One Million School Children To Get Free BBC Micro:bit Computers 157
Mickeycaskill writes with this news from TechWeek Europe: Every Year 7 student in England and Wales, Year 8 student in Northern Ireland and S1 student in Scotland will be handed, for free, a BBC micro:bit computer specially designed to help pupils learn to code. Micro:bits, which are smaller than the size of a credit card and can be hooked up to a mobile app or accessed via the Internet, will be delivered nationwide through schools and made available to home-schooled students over the course of the next few weeks. The students are able to keep their devices as their own, meaning they can work with the device for homework, in school holidays, and use it for more applications as their grasp on coding increases. The initiative follows on from the BBC's Micro programme that was introduced in the 1980s, and sees a partnership between the BBC and some of the world's most notable technology companies such as ARM, Microsoft, and Samsung. The computer will hope to emulate the Raspberry Pi, of which more than eight million have been sold. A BBC story explains a bit about the project's ambitions, and points out a few "bumps in the road"; originally, the hardware was to be in classrooms several months sooner. The BBC's own micro:bit page features more on programming the device, as well as many sample projects.
Emulate the Raspberry Pi? (Score:2)
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It's a microcontroller, not a computer.
I don't understand why you're trying to compare them.
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Re:Emulate the Raspberry Pi? (Score:4, Insightful)
It means in success and adoption, rather than performance. Its not a competitor to the Pi, its aimed even more at the educational market and has been deliberately designed in such a way that there is little prospect of a secondary market (so they dont get sold off on ebay).
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Those $8 machines which are going like hot cakes on ebay? Yeah, hand them out one day and by the end of the day half of them will have been nicked from classmates and hocked on ebay...
The Micro:bit has no secondary market, its deliberately designed in such a way that if you want to actually do something productive then its cheaper to go to another solution than work around the Micro:bits limitations.
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Does every child really need their own computer though? It would have made more sense to buy enough RPis for a class and maybe give each kid a flash drive for their work. You need a separate PC just to program these things, unlike the Pi you can't plug in a keyboard and monitor and develop on them directly.
The Micro:bit is just such a terrible idea. The lack of a case makes it vulnerable to physical and static damage. No provision for a real display, just some LEDs and two buttons for input. It's not really
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It's not really a computer at all, it's a crap Arduino
Yeah, those Arduinos are completely useless.
It's not surprising to you that they only sold a couple of dozen units, right?
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To clarify, I mean it is a crappy clone of the Arduino, which itself is a great platform but definitely not a computer or really suited to teaching children to code from scratch.
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They guy you are replying to is not denying that a Pi is "better", in terms of capability. But this has some qualities that make it "better" for the task at hand:
1. It's fairly worthless outside of it's intended environment, which means it won't be a temptation to "lose" it on eBay.
2. It's simpler. Setting up a Pi is not exactly hard, but it teaches you about setting up a computer, not electronics. You can get right to blinking lights.
3. It's cheap enough to give to the kids. Most kids will put it to the si
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Yes, and I was directly addressing his points. To reiterate:
"1. It's fairly worthless outside of it's intended environment, which means it won't be a temptation to "lose" it on eBay."
I suggested getting Pis for the class rather than the individual. Collect them up at the end of the lesson. To program the Microbit they will need PCs for every child anyway, which will belong to class.
"2. It's simpler. Setting up a Pi is not exactly hard, but it teaches you about setting up a computer, not electronics. You can
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I suggested getting Pis for the class rather than the individual. Collect them up at the end of the lesson. To program the Microbit they will need PCs for every child anyway, which will belong to class.
That solves the "selling it on eBay" problem, but then they can't take it home to diddle with it. It's a tradeoff.
Not at all. With the Pi you can throw in an SD card that boots into BASIC and then immediately start toggling LEDs connected to GPIOs. There is no reason why they couldn't provide a standard LED shield and the Javascript library code they created for the Micro:bit to run on the Pi as well.
