Most ridiculous British laws

The New air rifle law that raises the age of owning, purchasing and using an air rifle unsupervised to the age of 18, this also includes those who carry firearm certificates who are under the age of 18.

So as the law stands I can buy, own and use any form of firearm and shotgun that my certificates allow (So in my case 2 .22RF, a .303, a .357MAG/38SPL and a 7.62/.308 and any form of shotgun that cannot hold anymore than 3 cartridges) But I cannot own, purchase or use unsupervised an air rifle as I am 17.

 

I take it that your permission for .357/.38 covers carbines and not handguns?

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum

 

Yes it does, sorry should have made that clearer, it is for pistol caliber carbines rather than LBR's

 

You have got to be kidding. Do they actually enforce it? :roll:

 

Oh yes, it is very much enforced.

 

As Dave said, it is very strongly enforced, infact it doesn't just cover owning a TV but anything that can recieve and interpret TV signals such as VCRs, DVD recorders, even TV cards/adapters for PCs. The penalty IIRC is a £1,000 fine.

It's worth mentioning as well, this isn't a one-off payment either like an admin charge for a driver's licence, it's an annual fee. It's supposedly how the BBC is funded, which is why in the UK the BBC doesn't have any commercial adverts and supposedly it means the BBC can produce quality programmes free of commercial considerations (Yeah, right... :roll: ).

I wonder how many of us in the UK would really object if the BBC started running commercial breaks in exchange for scrapping the licence fee?

 

how much per household or is it number of tvs ....anyway what does it cost per year ? in us dollars ?

 

About 275 USD. Only one needed per household, regardless of the number of TVs.

Historically, this started as a way of funding the development of UK TV, which was a national, non-commercial project run by the BBC (which was already running radio). For some time there was only one channel - BBC TV - but later on commercial companies were allowed to compete, and the number of BBC channels has also proliferated.

For a long time the BBC had a deserved reputation for producing high-quality programmes, with an emphasis on educational ones. To a great extent they still do, but they are caught in a bind: to justify the continuation of their licensing fee they need to show they are popular, but to do that they have to show popular programmes in competition with the commercial channels. As a result, the Corporation is accused of dumbing down, which weakens its reason for existing.

At the moment, there are just five national UK TV channels which are "free to air"; funded either by the licence fee (for BBC1 and BBC2) or commercial advertising (ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5). In fact, Channel 5 (by far the least watched) is not really national, as coverage is not complete; I can't receive it, for instance.

In addition there are the commercial satellite channels (dominated by Murdoch's Sky TV), for which a subscription has to be paid, plus subscription cable TV in some areas.

Digital TV has started to be rolled out (it's already on satellite) with the aim of replacing all analogue channels by 2012. This promises a huge increase in the number of channels. Frankly, I think that the quality of commercial TV programming is certain to drop as a result. There will be no more TV viewers than now, so more channels means fewer viewers per channel, which means less income (from subscriptions and advertising) per channel, which means less money for making or buying programmes.

I am not familiar with TV in other countries, but Americans I know who visit the UK universally rate the quality of UK TV as being far higher on average than in the USA. That's due to go down the pan, I think, unless the BBC retains its income from the licence fee. So I for one don't mind paying the fee. I would rather have a limited selection of good programmes than a vast selection of rubbish.

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum

 

Unless you count digital (Which will become standard as analogue trasmitters are gradually turned off over the next 4 years) in which case there are many more now. Channel 5 we can only recieve on digital where I am, not analogue, although that said you really aren't missing much...

 

In Finland we also have TV licence. Cost, reason etc very much the same as in UK. Thought we don't get that same quality programs...

Digital TV is also this day here in Finland, terrestial network is now digital only and cable networks will be at the end of february. They promised more channels and better picturequality. Well, atleast we got more channels, now we have to wait to get decent programs for them. Before digital TV, there was total of four free channels in terrestial network, now there are about dozen. Cable network didn't see that much higher increase as there was already about dozen free channels.

This digital TV wasn't that much success here, people complained a lot against it and for a good reason. It was promised to have many new features, even interactive ones but after initial hype they were quietly discarded. Then there is the need for digital receiver, you need one for each of your TV. And they cost from 40 € up. And ofcourse there is the question of quality of these receivers. Some work most of the time, some wont. And upgrading their software might help but that requires some skill and knowledge from customer. In short, these boxes aren't as easy to use as they should.