I am an ex-pat and as an adult I am have become quite disillusioned with the UK and glad to have gotten out a decade ago. I miss nothing about England except my friends, and I'd feel sorry for them, but they all seem mostly happy with life.

Paying a license to have a TV (and it's assumed you must watch TV), opt in porn on the internet, CCTV everywhere, braying in parliament, not to mention the whole Brexit shit-show, I find little to admire about the UK.

It turns out the better half of Europe has TV licences in one form or another - but for some reason, we never hear about them. When the UK has to fund a state broadcaster, it's dystopian. When everyone else does it, it's business as usual.

( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licence )

The real cancer of UK society is the tabloid press, now mutating into socialmedia-powered viral linkfarms. The BBC is absolutely fine.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/digging-through-the-ar...

Or one of my favourite Monthy Python sketches:

"How not to be seen": https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGv8oAHxekU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPEeaxI0OPU

But you're right, it is present in multiple countries, I think Germany and France just turned it into a household fee

It's RTS 1, RTS 2, RTS 3, RTS HD (which is redundant since the 3 channels are already in Full HD), and then RTS 24/7, RTS Drama, RTS Archive, RTS Music, RTS Life, RTS Kids, RTS Music 2, RTS VOD and RTS SVOD, RTS [something I can't translate] (all names are translated from Serbian).

The TV service is the only one with HD terrestrial broadcasting, and yet it's production quality is absolute garbage (I mean literally, the video quality is absolutely terrible, I'm not even talking about the topics they deal with).

Basically, a money sink and waste of time. People who have SBB (United Group) watch N1 (CNN affiliate) in Full HD (with 30 Mbps bitrate, compared to 4 Mbps for RTS 1 HD).

People who don't have SBB cable, are stuck with the low level garbage channels from our state broadcaster.

to which my response was "sod off", and they did

repeat again every 5 years

as someone who hasn't watched broadcast TV in years (or iplayer): I'm not worried

On the hand, it feels unintuitive that there’s now no way to opt out. But I’m not sure how we delineate universal taxes (eg, my taxes pay for schools but I don’t use them) vs consumption taxes (I don’t pay road tax because I don’t drive). We still ultimately need to pay for them somehow - I don’t drive, but I still depend on roads.

Also: "The maintenance and improvement of these roads are funded through local council taxes, fees, and central government grants." - https://www.loc.gov/law/help/infrastructure-funding/englanda...

So rest assured that if you pay tax in the UK, you pay for roads along with other infrastructure and services.

And now for something completely different... I recall being told, by a man who knocked on my door in a college residence, that the van had detected my television. I had no television set. He asked to come in and look. I declined and he went away. Either enforcement by deception, or a creep using a pretext to get into womens' college rooms. Either way, bad!

I do miss the BBC website without ads and BBC iPlayer though. We had a television in later years (and a license).

It's probably because in the rest of Europe national broadcasters don't badger you to pay a license even if you don't actually own a TV set.

In the UK, I get threatening red-lettered envelopes every few years- because it's easier to harass me by mail than to try and figure out whether I watch TV or not.

And the threat is quite real. The broadcaster can send people to your house to snoop around, to see if you have a TV set or not. These agents are known to take liberties with the extend of their power (they will allege that they can enter your property whether you agree to let them in, or not) and there is basically nothing stopping them from stating that you are watching a TV programme as it is being broadcast if you have have equipment capable of doing so, such as a computer, or just a smartphone.

Basically, the TV licensing people in the UK are convinced that, if you say that you do not watch TV you are lying, and they treat you as an offender by default.

Does any of this happen in any other European country?

Also, my point was the advertising specifically, and attitude generally was dystopic, a la 1984. I am unaware of any other countries injecting that kind of narrative into their culture.

There are plenty of things to dislike about the UK, but that seems like an odd list of things to highlight.

The porn opt-in thing has been pushed back for a year or two and will be quietly shelved when it's realised it's unworkable.

The supposedly omnipresent CCTV invariably seems to have been lost or turned off if you actually need to figure out e.g. who has nicked your bike.

I will grant you the Brexit shit-show, however; that is genuinely horrific.

Actually it's 'indefinitely postponed now, after it was realised about the end of June that it was a violation of EU law (also, it was May's baby, and she's gone, Boris is a pro-porn kinda guy).

Most other countries with public broadcasting just roll the "TV license" into your taxes. CCTV everywhere (that the government can afford to put it) is commonplace in most countries (the USA being something of an exception).

Politicians acting like children is standard. In fact, I'd say that it's a desired feature of the Westminster System. Question Time/PMQs, although sometimes childish, serve an important role in the democratic process and open government. At least filibusters aren't commonplace, unlike in the USA.