That injects an unnecessary step and abstracts you from what the hardware is doing. If the goal is to teach a little bit of programming, then just open a web browser and forget the hardware altogether. If your goal is to teach basic electronics, then playing with more primitive hardware is beneficial. Flip this bit and the light goes on, flip it again and it goes off. Sure, you can make a Pi pre
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The Microbit plugs in to a PC via USB and shows up as a mass storage device.
You simply copy your python code to it and press reset.
There's a web based IDE as well, so you don't even need to install software. Works with Windows, Linux, Mac, Android.... Probably iPads too. Anything that supports USB mass storage and has a web browser.
Googling tablets in schools in UK, an article from 2014 says 70% of schools already have tablets for kids.
Even here in back-water New Zealand, schools are increasingly requiring
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Flip this bit and the light goes on, flip it again and it goes off.
Bingo. /sys/classes/gpio/blah/blah/export to enable your output, then write '1' to /sys/blahblah/value to turn it on!"
Teacher: "Write '1' to
Student: "How does that actually work?"
Teacher: "I don't know, magic computer stuff?"
Congrats, you're teaching how Linux works, not how computers in general work.
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and graduate to an Arduino
Except this is more capable than an Arduino
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Some of them, sure, but the "Arduino" moniker is no longer limited to the original 8-bit Atmel-based board. I think there is even an Arduino with the M0 chip found in this BBC thing.
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There's also one with a MIPS processor and WiFi running openwrt, but generally speaking Arduino is an ATMEGA328 or 2560
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The BBC microbit should be fun to play with once it is more generally available. The pins are not very convenient, but there are plenty of them and there are already edge connectors to take care of that. The built-in accelerometer/compass and bluetooth along with the crude display give it some unique features.
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Yeah, far less than an 8 bit Arduino with 32k flash and 2k ram
It's only a 32bit ARM Cortex-M0 with Bluetooth LE, 16k ram and 128k flash, a built in accelerometer and compass with a bunch of LED too.
Re:Emulate the Raspberry Pi? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a microcontroller, not a computer.
I don't understand why you're trying to compare them.
Because the creators compared them! And they came to the wrong conclusion, that there was a purpose for what they were making. But there isn't. What is really wanted is more Pi Zeros. You can use them for the same stuff as the Micro:bit, but you don't need a host system for development. You can use them with one if you've got one, so you're not giving up anything, and you get dramatically more for your money.
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A Pi Zero can't run off a coin cell.
If you don't have a host system for development, a Pi Zero requires a keyboard and HDMI monitor, a usb hub if you want a mouse too. Students don't bring these to school. They are starting to bring laptops and tablets. Anything with Bluetooth 4 or USB can work with a Micro:bit
A Pi Zero also can't do anything by itself. This thing has 25 leds, two buttons, an accelerometer and digital compass.
It's cheaper too. The Pi Zero might cost $5, but it's an extra $5 or so to buy the
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A Pi Zero can't run off a coin cell.
Coin cells are evil! They are as likely as not to wind up in a landfill. Much better to just go ahead and use Li-Ion. The Pi can run off a single NiMH battery if you use a commonly available and dirt cheap boost module.
but it's an extra $5 or so to buy the micro-to-non-micro adapter cables for HDMI and USB.
It's an extra $2 on eBay to buy the USB cable and you may not even need the HDMI cable. The Pi Zero does have composite video out on a header connector. Just taking a quick stab at eBay, I see composite to header for $4. I'm guessing wildly here, but I'd bet that if you poked around aliexpres
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Sure, the Pi that consumes 2 watts of power, you can run it from a NiMH cell, with a capacity of less than 3Wh, and lose 10% of that in the boost converter.
That's a whole hour of operation!
You can run a small 32bit micro off a coin cell for weeks. Days if you're trying to waste power. The CPU itself can only consume 2.4mA at full speed, an extra 10mA when transmitting BLE data.
