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'The people I hung out with while there were bitter towards the required TV licenses and "religion" for NHS in public discourse. Curious how widespread this att

'The people I hung out with while there were bitter towards the required TV licenses and "religion" for NHS in public discourse. Curious how widespread this attitude is.' Not very widespread at all in my experience.

ablation 8y ago
No, agreed. The NHS is very popular amongst the majority: - Seventy-seven per cent of the public believe the NHS should be maintained in its current form. This level of support has remained consistent over almost two decades despite widespread social, economic and political change. - Around 90 per cent of people support the founding principles of the NHS, indicating that these principles are just as relevant today as when the NHS was established. - A clear majority (66 per cent) of adults are willing to pay more of their own taxes to fund the NHS, underlining growing support among the public for tax rises to increase NHS funding.[1] [1]: https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/what-does-public-think-about-nhs https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/what-does-public-t...
- dagw 8y ago
  NHS is very popular amongst the majority: Absolutely, but at least when I lived in England everybody was also very opinionated about how CurrentGovernment ruining it, how it used to be so much better and how you need to to X right now to fix it.
- nailer 8y ago
  The OP was talking about how forbidden it is to speak of changing the NHS in any way. You are saying the NHS is popular. Those are orthogonal: you can like the NHS and want to change it.
  - ablation 8y ago
    That's a good point. I didn't consider that. It was my mistake to simply take that as criticism/negativity of the NHS.
confounded 8y ago
> Bloomsbury, Hyde Park, Soho, Notting Hill, and Mayfair...
- vidarh 8y ago
  For those not seeing the implication: These are areas that have some of the UKs wealthiest residents.
- sealjam 8y ago
  For anybody wondering. These areas of London are all extremely wealthy. It might be possible that the demographics populating these areas might be less 'grateful' for the services the NHS provides.
  - jonwinstanley 8y ago
    Exactly, many will have their own private health insurance and begrudge paying for something they don't need.
    - vertex-four 8y ago
      Of course, that private health insurance will generally dump them straight back onto the NHS as soon as they can describe an issue as “chronic” or it gets too complicated for them to want to pay for. Good quality healthcare plans (vs health insurance for acute events) doesn’t exist in the U.K.
      - frobozz 8y ago
        Often it's the same doctor who will refer you to themself in the NHS after an initial private consultation if they work out that the insurance company isn't going to pay enough for your treatment to make it worthwhile.
    - bloak 8y ago
      They hope they don't need it, but if you're getting operated on in an expensive private hospital and something goes badly wrong, or if you just fall down the stairs while you're there, guess what they do: they dial 999[1] and an ambulance comes round from the real hospital. And you won't be charged[2] for that service. Hooray for the NHS.[3] [1] You can dial 112 instead if you prefer. [2] Unless the private hospital charges you an admin fee for calling the ambulance for you, which I wouldn't put past those bastards. If it was profitable to slowly torture you to death that's exactly what they'd do to you. Personally I prefer to be treated by someone on a fixed salary who just wants to do the best they can with the resources available to them while earning the respect of their colleagues. [3] This has turned into a bit of a rant, but I suppose it gives people a feel for the British NHS "religion".
Nursie 8y ago
Dropped in to say that too - that's pretty unusual. The vast majority of Brits think the NHS is a great thing, don't really care about the TV license and love the BBC. I get that the NHS has this 'sacred cow' thing going on, where it's almost impossible to criticise and even proposing much change must be done tactfully... but this is because we think it's great, if underfunded.