Not labelling all expats like this but the vocal ones tend to be like this.

Went to Hawaii for couple weeks one year ago. Experienced culture shock.

NZ is probably best place in the world.

Better incomes, quality of living (houses are vastly better quality), infrastructure, entertainment, and weather.

The downsides is extreme weather, too big cities and much less nice people (historical backgrounds between kiwis and aussies are polar opposites).

Unless you, say, like to travel, or want to live in a place with people from a wide variety of backgrounds.

Also, NZ is pretty diverse. I work in Wellington and my team of 20 is from nine different countries and ethnicities, there's only four born Kiwi's in it (and the Kiwi's have different ethnicities as well some are Maori, others are Pakeha, and others are Indian Kiwis). I read about immigration statistics the other day and 8 of the top ten ethnicities which are granted permanent residents status are from Asia, the Pacific, and Africa, only two are from countries with a European majority (the UK and the US). I find Wellington to be more diverse than when I worked in San Francisco or London.

Culture wise, I keep saying NZ is like 50s in US - tons of new expats, everyone with decent background, keen to work hard. Most of Europe and US has now second generation foreigners which is not that interesting. Simple number: software teams I worked on only had 10-30% of kiwi's.

Our largest city is also our most diverse.

> Auckland is one of the world's most culturally diverse cities with the fourth most foreign-born population, an international study has found. > With 39 per cent of its population born overseas, the city is revealed to be more diverse than Sydney, Los Angeles, London and even New York.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&object...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity_index

For some reason, the article you linked made up their own (very poor) measure of diversity. Imagine a city that's half white locals, and half white British immigrants (temporary or permanent). Would you consider such a city as diverse? The measure in that news article would put this city as being 50% diverse, even higher than Wellington's 39%.

There's also not the extreme rifts that we see elsewhere. If you look at reform for instance then there was broad cross party support for firearm reform, abortion reform, and euthanasia reform all in the last few months with both left and right parties voting for all of the above, something which would be pretty inconceivable in a country like the US where people seem to take opposite views on things just because they refuse to agree with the other side.

The population is largely free of extremists and have a culture of just getting on with things and working together, this comes from the extreme isolation which we've historically had. That leads to people being irreligious, educated, and practical.

It's very democratic and has very low levels of corruption, politicians are accessible and mostly trusted.

This is tempered by a high cost of living compared to wages.

Unfortunately we have seen a rise of US style far-right opinions and extreme views fed from the internet (like antivax and also a rise of disinformation and fake news). Ironically this may mean that politicians will be forced to become less accessible and democracy and freedoms may take a back seat to security as we've seen in the US. I hope not.

This is so true. People are just so multi-faceted here. I have a friend who's a developer, mechanic, investor, guitar player and a stripper.

And then there was other side of anit-vax, anti-gmo, anti-progress people... We've got some of that in NZ, but nowhere close so visible.

Unless you're a woman of reproductive age.

There's a new law which just passed the first reading in parliament (with 80% voting yes) to remove any restrictions so thankfully this will no longer be an issue and a woman will be able to make the decision without having to go to a doctor.

So, while the laws are old it's actually positive that there's so much cross party support for progressive reform. Another law which is in it's second reading is euthanasia reform which has similar support.

Staying in the UK for me is like staying in an abusive relationship or a job you hate. It made me deeply unhappy, so instead of complaining and bringing my friends down I found a life to love overseas.

Nope, the US is firmly in the Wants a Prize for Basic Decency[0] category. Which is better than most other places, but that says more about other places than the US.

0: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WantsAPrizeForBa...

How could it be, if the mechanism behind the detector is not made public?

Prosecutor: This machine says you are guilty.

Defendant: How does that machine work?

Prosecutor: You aren't allowed to know.

Defendant: ???

Judge: Case dismissed.

https://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2013/08/22/ju...

So maybe they should have used TV-sniffing dogs instead? :)

Qualified immunity pretty much guarantees there's no punishment for any shenanigan as long as it can be plausibly presented to a judge as the police believing it's lawful (it doesn't need to be lawful, just belief is enough). The worst they risk is evidence being excluded - so no risk at all vs not searching.

https://www.tvobscurities.com/articles/cointv/

Edit: To add some context:

Don't forget it was still common for people to be paid in cash, weekly. For those on lower incomes paying a monthly rental was often difficult and many of those cash employees had no need of a bank account. So weekly payments at the shop, collection agents and other options like coin op were far more common. You might get a visit every year or two to pay premiums on something like a life assurance policy, and a little hand written book was your only record of payment.

Some friends of mine who lived in London had an electricity meter that they had to recharge with cards they got from the corner shop. This was in 2005 or so. Do you know how common this is in London, or the rest of the UK, nowadays?