The Pi Zero does not have the header attached for $5, it's an extra cost. I said $5 for the cables, you've turned around and now sai
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It's a microcontroller, so it should be compared to the Arduino, not the RasPi. In that comparison it's not bad, with an ARM Cortex M0 vs an Atmel AVR. These days the only "cool" thing that AVR has going for it is the availability of DIP packages.
And this really isn't news until they actually get delivered, because we've already known for months that they were going to give them to school kids.
I still have me BBC (Score:5, Interesting)
I've still got my BBC Master from last time around.
The last BBC computer education initiative worked amazingly well. Having the BBC in a classroom is what got me into programming when I realised I could make it do what I wanted.
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Do the tapes still work?
Same for me, started coding on an Acorn Electron at home and BBC in school. In between playing chuckie egg....
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That's great, but computers don't come with compilers any more.
Neither did the BBC. It came with a very fine BASIC interpreter with a built in and fully integrated assembler. But no compiler.
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Some computers came with a BASIC Interpreter (not compiler) in ROM. That didn't include the earliest machines such as the Altair and IMSAI, just stuff like the Apple and TRS-80 machines. More advanced machines typically did not. You usually had to buy programming toolkits.
Actually, a ROM-based interpreter is more liability than an asset once you get into multi-tasking systems. It would be foolish to put a Windows-dependent ROM on a machine that might get Linux installed, and the ROM would operate independen
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Well, on those machines, the ROM was the OS, AMOS (Acorn Memory Operating System) in the case of the BBC. Strictly speaking the BASIC ROM was optional and in fact the BEEB came with a bank of several ROM slots which were all in the same address space as the BASIC interpreter.
My school had beebs with a LOGO interpreter too, so *LOGO would disable the BASIC ROM and enable the LOGO one.
The machine would boot into the MOS shell if the BASIC ROM was removed and I believe into the first active ROM if one was inse
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Does anyone still learn 6502 assembly?
I never had a BBC but I did have a C=64
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Way to split hairs. Compiler, interpreter, a way to create your own programs. Computers don't come with them and haven't for quite a while.
Depends on what you consider as ways to create your own programs.
MacOS X comes with a programmable shell.
Any other Unix[like] OS also comes with at least a shell. Linux and BSDs generally come with a full programming env on the install media.
Any Open Firmware based computer has an entire forth programming environment built into the firmware.
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Way to split hairs. Compiler, interpreter, a way to create your own programs. Computers don't come with them and haven't for quite a while.
Since I'm splitting hairs... you can create your own programs now with a text editor and a web browser. AFAIK, pretty much every computer comes with both of those.
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Well, the little used Microsoft Windows comes with a couple. The scripting host does Basic of a sort. (VBScript) I prefer JScript if forced to use it. The 'absolutely part of the OS' browser does JavaScript even if you don't go for weird stuff like HTAs. PowerShell is great but GUIs take a bit of fiddling with XML.
That's out of the box. There are other options for download.
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My Raspberry Pi came with one, so did my Debian workstation. Several compilers, in fact.
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I'm not sure why this is a problem. They all come out-of-the-box with internet connectivity and an app store/repository, which is better than a ROM-encoded interpreter. If you can get a WiFi signal, you have access to many free interpreters and compilers, no matter what platform you have. Even if you are restricted to web sites only, there are plenty of sites to compile and run programs in-browser. Options are far better today than they were in the 80s, computers far cheaper, and, well, Google.
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Well, they don't if you count the media that comes with it, but there are compilers available for every OS without cost.
Linux is obvious, and OS X still has free XCode downloads. Windows has Visual Studio Express.
Granted, though, Linux and OS X come with the same compilers and development environment that everyone uses - Windows requires you to pay for that.
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Syntax error at line 10
Microsoft Education (Score:4, Insightful)
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If Microsoft hates the Raspberry Pi so much, why did they make a special Windows 10 build for it? It's the main supported hardware for their IoT platform https://dev.windows.com/en-us/... [windows.com]
Re:Seafood Platter (Score:3)
That's a bit unfair. Why single that one out?