arethuza 8y ago
I have met a few people who ranted about the NHS and TV Licenses - a very small minority but they definitely do exist. Often the type who live abroad because the UK has, in their opinion, too many immigrants. Edit: I'm not suggesting that either the BBC or the NHS are above criticism - far from it. But I'd rather criticism was based on facts and not what the Daily Mail reports.
- dazc 8y ago
  You met these people abroad then?
  - arethuza 8y ago
    Not always - have heard those views from people back in the UK from their tax-exiles as well. Mind you - I'm only talking about a handful of people but the ones I did meet who thought that way were at such a level of foaming at the mouth lunacy I can't really forget them. I did memorably try and explain to one crowd why I was quite happy with not being able to shoot trespassers on my lawn but I think I was regarded as a dangerous communist after that. NB Not had any conversations like that for 10+ years...
    - C1sc0cat 8y ago
      Thee is a wing of UKIP who want usa style gunlaws or a return to the pre 1930's rules or lack of - there is a reason the Shelby's in peaky blinders can own SMG's and LMG's
  - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
    I remember meeting a British couple in Australia who told me they moved there to get away from the immigrants.
nailer 8y ago
I live here and don't pay the TV license. I don't consume BBC content, and dislike how they try and send angry letters for not paying for something I don't use (the BBC FireTV app runs at about 6 frames a second and is frustrating to use). Imagine if Netflix was claimed to be 'mandatory' and they could enter your home to check you're 'really' not using Netflix. The NHS is popular, and people like it, but it's also very inefficient and it can become a political nightmare for anyone who tries to address that.
- rounce 8y ago
  > Imagine if Netflix was claimed to be 'mandatory' and they could enter your home to check you're really not using Netflix. Poor analogy, Netflix would also have to be owned but not funded by US Govt. TV licence people can't exactly kick in the front door and search you for broadcast reception equipment, they're not the police, more like slightly more official bailiffs. They may threaten you with all sorts of legal toil but their powers are quite limited, they rely on their reputation to scare you into submission.
  - nailer 8y ago
    > Netflix would also have to be owned but not funded by US Govt. Well yes, that's part of the scenario. That doesnt dismiss the point there's a news and entertainment company that thinks everyone watches their content and therefore sends them angry threats
  - chrisseaton 8y ago
    > more like slightly more official bailiffs No they're _less_ official than bailiffs. Bailiffs can force their way into your home to take your property to pay for some fines and taxes. A TV licence person can do absolutely nothing - they're just a normal member of the public.
    - rounce 8y ago
      Don't bailiffs need to have been allowed to cross the threshold of the premises (ie. you open the door to them and then they prevent you from closing the door)? It's illegal for them to kick your door in. I mean't more official in that TV licence people work for a government owned organisation. Though I hadn't realised they didn't even have bailiff powers.
pjc50 8y ago
As with the weather, just because we complain about it all the time doesn't mean it's actually bad.
Cthulhu_ 8y ago
They got rid of the TV licensing in NL a while ago, since most people have cable, sattelite, or none of the above. We still have (and, imo, need) public channels and broadcasters, but they're paid from regular taxes now.
- tialaramex 8y ago