At the time I had found it at the very least a huge hassle. It was one of those things when I first got to the UK that I just couldn't comprehend.

Another one: when I got my first check from my job at the time (working at a warehouse) I went to the bank to collect it and the bank said I had to wait for a week to make sure the check wouldn't bounce and I think to ensure I wasn't money laundering. I couldn't believe what they were telling me, so I asked the people I worked with who confirmed it. Except, they said it wasn't a big deal: you just go to a shop, give them the check and they give you 80% of your salary. So you don't have to wait for a week.

So wait, I work all week, then the bank will treat me as a potential criminal and some financial parasite will suck off 20% of my salary as a consequence? And the people I worked with just shrugged it off. It was considered just normal. I told people Back Home (in Greece) about all this and they just didn't believe me.

This still happens, but only if you are far behind on your electricity bills, the supply company will eventually just say "ok, we will keep supplying you, but you must agree to have pre-paid meter installed at home". That way you can't be late on your payments anymore.

>>Another one: when I got my first check from my job at the time (working at a warehouse)

Wait....that was in the UK? And someone gave you a cheque? Those pretty much don't exist in the UK anymore, it's like an ancient relic of the past if you see one. The only situation when they are still used is for insurance payouts, for some reason the insurance companies still prefer to send you a cheque.

Thanks for clarifying. I'm guessing though the meters tend to stay in the homes even after the late-paying tennants have moved out?

>> Wait....that was in the UK? And someone gave you a cheque?

Yes, this was in the UK, in the South East, in 2005. It's been a while so I'm a bit fuzzy on the details but I think what happened was that I didn't have a bank account yet and so I was paid by cheque (thanks). Also, if I remember correctly, I refused to make use of the shops and I subsisted on the money I had in my Greek bank account (that I could access from UK terminals with my Greek bank card) until I got a UK bank account.

Some of my colleagues made use of the shops they recommended to me though, so either they too got paid by cheque or more likely they basically took a loan out on their salaries. Which sounds less mad, but only until you see some of the rates for payday loans (as I gather you must have).

As gambiting says they;re often put in if you get behind on bills, but if you have poor credit or move into a flat that already has them I think it can be pretty damn difficult to get off them. Like some utilities make a charge or ask a deposit to get a normal meter put in again, even if that wasn't down to you in the first place.

So if you've haven't got much you tend to lose out 2 or 3 ways.

Ah, thanks- I was wondering about that. I imagined it wouldn't be simple to take the meter off once it's on.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/methode%2Ftimes...

Not for the BBC license though: it was when TVs where expensive (in the 60s and 70s) and so some people could just rent one.

Probably sounds alien to US people, but UK was much poorer country, especially in workers areas...

See my sibling link. First thought of by the US International Telemeter Corporation in the late 40s or very early 50s.

My grandparents were forced to have one. My late grandfather had PTSD from fighting in WWII and could basically never hold down a job or make a good financial decision.

The TV rental business was very much like mobile phone contracts. For this reason I am not one of those people that buys a mobile phone on contract with the 'upgrade' every two years. The 'contract' your family were on for the TV was 'pay as you go' and I shudder to think how often your family could have paid for the TV, probably ten times over!

The fear of the TV detector van kept people tuned in to what important stuff was being disseminated on the state broadcaster that pretends to be independent. Sure there were home computers, VHS/Betamax and 'the wireless' back then but screen based entertainment was limited.

The TV had four channels (if you were lucky), so that meant news every night about the latest Cold War tensions, the misery of the Miner's Strike, the joy of the Poll Tax riots, the obsession with inflation, the latest dole figures, what privatisation was being flogged, 'Protect and Survive' and messages about how heroin screws you up.

Remember there was no such thing as society, you just had to hide behind your door and rely on the 'neighbourhood watch' signs for security. Crime really was a thing then, burglary a fear far worse than it should have been. The BBC very much reflected this but we remember 'Life on Earth' and tell ourselves how wonderful the BBC was.

Icing on the cake for this miserable era was the actual BBC. Radio 1 was 'Smashy and nicey' DJs that were quite depressing and BBC children's programming had presenters that have invariably been prosecuted in recent years for child abuse related offences.

But at least we had a national conversation. Remember 'who shot JR?'. Nowadays people would be saving the box set to watch later so you can't have this shared conversation, if anything it is anything but.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but that doesn't seem to me like it makes any sense. How could fear of being caught watching the TV without a licence make you more likely to watch the TV? It could make you more likely to pay, or less likely to have a TV, but those are entirely different.

All was revealed by Father Ted https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sq4_c-_r0K4

That's not really fair is it? They started harsh because the country was a wreck when she was first elected. The miners went on strike because they were used to being able to topple governments by doing so. The obsession with inflation came about in contrast to the previous obsession with employment figures, yielding a country with full employment but sky-high inflation. Thatcher argued that was wrong and you could have full employment with low inflation: several boom economies since then have shown she was correct.