Re:Microsoft Education (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree with the Guardian commentator here: http://www.theguardian.com/tec... [theguardian.com], that calls the initiative 'hugely dickish':
Like most older Brits, I have a lot of affection for the BBC, but in the last 10 - 15 years, it has lost its way both for technology and TV output.
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The article ignores the timeline and is written with perfect hindsight as usual.
When the BBC Micro:Bit project was conceived it Raspberry Pis (the original) were perpetually sold out and cost $35. Even when the BBC Micro:Bit was released it the cheapest Raspberry Pi was still 3 times the price.
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1. First, giving them is essentially destructive in that it is an anti-competitive use of public funds
2. Currently the 'micro-python' editor is only available as an
3. The Pi costs more because it's actually useful, rather than being an Arduino--
4. Actually, if they wanted 'this', they could have got behind the Arduino itself
This is a partial trojan from Microsoft, Google and some of the other cheerleaders packaged as 'generosity' and 'education'.
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I realise that some Pi zealots see it as a threat but really its an opportunity. Kids will learn key concepts on th
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Really? The micro:bit isn't even remotely like a Raspberry Pi - it's a small ARM M0 microcontroller core (running at 16MHz) with no operating system, Bluetooth and a bunch of GPIOs.
The Pi on the other hand is a complete microcomputer system and considerably more powerful (1.2GHz, built in WiFi, 3D accelerated graphics etc). It's a much more advanced and complex device.
If anything, the micro:bit will be trying to steal the Arduino's thunder.
Why not Raspberry Pi? (Score:3)
It's cheap and actually produced in the UK.
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It's cheap and actually produced in the UK.
Define cheap. The cheapest RaspberryPi is 3x the cost of the Micro:Bit
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Raspberry Pi Zero?
The well established Raspberry Pi Zero which was out in 2012 when the BBC:MicroBit project was started?
Is that the RaspberryPi Zero you're talking about?
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Why not RPi?
This BBC report [bbc.co.uk] says why:
Mr Richards has previously taught classes using another British low-cost computer - the Raspberry Pi - but says he believes the Micro Bit is better suited for younger age groups.
"It's been designed at a lower level that allows children to understand more quickly the concepts that you are trying to get across," he explained.
"With the Raspberry Pi there are a lot of things that don't make immediate sense. So, I think the Micro Bit will make a great stepping stone that engages younger children before they want to do more serious projects that would require something like the Pi."
That's what a teacher who's been using both devices thinks. Sounds fair to me. Micro:Bit as a gateway drug to the harder stuff, leading the kids of today into doing hardcore Linux in the future.
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I think they mean emulate the success fo the raspberry pi in building an ecosystem. Not commercially or in terms of technology but in terms of engagement of kids.
I personally enjoy programming microcontrollers and the raspberry pi is a bit complicated to run as bare metal for my taste, the GPU gets in the way and it has too many bells and whistles compared with, say and MSP430 or a cortex M0.
This is about propelling kids toward a better low-level understanding of computing and the only thing I think they
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For digital catch-up services we could have a single application for BBC, ITV, Ch4 and Ch5 but Sky objected so it's fragmented despite the BBC's attempt to work in the public interest.
The BBC would only want that so they can mandate more people having to pay TV licencse. Nothing to do with public interest.
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I listen to a lot of ad-free BBC Radio, which is brilliant. For digital catch-up services we could have a single application for BBC, ITV, Ch4 and Ch5 but Sky objected so it's fragmented despite the BBC's attempt to work in the public interest.
That's the thing, we don't want a single catch-up service.
And that's not what he said he wanted, either. Nice try, though.
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You don't remember Sinclair? If, instead of making the BBC Micro, the BBC had backed a Sinclair it would have given Sinclair more money.
Well there's the answer to your own point. Sinclair was a commercial company. Why should it get the backing, endorsement and publicity from the BBC over all other competing computer manufacturers?