  For political reasons the UK's TV license is collected by (a third party contractor on behalf of) the BBC, but the money doesn't actually go directly to the BBC, it goes to central government, they carve it up and send some to the BBC. Lots of odd things are funded with this money, including for example local newspaper reporters at for-profit newspapers (!) but the name and forcing the BBC to actually collect it mean in the public consciousness it's all blamed on the BBC. Now, Public Service Broadcasting is _distinct_ from having central government revenue funding a broadcaster as happens for the BBC. All UK terrestrial TV is "Public Service Broadcasting" and so are the old US TV networks. PSB means you're using up some finite public resource (radio bandwidth) and so you need to "give back" to the public. It's pretty common to require a daily news broadcast and to have other constraints "for the good of the public" e.g. a non-English country might require at least 10 hours per week of the local language even though viewers would really just prefer wall-to-wall imported soap operas in English or whatever. As well as the internationally famous BBC, Britain also has "Channel 4" which owns the Film Production company Film4 that made or co-made films you've probably enjoyed (e.g. "Trainspotting", "12 Years a Slave"). Channel 4 is a PSB, but more importantly it's publicly owned. It operates more like a for-profit television company (e.g. advertising) except the money goes back into making TV and it has a publicly controlled mission to be er, challenging. So e.g. the BBC went "Hey, half the population are women, so it's crazy to have all these panel discussion shows with 6 men and no women. From now on, if your show has a panel discussion it needs either a woman or a sign-off explaining why there weren't any women" but C4 is the kind of place where they go "Hang on, there totally must be Muslim lesbians, right? Let's do a show about the Muslim lesbian dating scene, so there's this whole tolerance angle but also it has hot women kissing each other".
  - nailer 8y ago
    That's an excellent breakdown, but Channel 4 would be very wary of highlighting the animosity towards gay people in Islam.
entity345 8y ago
The unhealthy reality is that criticising the NHS or the TV license is not allowed on penalty of being ostracised and labelled an extremist. So most people abstain unless they know it is OK to talk.
- albertgoeswoof 8y ago
  NHS maybe, the license fee is fine to complain about
  - gadders 8y ago
    But sometimes people see an attack on the license fee as an attack on the BBC, which is also treated as a beloved institution by much of the UK.
    - notahacker 8y ago
      Criticising BBC news coverage for not reflecting ones own political biases is practically a national sport though
- Jonnax 8y ago
  The NHS is fine to criticise. But if someone says the solution to its issues are to sell the profitable parts to the friends and family of conservative politicians. Then that's not going to make you popular.
  - entity345 8y ago
    Exactly my point. If someone emits a criticism it MUST mean that they want "an American system" and "to sell the profitable parts to the friends and family of conservative politicians" because, of course, that's the only alternative to the current situation... So it's fine to criticise as long as the criticism is limited to suggesting that perhaps the hospital's car park could be slightly cheaper, if that's not too much bother, please, sorry. Hence why people either say that everything's great or keep quiet.
m-i-l 8y ago
'The people I hung out with while there were bitter towards the required TV licenses and "religion" for NHS in public discourse. Curious how widespread this attitude is.' I think its fair to say that a person's views on public service broadcasting and public healthcare, i.e. the TV Licence (which funds the BBC) and the NHS, correspond to where they are on the political spectrum - the further right are openly critical, the moderate right are insincerely supportive, and the centre and left are openly and genuinely supportive. Based on this, it sounds like the author was hanging out with some people from the far right, in which case this would not be hugely widespread in the UK as a whole.
- shrikant 8y ago
  Not sure if you'd call them "far right" exactly, but the tech-bro super-libertarian (think "taxes are theft") types also tend to complain about the TV licence fee and the NHS...
bnastic 8y ago
Quite the contrary in mine. Dissatisfaction with “tax money waste” correlates with the amount of tax they pay.

