I've a confession to make I have not paid the TV licence since 1992

[NaRvIcK DeViL]

I've a confession to make I have not paid the TV licence since 1992 . Since 1994, I've had no letters or visits .I live at the top floor of a 3 story block of flats; I have 2 TVs 2 DVD players ,2 video recorders ,1 freeview box and 1 with a 160GB hard-drive. Up till 1992 I had worked and lived abroad from America, Canada, France, Hong Kong, On returning to this country I could not believe that I had to still pay for the right of the BBC s existence whether I liked it or not .I was even more infuriated knowing that the BBC around the world was financed through voluntary subscription.

BBC America, Canada, India etc are going concerns and a very lucrative one at that! Only here in the UK is its existence assured by a nice little earner that you're conditioned to call a licence when it's blatantly a tax on every home that wants to have and use a TV.

On top of all this are the blatant lies that are told to endorse the policing of this anachronism which includes the detector vans and hand held detection devices which to be honest is the biggest load of bull anyone can dream up and the paying public seem to lap this total crap up, it's as bad as the myth, if not worse than you being told that to get the new freeview digital channels you will have to upgrade your aerial to a new digital one ,there is no such thing as a digital aerial . I myself, I'm still using 2 old indoor aerials and have no problem receiving these channels even though on buying a freeview box with hard-drive it said on the box that it wouldn't work without a external aerial. Please don't forget that the new digital channels are on reduced transmission strength until the old analogue signal is finally switched off, you may find that if you live in areas that have already switched that your digital signal strength has increased.

Now if you want to be in the same situation as me where you won't have to bother ever again paying this tax the steps to accomplish this are very easy indeed and there are 2 rules you should follow one is the - No Contact Rule and the other is the Removal of the Implied Access.

With a bit of savvy they won't be able to prosecute without You complying to their non-existent authority.

Couple of facts they don't want you to know:

*The Number of prosecutions they claim to do every year 140,000 is a, full in your face blatant lie they are lucky to do 10 to 14 thousand. If you have IQ higher than ex president Bush Junior which is about the size of my manhood, do the maths, the courts would be totally clogged. For a start!

*You DO NOT need a license to own a TV/Video/DVD/Radio/Computer (even with a tuner card)/Mobile phone(not yet !)- the license is only to grant you permission to receive broadcasts live i.e. at the same time as they are transmitted. Watching a program that is recorded on a Tape, Disc, Hard-Drive is perfectly legal.

*Their TV licensing officers, have no more rights than an out-dated door to door salesman putting a foot in your door as you try to slam it shut in their face.

If you are unfortunate enough to open the door to one of these goons then simply say now't and I mean now't don't even acknowledge their existence (if you can resist making witticisms) and close the door. They DO NOT have any right to enter your home. They DO NOT have any right to force you to answer questions- the people to whom convictions are attributed are those who have stupidly confessed. Remember it is they that have to prove you have committed a criminal offence and to enter your home requires a warrant from the courts- trust me this is very burdensome, time consuming and costly, with the magistrate requiring a "good degree" of certainty that a crime has been committed i.e. seeing you physically watching live TV and they'll need a witness.

One day I hope the licence will go and good riddance- it's well out of date and the BBC knows this only too well. Some people may choose to subscribe to one/or many of their channels as they do around the world, which I did when I was living in the east coast of the United states- the news coverage you watch here in the UK "BBC News 24" is for our consumption and the countries close to us that can pick up our transmissions which they receive for nothing. Ireland, Norway, Denmark etc and parts of Northern France .The rest of the world gets BBC Worldwide which comes with adverts and to be honest once you've watched BBC WW you'll finally realise that our news should be called "We don't lie to you ! we just miss out alot"

The key here is CHOICE. and not the illusion of choice with a stick over our heads, lets kill off this draconian and unethical stealth tax before the next Royal Charter is renewed because if we don't this tax will evolve where it will not only rise in cost (Rate of inflation ignored as usual) but the other media companies ITV, Channel4, etc who have already stated they should get a slice, Will Eventually.

Hey! it's the British way we have a nice gravy train going here which the repressed, compliant people of Britain except, so let's take advantage of it.

[jaysbee666]

WOW, terrific first post NaRvIcK DeViL, it would have been easier on the typing fingers to go into introduction and basically say Hi all the same, welcome to Techwatch

[Robbo]

Just interested to know why you think using TV detection equipment is bull***t?

Are you saying that its not possible?, as I know receiver detection is.

Yes, there is no such thing as a digital aerial, but there is often a need to upgrade the aerial for one that can receive the signals OK, after DSO. It may be that the group has changed, needs to wider,more gain etc etc, also would depend on where the receiver location is relative to the transmitter.


As for not paying for your TV licence for all those years, well I think you should, and hope one day you get caught and have to pay. You are just a freeloader.

Though, I tend to agree, that making avoidance a criminal issue, is itself 'criminal'.

[NaRvIcK DeViL]

I think some people going by the responses so far have a nostalgic perspective about the BBC which in this day and age is misplaced .