Figuratively emulate (Score:2)
The computer will hope to emulate the Raspberry Pi, of which more than eight million have been sold.
Not literally, of course; not even that figuratively, either, since they're not selling any of them.
damn. (Score:2)
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my daughter is in year 8 not 7, so she'll miss out. and I don't get to play with it!
Don't worry I'm sure she'll be able to grab one off the bus seat or wherever else these year 7s are just going to leave the things.
Obligatory (Score:2)
Wait a minute, may be....
An ecommernce bonanza (Score:2)
Micro:bits, ... will be delivered nationwide through schools and made available to home-schooled students over the course of the next few weeks
And most will end up in a drawer / in the bin or on eBay within a matter of weeks.
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The plan is to force students to use them through an educational package, so if a student loses theirs (or sells it) then they will have to replace it.
Accelerometer + BTLE = listening device. (Score:2)
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Interesting project, but perhaps not entirely practical for deployment in the field.
Now pay attention, 007...
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And for extra sneaky squirrel points you have to work out how to use the multiple axis of the device to decode a full stereo audio stream.
Gentle introduction (Score:5, Interesting)
There are some ugly sides to the Pi for the uninitiated. I'm not saying one is better than the other (I really like the Pi), but I do think the micro:bit could be a welcome addition to the ecosystem.
I'm disappointed that BBC isn't making them available to the general community from the get go (or even before release to schools). We have a way better chance and troubleshooting (and populating stackoverflow) issues than they do. Despite the fact that this is intended to be plug-and-play, things never are (especially when they involve locked-down machines like those present at most schools).
In any case, I'm looking forward to getting one of these things!
Not sure I understand the Bit vs Pi attitude (Score:5, Informative)
The bit device is meant to be a simple board that a kid can plug into a PC and run little experiments that teach them the fundamentals of computing. Unlike the Pi it doesn't require teachers or parents to screw around flashing an SD card, or hooking up a network, display, keyboards or whatever to get it working.
And at the end of the day kids who learn the fundamentals on a bit are far better placed continue learning on the Pi or a computer. So I'd see their place in the world as being complementary to each other rather than competitive. But then again I'm looking at this rationally. I suspect some Pi owners have developed some kind of siege mentality and see other boards as a personal threat.
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Unlike the Pi it doesn't require teachers or parents to screw around flashing an SD card, or hooking up a network, display, keyboards or whatever to get it working.
Your imagination has atrophied. You can get preloaded memory cards, and the Pi could be configured to accept a serial connection so that you could use it just like the Micro:bit if that's all you wanted.
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But unlike a Raspberry Pi, the Bit requires another computer to program it. The Pi is a standalone computer. The thing programming the micro:bit might end up in many cases being a Raspberry Pi. The ARM M0 development kit for more advanced users is just an apt-get install away on any Debian-based system.
But I'm not actually disagreeing with you here. The micro:bit is a microcontroller board, more akin to an Arduino than a computer. It doesn't run an operating system. It's a 16MHz ARM M0 microcontroller. Comp
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But unlike a Raspberry Pi, the Bit requires another computer to program it.
...but you won't get far programming a Pi without a mouse, a keyboard and a display etc. In the typical school, you might, maybe, get a class set of Pis, but no teacher is going to lug 30 HDMI monitors, keyboards and mice into their classroom - they're going to book the PC lab. As all the displays in the PC lab already come with PCs attached, why not use them? Or, if the school's been kitted out in the last 10 years, it'll have a laptop or iPad trolley, which won't be much use with a Pi.
Bottom line: the Pi
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I don't know what it runs as an OS but I guess for teaching kids it really doesn't matter what runs underneath. What matters is it's easy to use
With tiny computers down to $5...why not? (Score:2)
Clearly the price of the hardware is now irrelevant - there can't be many places in the world where a one-time $5 per-child expense is unattainable.
