a row of medals on his tuxedo like you would expect for a royal. Certainly not an American I’d say. They don’t generally wear such decorations, even on state occasions. 😉
OK…here’s what I found on Google about formal seating arrangements:
“Most formal dinners have a host and hostess. The seating arrangement will start by placing the guest of honor. A female guest of honor will be seated right of host and a male guest of honor will be seated right of hostess”
“The host and hostess can sit either at the head of the table on opposite sides or in the middle of the table opposite sides”
“Husband and wife should not sit next to each other”
SO…….husbands and wives ARE separated at formal dinners.
Now I’m wondering who the guy is with all the medals sitting next to Jessica…..LOL.
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Maybe the Ambassador, Danny?
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Danny, I just spotted Phil at the table right behind the queen’s. It looks like Mrs Bush snr he’s sitting next to. Barbara… well, there is a shock of white hair!
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Tris……You have a good eye! That’s definitely Phil at the next table, and that’s Barbara Bush sitting next to him as she would certainly be seated. Her famously snow white hair is instantly recognizable. She never used any kind of hair coloring as she grew older.
Very likely the British ambassador sitting next to the Queen as you suggest!
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I’ve no idea who the British Ambassador was (or is), but I’m guessing that the people at the President’s table would be very senior. And the people at Mrs Bush’s table would be secondary.
I don’t know what Jessica was there, though. I think that was before they created her Dame. I imagine she must be a favourite of the queen. I bet she has a box set of “Murder She Wrote” (as does Munguin!)
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Tris…..Glad to hear that Munguin properly appreciates Murder She Wrote.
That was 1991, and Lansbury was right in the middle of the prime time network run of Murder She Wrote. So being then currently very popular, and an English born actress with family connections in both English theater and politics, she was probably a good candidate for a seat at the top table with the Queen. Perhaps the Queen was by then a fan of the show. 😉
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Yes, I imagine she was, Danny.
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Interesting, Danny, that in that first photograph with the French President Mr Pence appears to have not trusted himself to stand next to a female of the opposite sex unless it was his wife.
Female-Male; female-male… then male female.
It’s a wonder Angela didn’t have to solve a mystery at the White House. “Jessica, there’s a body in the withdrawing room…”
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LOL Tris…….Yes, it’s a wonder that Jessica is ever invited anywhere. 😉
I hadn’t noticed the gender misalignment in the Macron picture. Pence really can’t be trusted…..LOL.
I’m always surprised at how small and plain and (often) relatively ugly the White House is. Who would actually want to spend any time in the Blue Room for example. A sparsely furnished barn-sized room with an ugly wall covering and even uglier chandelier. It almost makes the rooms at Buckingham Palace look inviting. The excuse is advanced that it wasn’t built to be a palace, but more like a ca. 1800 colonial country house.
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Well, that would fit with the republic point of view, Danny.
Leader has to have somewhere to live, but he (in those days) is not a king. It shouldn’t be a palace.
I imagine that Mike didn’t feel he could be trusted to stand next to the attractive Melania. Get ye behind me Satan, and get ye next to me Trumpy.
I mean even the most desperate couldn’t possibly be tempted by Trump.
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Tris……I think you have Mike Pence figured out. A man determined to avoid temptation…..LOL.
The Blue Room has always served as a principal reception room for state visitors. It is likely the room where Tom Jefferson insulted Anthony Merry, the formally dressed British ambassador, who was presenting his ambassadorial credentials in 1803. As Merry told the story (to anyone who would listen,) “President Jefferson shuffled into the room in “slippers down at the heels” and coat, breeches, shirt, and woolen stockings that…displayed ‘utter slovenliness.'”
Merry considered it a personal insult, which is entirely possible, because Jefferson didn’t much like the English. The perfect choice for the man to write the Declaration of Independence. (Jefferson enjoyed his time in France and got along with the French much better.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Merry
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Ha ha… Interesting man was Mr Merry.
Napoleon called him “Always (or still) Gay”, presumably a commentary on his seriousness, and his name!
Not too great at scheming though!
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LOL……There seems to be some question whether the incidents with Ambassador Merry were simply a case of Jefferson trying to strike a more “common” pose for the presidency, or a deliberate decision to be rude to Merry and his wife…….and by extension, to Britain. Jefferson could be a somewhat nasty politician when he wanted to be. Maybe he just figured what’s the fun of having a revolution if you have to be polite to your former enemy afterwards. 😉
https://blogs.weta.org/boundarystones/2017/01/10/merry-affair
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LOL. Who escorts whom into dinner is the very quintessence of what international diplomacy is about.
Just imagine having to escort ones own wife… or, enter alone and have you seat pinched by some blokey just as you were about to park your butt.
Oh the horrors!!!!
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Well the Sh** will hit the fan now.
The osborne legacy.
The EBC are to stop the free TV licence for the over 75’s, they will only get it if they are on BENEFITS.
Remember the wee rule change for couples with age differences losing benefits if one is not of pension age.
This will maybe open up some eyes of the Proles to who is getting the better return, those earning over £80,000 or those just getting by.
Another maybot promise into the bin.
The EBC is just a state propaganda machine. Wonder if they will continue with the Insurance company sales pitch, you wouldn’t let 10p a day stop you from giving your dependants some security. THE LICENCE IS ONLY 45 PENCE A DAY for 24 hours, i.e. 2 pence an hour.
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I STILL wont bloody pay a TV Tax.
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It’s time we had a wee revolution about this.
£150 a year for 4th rate “entertainment”.
They really can’t prosecute everyone… and surely they would need to think carefully about prosecuting pensioners.
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What we need now Tris is
An appeal to the people of Scotland to support the Scottish government taking control of broadcasting in Scotland.