After Thatcher had won three elections Britain was a first world country again. You don't see many people pining for Britain in the 70s with all the strikes, electricity outages, bailouts and 3 day weeks. Blame her for the poll tax, sure, but even then those riots were by people who wanted unfair taxation: they defined "fair" as some people having to pay more for the exact same services than others do, something nobody tolerates in the commercial world.

Remember there was no such thing as society

You're selectively quoting Thatcher here, as her ideological enemies do so often. She was pointing out that when her opponents said "society will pay for it" there was no such thing as an abstract, disconnected, third party entity labelled "society" that would magically inject money into Britain - that what such people really meant was "my neighbours will be forced to pay for it".

http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/106689

Here's the full quote:

But it [people living on benefits/blaming society for their problems] went too far. If children have a problem, it is society that is at fault. There is no such thing as society. There is living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate.

Doesn't sound so bad when you realise her alternative to the word "society" was "a living tapestry and men and women and people", that this tapestry is "beautiful" and that the quality of our lives depend on "how much each of us is .... prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate".

It's ironic yet totally unsurprising that her argument against imprecise socialist double-speak is now usually referenced via a selective quote designed to make her look inhumane.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2010/oct/30/pay-as-you-vie...

I bought one once and evidently they managed to typo the house number, so our neighbour down the street who didn't have a TV kept getting the 'we know you have a TV but no license threatening letters

I researched this the last time TV detector vans came up (it seems to be on repeat on HackerNews a lot...), the legislation was repealed in 2013 so it's not done anymore. It was for sure this that was the real enforcement tool I imagine prior to 2013, rather than the mythical van. Much easier to just check the address against the TV sales database than randomly drive a fleet of vans around the entire country!

> https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one/business...

Is this for real? I remember thinking "dystopian as hell" when I heard about all the CCTVs in England, but this one takes the cake. I can at least see the points made by the other side of the CCTV argument, even though I very much disagree with them.

Why cannot one just buy a TV in England without giving out their personal info?

> The Wireless Telegraphy Act of 1967 (as amended) has been repealed, meaning that from 25 June 2013 onwards you no longer need to send us customer name and address details when you sell or rent out TV equipment. This also means your business no longer has to keep sales records to comply with the law on TV Licensing. If you don’t need these records for anything else you can destroy them from 25 June.

https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one/business...

The silly thing was our house had a license, plus the TV in question was only ever used for a games console so never received TV signals

The law wasn't "you must hand over your details when buying a tv", it was "you must ask for details when selling a tv". Customers were free to supply false information.

...this is one of these utterly bizarre public sector things where the govt will hire a private company to chase down people (usually immigrants, unemployed, etc.) and give them a cut of whatever is looted...unsurprisingly, this has proved to be controversial in practice.

I have actually heard of people who called the police because they were being harassed by these people. All so some chinless wonder from Oxbridge can get paid £200k/year commissioning dogshit documentaries about Ethiopian trance music (the BBC massively underpays for talent but employs an unfathomably large number of middle managers).

I would love to see how this kind of system would work in Texas.

This actually happened to me! I (Mexican living in the UK) was at my rented flat with my father visiting. We were watching a movie in a TV I had (which I mainly used to watch DVDs or things from my computer) when suddenly someone knocked at the door. I usually never opened (I did not have many friends while living there) but given that my father was there, it would have been weird to leave the person ringing the bell while we were watching the movie.

Turned out to be one of those license guys. As an expat without knowledge of my rights, I did not know what to do and the bastard kept pushing... until I let him in. He "inspected" the TV where we were watching the movie, and I told him that yeah I had a TV but did only use it for watching DVDs. At the end, he "saw" that it did not have an antenna and he basically said that because of that, we were OK (it kind of felt as if he just wanted to get out of the awkward situation).

After he left, my father and I talked about how crazy was that system were they send mafiosos to check if you had a TV... first world problems.

Nonetheless, I have heard of them: forcing entry into people's homes, claiming to have powers of search, claiming to have power to issue fines, claiming to work on behalf of the police and that they can request arrest...it is kind of incredible.

Britain is a very odd place (I say this as a Brit).

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/help/outsideuk

  I live outside the UK. Can I use BBC iPlayer?
  BBC iPlayer is funded by the UK TV Licence
   and its use is restricted to UK residents only.

I once received a letter from TV licensing after I bought a TV USB dongle off Amazon...

Eventually we gave up and just let them inundate our paper recycling. They've been comically useless. I am certain after 15 years of their incompetence, Capita have been responsible for many an unsafe conviction.