The only limiting factor now is whether kids have the course materials to learn - and whether they have access to a machine with display and keyboard to write their programs on. The coursework isn't going to be cheap - but if done right - and OpenSourced - then the cost can be amortised down to nearly $0. So the one remaining problem is whether these kids will
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To a Yank, the Queen is part of the government. Just pretend kav2k said "Establishment". The BBC and it's "fee" is imposed on the people of Britain from above, call it what you will.
Re:Internet of Things (Score:5, Informative)
Sigh...
The BBC here in the UK is NOT, repeat NOt funded by the Government. It is funded by the people through the TV license. The money goes nowhere near the government. The current license is approx £144/year per household.
The ONLY bit of the BBC that is Government funded is the World Service.
Please get your facts right.
Re:Internet of Things (Score:5, Informative)
Meh, its a little bit of both.
The TV license funds the BBC and various other services in part - the BBC also sells its content on the secondary market for more funding (Top Gear was completely funded by its secondary market, it cost the BBC nothing for example).
The TV license is however a government backed tax, the same as other directly collected taxes such as vehicle tax - the government sets the rate and the TV Licensing authority collects it and distributes it (most of it goes to the BBC and related providers, some of it goes into a fund to subsidise broadband for rural locations).
So no, the BBC is not funded by the Government, but yes, the BBC's funding is provided by a revenue stream created, controlled and protected by the Government. Subtle difference.
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More like a distinction without a difference.
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The difference is lack of control.
Any government-funded process usually has government control. The BBC is not controlled by the government, not funded by the government (although I agree they're involved with the mechanics of the funding process) and was established by royal charter. [bbc.co.uk]
The BBC are frequently critical of government policies (as well as shadow-cabinet policies. Try watching politicians of all walks squirm on News Night [youtube.com], for example - although I believe Jeremy Paxman has retired from the program
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FYI, when talking to Brits it can get confusing when you refer to the "government". To them the Queen is not part of the government. Since the BBC is not authorized by Parliament directly, but by Royal Charter, it would be more proper to say that the TV license is an "Establishment-backed tax".
Hopefully I got that right - you can go in circles with this obscure terminology when talking across the Atlantic.
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The BBC exists under Royal Charter, but the TV license is authorised by the Communications Act 2003, not the Royal Charter, and is set by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, so the TV license most definitely is a "revenue stream created, controlled and protected by the Government".
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In America federally mandated is synonymous with government run.
Look at Obama care. With the rhetorical you'd think the government is coming into our homes and sticking thermometers up or asses.
You've got to admit though, Royally chartered statutory corporations are influenced by the government.
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If we're going to talk about getting the facts right, the World Service has been funded through the licence fee since last year with a relatively small top-up from the government announced back in November.
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our PBS is similarly largely supported through private means, but that doesn't stop the idiots here from trying to cancel the meager sum the government does send its way.
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PBS doesn't do itself any favors by consistently targeting viewership from one side of the aisle. While that strategy does give them fervent supporters, it also gives them fervent detractors. Like it or not, those detractors do pop into political power now and again.
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STFU, Donald.
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"public service broadcaster" ... owned by the government, controlled by the government, funded by the government... so wtf is it if not a government entity? It even taxes the public with the "television license fee".
Actually I thought it was run by HSBC
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The government is not my fucking landlord and does not own my fucking land. If you want to be a peasant with a landlord bending you over at will, have at it.
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Why do people persist in being so smugly ignorant?
You "own" your land until:
A. You fail to pay your property taxes and the government sells it to someone else for back taxes.
B. Donald Trump decides it's sitting on part of his next development and he pays, er persuades, the local government to seize it by eminent domain
C. Your wildest Libertarian child-dream comes true and the goddam gubbmint is disbanded, leaving Attila the Hun free rein to come swarming in with his hordes and take it - and your family - an
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It's not a tax.