Devolve control of the media to a body controlled by our own Parliament, yes I do realise that SLAB were in control in Hollyrood in the past.
I may then consider paying for entertainment and education from such a body, the current body. EBC, is the propaganda arm of the englandland establishment.
Eire pay the EBC something like £40 for all the output from the EBC as you can buy programming from all over the world now, I sometimes get my news on the computer from RT, ABC, France24 and a German channel, all in english.
So forget about complaining about the loss of the free TV TAX for the over 75’s lets shout out loud for our own media.
It might take a while to get up and running but it will be better than the current STV and EBC scot.
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Agreed. Munguin may need to write a letter…
Netflix needs to get advertising their services to people. You can get most of the BBC stuff on Netflix for a great deal less, rather like in Eire.
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From the EBC,
3,700,000 people get a free tv licence at present.
The EBC did an on-line survey, 190,000 people responded, of which 52% said scrap it.
Wonder how many over 75’s do on-line surveys?
I responded to the survey, I don’t watch their propaganda.
My response was to scrap the tv licence TOTALY, wondering now IF they’ve just misrepresented my response.
Wish i had kept the survey and had a look again at the form, it included a reply box for comments.
Anyway the maybot promised earlier this year that it would remain, just like her other promises.
So can someone else explain how a so called independent Company can change a benefit without the approval of a parliament.
The chancellor, osborne, got the EBC to take the benefit from their block grant, looks like they’ve decided that the TV TAX will fund the FREE tv licence benefit for certain over 75’s. This means they are definitely a STATE FUNDED Media company. No pretence now that it is funded by the licence fee. Just the same as RT, simply a propaganda machine like North Korea.
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Another May promise goes west.
Jeeez she was hopeless.
You’re right though. I suspect that many over 75s don’t do online surveys.
Of course some do, but I suspect that this is was completed by much younger people who think that if the oldies have to pay, THEIR licence will come down.
Fat chance. The top folk will just get a fat pay rise. And the “stars” will be looking for bigger payments too.
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Ah… just in time for one of the candidates to say that he or she will reverse it…
Damned shame for old folk who depend on other channels for their only entertainment.
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There’s nothing more permanent than a temporary tax.
Historically, I have a lot of sympathy for the BBC TV tax, although it may be an anachronism now. The broadcasting infrastructure that television required was hugely costly. The British government chose a tax on users to pay for it. On the other hand, the Americans chose a commercial paradigm. So American TV was trash from the very beginning, with at least 1/3 of the air time now dedicated to ads. (Sometimes more during non-prime time.)
I wonder how the TV tax has tracked the general inflation rate over time.
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When first introduced on 1 June 1946, the licence covering the monochrome-only single-channel BBC television service cost £2 (equivalent to £81.49 as of 2018). (Wiki) It is now £154, but covers a multitude of channels.
It was a perfectly reasonable thing to do in that time., when there was but one channel and you watched that, or your didn’t
Now, of course, there are hundreds of channels to watch, almost all with advertising.
As you’ll know, Munguin Towers doesn’t have tv, mainly becasue all tv is pretty crap and Munguin has never been a fan.
But when I visit my mum, sometimes we will watch something on tv on one of these catchup things.
I really can’t remember watching anything on BBC.
People who by and large watch one of the other 600 channels may reasonably object to paying the licence fee as well as watching the ads that interrupt their programmes on Sky or Gold or STV.
The ads are annoying (but watching recorded items can always be passed over),
Of course the BBC executives pay themselves not like civil servants, which they are, but like hotshot tv executive, which they also are. And the “stars” who appear on BBC expect massive amounts of money for being “attractions”.
It doesn’t help, too, that over the years the BBC has happily harboured quite a lot of sexual perversion in their dressing rooms.
And finally, the BBC, funded by a tax, is always a bit creepy with the government in London, which decides the level of the tv tax so bias is not unknown!!
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Very interesting! The TV tax does seem like an anachronism in a world of hundreds of mostly commercial channels. In the states, non-commercial “Public” television (the PBS-TV network and NPR, National Public Radio) came into being long after the commercial TV networks were well established. PBS and NPR are VERY small enterprises compared with the BBC in Britain. PBS broadcasts lots of BBC production content.
The idea was that public television and radio would be funded on a voluntary subscription basis, and the “fund drives” which ask for public donations are about as annoying as “commercials” when the are held. There is also some funding of public broadcasting from general federal tax revenues, which is controversial because it involves content…including News content…….which is viewed by right wing Republicans as having a liberal left political bias.
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LOL.
I’ve always thought that subscription would be a way to deal with the BBC.
In this day and age it should not beyond the wit of man to switch off BBC channels to people who have not paid a subscription, but leave them free to watch the hundreds of other channels and pay for it by sitting through the irritating commercials.
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Tris….Indeed!……Encryption technology must exist to do what you suggest. Just send the BBC channels to people who pay the tax. The TV broadcasting infrastructure has been in place for more than 70 years now, so why keep taxing television sets? It really only makes sense to charge a tax for the non-commercial BBC production content. But that would mean much less tax revenue. So what’s the likelihood? 😉
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Its amusing that after all the digging over the last 3 years (since Gove “planted the knife”) all Boris can come up with on Gove is that he took coke.
I’d be utterly astounded if there was anyone (apart from Leadsom) in the tory glamour contest who hadn’t taken coke at some point in their life.
Hell I took cocaine on Lewis in very early 80s so if it reached us then it had to be endemic elsewhere.
It wasn’t my sort of thing but I can see how it could be very easily – makes a dull man sharp etc.
Its the squaddies/police drug of choice given how fast it voids the system for most random screening tests…
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I suppose if it makes a dullard sharp, we should feed it to all the MPs! God knows we could do with some smart ones.
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