ablation 8y ago

No, agreed. The NHS is very popular amongst the majority: - Seventy-seven per cent of the public believe the NHS should be maintained in its current form. This level of support has remained consistent over almost two decades despite widespread social, economic and political change. - Around 90 per cent of people support the founding principles of the NHS, indicating that these principles are just as relevant today as when the NHS was established. - A clear majority (66 per cent) of adults are willing to pay more of their own taxes to fund the NHS, underlining growing support among the public for tax rises to increase NHS funding.[1] [1]: https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/what-does-public-think-about-nhs https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/what-does-public-t...

dagw 8y ago
NHS is very popular amongst the majority: Absolutely, but at least when I lived in England everybody was also very opinionated about how CurrentGovernment ruining it, how it used to be so much better and how you need to to X right now to fix it.
nailer 8y ago
The OP was talking about how forbidden it is to speak of changing the NHS in any way. You are saying the NHS is popular. Those are orthogonal: you can like the NHS and want to change it.
- ablation 8y ago
  That's a good point. I didn't consider that. It was my mistake to simply take that as criticism/negativity of the NHS.

confounded 8y ago

> Bloomsbury, Hyde Park, Soho, Notting Hill, and Mayfair...

vidarh 8y ago
For those not seeing the implication: These are areas that have some of the UKs wealthiest residents.
sealjam 8y ago
For anybody wondering. These areas of London are all extremely wealthy. It might be possible that the demographics populating these areas might be less 'grateful' for the services the NHS provides.
- jonwinstanley 8y ago
  Exactly, many will have their own private health insurance and begrudge paying for something they don't need.
  - vertex-four 8y ago
    Of course, that private health insurance will generally dump them straight back onto the NHS as soon as they can describe an issue as “chronic” or it gets too complicated for them to want to pay for. Good quality healthcare plans (vs health insurance for acute events) doesn’t exist in the U.K.
    - frobozz 8y ago
      Often it's the same doctor who will refer you to themself in the NHS after an initial private consultation if they work out that the insurance company isn't going to pay enough for your treatment to make it worthwhile.
  - bloak 8y ago
    They hope they don't need it, but if you're getting operated on in an expensive private hospital and something goes badly wrong, or if you just fall down the stairs while you're there, guess what they do: they dial 999[1] and an ambulance comes round from the real hospital. And you won't be charged[2] for that service. Hooray for the NHS.[3] [1] You can dial 112 instead if you prefer. [2] Unless the private hospital charges you an admin fee for calling the ambulance for you, which I wouldn't put past those bastards. If it was profitable to slowly torture you to death that's exactly what they'd do to you. Personally I prefer to be treated by someone on a fixed salary who just wants to do the best they can with the resources available to them while earning the respect of their colleagues. [3] This has turned into a bit of a rant, but I suppose it gives people a feel for the British NHS "religion".

Nursie 8y ago

Dropped in to say that too - that's pretty unusual. The vast majority of Brits think the NHS is a great thing, don't really care about the TV license and love the BBC. I get that the NHS has this 'sacred cow' thing going on, where it's almost impossible to criticise and even proposing much change must be done tactfully... but this is because we think it's great, if underfunded.

arethuza 8y ago

I have met a few people who ranted about the NHS and TV Licenses - a very small minority but they definitely do exist. Often the type who live abroad because the UK has, in their opinion, too many immigrants. Edit: I'm not suggesting that either the BBC or the NHS are above criticism - far from it. But I'd rather criticism was based on facts and not what the Daily Mail reports.

dazc 8y ago
You met these people abroad then?
- arethuza 8y ago
  Not always - have heard those views from people back in the UK from their tax-exiles as well. Mind you - I'm only talking about a handful of people but the ones I did meet who thought that way were at such a level of foaming at the mouth lunacy I can't really forget them. I did memorably try and explain to one crowd why I was quite happy with not being able to shoot trespassers on my lawn but I think I was regarded as a dangerous communist after that. NB Not had any conversations like that for 10+ years...
  - C1sc0cat 8y ago
    Thee is a wing of UKIP who want usa style gunlaws or a return to the pre 1930's rules or lack of - there is a reason the Shelby's in peaky blinders can own SMG's and LMG's
- tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  I remember meeting a British couple in Australia who told me they moved there to get away from the immigrants.

nailer 8y ago

I live here and don't pay the TV license. I don't consume BBC content, and dislike how they try and send angry letters for not paying for something I don't use (the BBC FireTV app runs at about 6 frames a second and is frustrating to use). Imagine if Netflix was claimed to be 'mandatory' and they could enter your home to check you're 'really' not using Netflix. The NHS is popular, and people like it, but it's also very inefficient and it can become a political nightmare for anyone who tries to address that.

rounce 8y ago
> Imagine if Netflix was claimed to be 'mandatory' and they could enter your home to check you're really not using Netflix. Poor analogy, Netflix would also have to be owned but not funded by US Govt. TV licence people can't exactly kick in the front door and search you for broadcast reception equipment, they're not the police, more like slightly more official bailiffs. They may threaten you with all sorts of legal toil but their powers are quite limited, they rely on their reputation to scare you into submission.
- nailer 8y ago
  > Netflix would also have to be owned but not funded by US Govt. Well yes, that's part of the scenario. That doesnt dismiss the point there's a news and entertainment company that thinks everyone watches their content and therefore sends them angry threats
- chrisseaton 8y ago
  > more like slightly more official bailiffs No they're _less_ official than bailiffs. Bailiffs can force their way into your home to take your property to pay for some fines and taxes. A TV licence person can do absolutely nothing - they're just a normal member of the public.
  - rounce 8y ago
    Don't bailiffs need to have been allowed to cross the threshold of the premises (ie. you open the door to them and then they prevent you from closing the door)? It's illegal for them to kick your door in. I mean't more official in that TV licence people work for a government owned organisation. Though I hadn't realised they didn't even have bailiff powers.

pjc50 8y ago

As with the weather, just because we complain about it all the time doesn't mean it's actually bad.