So i'll start with how well your being legally mugged ...... Dr Who was shown in America for the first two series solely by BBC America it is now been sold to the networks which in the states means the big bucks start rolling in, so far going by what has been said in the states by their media it's made 80 million Dollars just from the first 2 series alone.

Top gear is another programe which is very popular so much so that millions of americans illegally download the programmes once they've been shown on uk television .when it comes to selling to the networks it's made a fortune by being one of the most popular programmes shown in the United States.

None of this money will go to alleviate the tv licence paying public.Since BBC AMERICA is a going concern in it's own right .

BBC UK does make some money through BBC World Wide (180 million) last year, which is where the companies that make up the global BBC FRANCHISE go to aquire programmes from the BBC catalogue at a very reduced price.

And by the way No ! prosecution has ever taken place in court by using the evidence of the detector vans and i mean ever !!! visit the official tv licensing website to find that out ...please ! if you've got the spare time you can find this out for yourself.

[NaRvIcK DeViL]

The real rate of BBC licence fee evasion

The readers’ pages of our daily newspapers regularly carry stories about the ruthless behaviour of TV Licensing, the arm of the BBC responsible for collecting licence fees from homes with televisions.

Households with no TV set report sustained TV Licensing letter campaigns, with rising levels of threat.

Magistrates bemoan the burden on the courts of a constant stream of evaders being prosecuted. Civil libertarians are shocked by a sinister poster campaign from TV Licensing boasting “we know where you live”. Non-payers are warned of the dangers of ending up with a criminal record.

The level of prosecutions is certainly substantial: 168,800 in 2008/9, constituting 30% of all non-motoring summary cases. 28 per cent of evaders are single parents, mostly female, and that 55 per cent of female single parents live in extreme poverty. Anecdotal evidence is that TV Licensing targets known offenders, waiting for them to fall into arrears again, and then launching a new prosecution.

Yet careful reading of the BBC’s latest Annual Report reveals a very different state of affairs. The BBC records 25.459m licences, but also admits to a 5.2 per cent evasion rate, which equates to 1.324m evaders. If we assume that the rate of 168,800 prosecutions for evasion the previous year continued in 2009/10, and that all were successful, I calculate that there were 1.493m evaders in total, of whom just 11.3 per cent were actually caught. Given that of the 25.459m licences in issue 4.008m were paid for by the government, on behalf of exempted over-75-year-olds, and that 68 per cent of the remainder paid by direct debit, the true evasion rate was much higher than 5.2 per cent. Eliminating the over-75s and the direct debit homes reveals that the households who needed to be pursued by TV Licensing numbered just 6.775m: so the total evasion rate was 22 per cent, and the successful evasion rate was 19.5 per cent.

Of course, TV Licensing turns a blind eye to much of this evasion, to avoid a situation where court proceedings for TV licence evasion exceed the entire total for all prosecutions for indictable and summary offences, swamping our legal system – especially as the BBC makes no contribution to the court costs incurred by these prosecutions.

Whatever the truth of that conjecture, the reality is that payment of the TV licence has become voluntary, like inheritance tax: paid only by those who love the BBC, by those who dislike breaking the law or by those who cannot be bothered to fend off what turn out to be hollow threats of prosecution. Of course, cancelling a direct debit and then not paying the licence fee would alert the doziest of pursuers, but anyone moving home or not paying by direct debit can certainly contemplate not paying until an actual prosecution is imminent. There is no penalty for paying up late (though the BBC imposes a £5 fee for those who want to pay quarterly), provided you make up for any arrears you may have accumulated.

Evasion costs the BBC in excess of £180m a year, on top of collection costs of £126.5m. Put it another way: evaders add £7.50 to the cost of the TV licence for those who are stupid enough to actually pay . The BBC is also highly sensitive to cash flow pressures. The TV licence fee is one of the few charges in society which has to be paid in advance. Any trend towards late payment would put severe pressure on the BBC’s tightly restricted borrowing capacity. It might also put doubt in the minds of BBC creditors, especially when reminded that – according to the Annual Report – only 48 per cent of people think the licence fee is good value for money.

It so happens that the report also reveals a huge deficit in the BBC’s pension fund, of over £1.6bn, which in turn has pushed the BBC’s consolidated balance sheet deep into the red, for the first time in living memory. The growing concern section of the Report confirms that the auditors are relaxed, on the basis that the licence fee is guaranteed to be paid through to April 2013, and is expected to be renewed thereafter. The developers of the new £1bn BBC headquarters in Portland Place only signed their deal with the BBC on the basis of written assurances from ministers that the BBC – and the licence fee – had decades of government assurance.

Yet the truth is that the licence fee faces a potential crisis once digital switchover is complete in 2012. The rapid roll-out of broadband, and the widespread take-up of catch-up services like the BBC i-player, has made it far easier to gain access to BBC content without having to pay the licence fee at all, as it only applies to users of live TV content. Take-up of high definition TV will keep the market for TV sets vibrant, but many single-person households – whose numbers run into millions – may calculate that owning a computer with fast broadband makes keeping an old-fashioned TV-only screen an expensive anachronism.