But it is a a ripoff, which is why I don't bother with it. Forget the fact the where I live I can pick up practically no channels over the air other than the most very basic. Then they take the best channel of the air to make it "online only" (bbc3) They leave 4 online showing the same kind of stuff as 2 then they fill 1 and 2 with pure dribble for the most part. Oh gotta watch me some of that high brow bargain hunt, or shitty shitty daytime game show, or benefits saints and scroungers. The state of bbc tv
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When I was young and at college, I used to think this way. Then I grew up, moved out of the country, and realised just what a gem the BBC really is. Until you've experienced the advert-laden projectile stream of vomit of fully commercialised television without anything like the BBC to restrain it, you don't realise what you've got.
Let me put it this way. Even if I never watched any of the programs, I would gladly pay the equivalent of a license fee over here in the states just for the moderating effect the
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Compare old episodes of Horizon (popular documentary) from the 70s and 80s to modern ones. It's incredible how dumb the modern episodes are in comparison. It's so bad that the BBC won't repeat the old ones, except in carefully edited clip shows where the old "boring" footage of people talking has been spiced up with some shitty "moments of wonder" piano music and a new, breathless voiceover.
Meanwhile, Japanese TV was showing a documentary explaining the Unix filesystem and file permissions the other evening
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So the fact that the government mandates insurance if I want to drive my car on the road means the cost of my car insurance is actually a tax?
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Does it matter from any point except semantics? It's money that you have to pay because the government forces you to. Where the check goes is secondary. If you have a TV in Britain, you have to pay money by force of law - do you really care if you make the check out to the BBC or "Her Royal Highness"?
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Oh please do bugger off.
"Extortion"? Really? Really? Yes, if you own TV and are capable of receiving live TV you pay. Don't like that don't have an aerial and get on with your life.
And really, for £145/year if you can't find anything on BBC TV or radio worth having then I pity your lack of imagination. Its radio output alone is worth more than that.
A now deceased BBC employee was almost certainly a serial pedophile. It's inexcusable and if you were here for any period of time you'd notice quite how mu
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A now deceased BBC employee was almost certainly a serial pedophile. It's inexcusable and if you were here for any period of time you'd notice quite how much the BBC is self-critical.
What many of us found quite telling is that they made a huge row over Clarkson socking up his producer to get out of his contract, but they tried to hush up the reports of pederasty. If they really cared about the children, they'd have been shouting their condemnation from the hilltops.
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and probably not even £145 richer - when you think that Google makes $70bn in advertising revenue per year, and that the advertisers have to find the money to hand over to Google to show their adverts, you'll be paying far more than than in increased costs for products. And have to watch the damn adverts too.
The BBC has its faults, typically left-wing liberals trying to set the agenda, but that doesn't mean all of it is rubbish or needs to be thrown away.
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It might not be in the BBC's remit, but it's only tax payers money, so who cares?
It might not? So which is it? Once you've made up your mind, we can discuss whether we should care.
For you Americans who may not know, every UK household that wants to watch any form of live TV must pay £144/year to the BBC, even if you don't watch BBC channels. The rules are being changed to include non-live TV too.
For you folks who may not know, this is the norm in lots of countries. Every one of them that I've ever lived in, at any rate--except the US. So if you don't like that arrangement, perhaps you should consider moving to the US... or throwing out your TV.
I rarely watch Swedish television, but don't mind paying the license fee (~2300 SEK/year), because I realise that it's in the country's interest to have at leas
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I also pay for multiple commercial channels that I never watch.
They do not work for nothing so they get paid for by advertisers.
Advertisers are also not benificent charities and they get paid for by their customers (eg supermarkets, car companies...)
The companies get their money from the end customer - ie individuals like me.
So ... I end up paying more in my daily purchases to fund multiple levels of payments (each of which is abstracting their own profits).
Personally I think the BBC is good value for money
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This is simply millions (possibly billions) in tax revenue grabbed by the BBC to pretend to be 'helping the children'.
Tax revenue? BBC? Careful now, your US based anti-government agenda is cropping up. Especially since you used the words tax and BBC in the same sentence it just shows your ignorance.