Cthulhu_ 8y ago

They got rid of the TV licensing in NL a while ago, since most people have cable, sattelite, or none of the above. We still have (and, imo, need) public channels and broadcasters, but they're paid from regular taxes now.

tialaramex 8y ago
For political reasons the UK's TV license is collected by (a third party contractor on behalf of) the BBC, but the money doesn't actually go directly to the BBC, it goes to central government, they carve it up and send some to the BBC. Lots of odd things are funded with this money, including for example local newspaper reporters at for-profit newspapers (!) but the name and forcing the BBC to actually collect it mean in the public consciousness it's all blamed on the BBC. Now, Public Service Broadcasting is _distinct_ from having central government revenue funding a broadcaster as happens for the BBC. All UK terrestrial TV is "Public Service Broadcasting" and so are the old US TV networks. PSB means you're using up some finite public resource (radio bandwidth) and so you need to "give back" to the public. It's pretty common to require a daily news broadcast and to have other constraints "for the good of the public" e.g. a non-English country might require at least 10 hours per week of the local language even though viewers would really just prefer wall-to-wall imported soap operas in English or whatever. As well as the internationally famous BBC, Britain also has "Channel 4" which owns the Film Production company Film4 that made or co-made films you've probably enjoyed (e.g. "Trainspotting", "12 Years a Slave"). Channel 4 is a PSB, but more importantly it's publicly owned. It operates more like a for-profit television company (e.g. advertising) except the money goes back into making TV and it has a publicly controlled mission to be er, challenging. So e.g. the BBC went "Hey, half the population are women, so it's crazy to have all these panel discussion shows with 6 men and no women. From now on, if your show has a panel discussion it needs either a woman or a sign-off explaining why there weren't any women" but C4 is the kind of place where they go "Hang on, there totally must be Muslim lesbians, right? Let's do a show about the Muslim lesbian dating scene, so there's this whole tolerance angle but also it has hot women kissing each other".
- nailer 8y ago
  That's an excellent breakdown, but Channel 4 would be very wary of highlighting the animosity towards gay people in Islam.

entity345 8y ago

The unhealthy reality is that criticising the NHS or the TV license is not allowed on penalty of being ostracised and labelled an extremist. So most people abstain unless they know it is OK to talk.

albertgoeswoof 8y ago
NHS maybe, the license fee is fine to complain about
- gadders 8y ago
  But sometimes people see an attack on the license fee as an attack on the BBC, which is also treated as a beloved institution by much of the UK.
  - notahacker 8y ago
    Criticising BBC news coverage for not reflecting ones own political biases is practically a national sport though
Jonnax 8y ago
The NHS is fine to criticise. But if someone says the solution to its issues are to sell the profitable parts to the friends and family of conservative politicians. Then that's not going to make you popular.
- entity345 8y ago
  Exactly my point. If someone emits a criticism it MUST mean that they want "an American system" and "to sell the profitable parts to the friends and family of conservative politicians" because, of course, that's the only alternative to the current situation... So it's fine to criticise as long as the criticism is limited to suggesting that perhaps the hospital's car park could be slightly cheaper, if that's not too much bother, please, sorry. Hence why people either say that everything's great or keep quiet.

m-i-l 8y ago

'The people I hung out with while there were bitter towards the required TV licenses and "religion" for NHS in public discourse. Curious how widespread this attitude is.' I think its fair to say that a person's views on public service broadcasting and public healthcare, i.e. the TV Licence (which funds the BBC) and the NHS, correspond to where they are on the political spectrum - the further right are openly critical, the moderate right are insincerely supportive, and the centre and left are openly and genuinely supportive. Based on this, it sounds like the author was hanging out with some people from the far right, in which case this would not be hugely widespread in the UK as a whole.

shrikant 8y ago
Not sure if you'd call them "far right" exactly, but the tech-bro super-libertarian (think "taxes are theft") types also tend to complain about the TV licence fee and the NHS...

bnastic 8y ago

Quite the contrary in mine. Dissatisfaction with “tax money waste” correlates with the amount of tax they pay.