The switchover to digital which will see the analogue TV effectively "switched off" is getting ever closer, and with it comes many considerations. Specifically, for the Government, the main consideration is how to ensure that the elderly and disabled are still able to watch Corrie when the time comes. Now I'm not going to be too caustic here, many elderly and disabled people will have television sets which have been plugged in for years and just simply "work".
The switchover to digital, with its incumbent extra set-top box and new fangled remote control menu screens will undoubtedly bamboozle a few of them. So it does kind of make sense to prepare for this in some meaningful way. As a sort of "trial run" the Government introduced a trial in Bolton to help "vulnerable groups" switchover to digital. What this actually meant was subsidising the cost of an STB and helping them plug the aerial into it and the SCART lead into the TV (subsidised TVs were presumably given for those with SCART).
That trial, in one metropolitan borough in England, cost £211,000. The Department of Culture, Media and Sport is quick to stress on that point that the spending was not all from the Goevrnment. The £211,000 was actually split equally with the BBC. The fact the BBC is funded by us as well still means that £211,000 of taxpayers money was spent on the pilot of course. So how does this pan out for the entire country in cost terms? Well, according to the DCMS budget (which I take with a pinch of salt given the Olympics Budget), they will spend £600 million on subsidising STBs (and STB capable TVs) and installing digital across the country for these "vulnerable groups".
On a purely anecdotal point, I know for a fact that at least one Labour Council in London told its residential home pensioners they needed to buy a STB themselves if they wanted to continue watching TV - no one complained about it. This make me wonder whether it is absolutely necessary to subsidise everyone at such a high cost? An STB costs about £20, and a SCART-enabled TV will cost about £40 (see Tesco). That is not an awful lot of money when you consider the date of switchover and the time between now and then.
True, many pensioners are disabled people are facing hardship right now, but, according tot he Government they've never had it so good. If the Government is correct then why does it need to subsidise their ability to keep up with what Dot Cotton is doing? Surely the very existence of such a large budget for digital switchover is actually evidence of the Government's lies, spin and deceit on the financial position that these groups are currently in?
4 comments:
If that last point were true it would only draw attention to the very much worse place they were in under Thatcher and Major.
And what the fuck has that got to do with the price of bread today exactly? Oh look nothing! Tit argument from a tit!
Turn it off soon and take the licence fee with it....
Old people must surely remember the time when there was no TV so I'm sure they could live without it again.
Perhaps they could *shock* read a book instead. Might stimulate a few brain cells and keep them out of care a little longer.
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