This reminds me of how Brits were always totally obsessed with all the regulations that the unelected EU bureaucrats were supposedly inflicting on us all the time, and then youād go to France and see kids diving off a high-board into a shallow pool contaminated with battery acid with absolutely no lifeguards to be seen, and generally no-one seems to give a shit.
Not all of France is like Paris, and the Seine is not a pool. (Plus, battery acid would probably count as a good attempt to clean it up, not as contamination.)
Itās just a way of funding the BBC that was devised before a TV was something that essentially everyone had. Since itās delivered OTA it seemed easier to tax the device itself then it was to tax everyone unfairly. So calling it a ālicenseā is fairly outmoded, itās really a tax. You also donāt have to pay it if you donāt actually receive TV channels.
It should just be rolled into regular taxes now, but who is going to propose and approve a new tax in this day and age? So itās easier not to touch it.
And in Australia doing the same it's "Oy wait up mate, where's your Ocker licence?" Luckily we don't need barbeque licenses, tong licenses, etc. we got away from the UK to escape all that bureaucratic red tape
They're making fun of how Brexit was pushed on a platform of getting rid of overstrict EU regulations and bureaucracy (as well as a lot of overt racism) but it turned out a load of it was just homegrown British bureaucracy that had nothing to do with the EU but UKIP voters kept complaining that anything they didn't like about Britain was the fault of the EU anyway
Give it time. It won't be a licence though, it'll be a compatible bread subscription for a discounted toaster, with government enforced felonies for using incompatible bread
*Based on how the software and entertainment industries work