Ministers have in recent years openly questioned whether the licence fee is a sustainable means of funding the BBC in the future. The realisation that TV Licensing is a tiger with rather weak teeth will concentrate minds even more on this issue. Planning for a switch to encryption and subscription – which eliminates the evaders – may prove to be rather more attractive than just waiting for the system to fall into disrepute.

[the insaan]

i agree to the point that it is a full on in your face tax, if you subscribe to virgin or sky, then you pay them for TV, why pay the BBC if you want to watch national geographic

it's like shopping at asda but paying both asda and tesco for your shopping. It is robbery.

[brian]

Narvick, you're missing the point that the BBC is funded each year by the taxpayer, and that the profits made through BBC Worldwide are put in to try and make the BBC less of a tax burden.

That's my impression anyway.

How much has the licence fee gone up in the past few years?

[Robbo]

I'd rather we kept the TV licence, it nice to not to have poxy adverts every 10 to 15 mins like you get on Sky, and thats subscription channels. Sky 1 is diabolical for it, with adverts at the most inappropriate time. Doctor Who would be totally spoilt by adverts throughout it for example.

[NaRvIcK DeViL]

Resisting the BBC terror tactics

We’re like the suffragettes, say a growing group of TV fee refuseniks

The news that the BBC would be running an expensive advertising campaign to promote Radio 1 DJs drew explosive reactions . “£300,000? That’s about 2,150 licence fees!” spluttered one blog post. The campaign had been put on hold by Mark Thompson, the director-general, amid fears that it “looked too expensive”. Now it seems the corporation has decided, once again, to ignore the views of many of those who fund it.

The furore delights Erik Oostveen, a Dutch telecoms engineer who is at the forefront of the campaign against the licence fee. He began his crusade soon after arriving in the UK in 2001. Receiving “an intimidating letter” demanding that he pay, he obeyed. “But I was being forced to pay for a service I hadn’t asked for and didn’t want,” he says. So he disconnected his television from the rooftop aerial, “detuned” his set and stopped paying.

He insists he and his family are not breaking the law as they cannot receive “live” television. But growing numbers are continuing to watch television while evading the charge.

Oostveen has set up a website, www.tvlicensing.biz, which campaigns for the abolition of the licence and offers tips on “how to avoid being detected” by TV Licensing (TVL), the private company that collects the fee on the BBC’s behalf. Oostveen’s campaign centres on what he sees as the “intimidating” tactics used by TVL. He has had a torrent of stiff letters and three home visits from TVL officers — a video of the last one, is on his site.

“The BBC is creating fear,” he says. “The letters have a harsh tone and even if you tell them you don’t watch live broadcasts they may still send someone round to check. That says: we don’t trust you; you’re breaking the law.”

Oostveen is not alone. At least 50 Facebook groups call for the television licence to be boycotted. One protester, John, in his late thirties, admits that he watches television via Freeview and has “never” paid the fee.

He has been visited three times over nearly two decades. On the most recent occasion he answered a knock to find a man in “civvies” saying he was conducting a survey in the area. “He asked me my name and whether I was the householder,” he recalls. “I knew who he really was and told him to get on with it, so he flipped out an ID card that said ‘TV Licensing’, like he was from MI5 or something. I started laughing and shut the door in his face.”

Michael, 52, who hasn’t paid since 1974 and admits to rigging up a system that allows him to watch live television, wasn’t so lucky. He got caught when TVL officers turned up with three policemen and a search warrant. “They barged in while we were watching a DVD,” he says. “One of the police officers climbed over the back gate, while two more went to search upstairs.

“The licensing people said they had a warrant to inspect the equipment. I’d detuned the sets and cut the aerial lead. But I was caught out because I hadn’t detuned them properly. The TVL guy stuck a pen or a key in the back of a set and was able to get a very fuzzy, grainy picture. And that’s enough to convict.” He was fined £120 and ordered to make a £15 contribution to Victim Support. “That’s still less than the fee,” he says. “So what kind of deterrent was that?”

When asked about its representatives being “intimidating”, the BBC said it was reviewing the way it communicated, but evaders were still liable for prosecution. Another prosecution is precisely what Michael says he wants, as he seeks to provoke a test case to show the licence fee is ultimately “unenforceable” thanks to rapidly evolving technology, which enables millions to watch live television on their computer screens.

He says: “A TV tax shouldn’t exist. Debates aren’t working, lobbying MPs doesn’t work, so small people like us are making a difference. This is civil disobedience. I’m doing what the suffragettes once did.”

[Macabre]

Originally Posted by Robbo

I'd rather we kept the TV licence, it nice to not to have poxy adverts every 10 to 15 mins like you get on Sky, and thats subscription channels. Sky 1 is diabolical for it, with adverts at the most inappropriate time. Doctor Who would be totally spoilt by adverts throughout it for example.

Have you never watched anything on Dave or Uk gold ??


Which are BBC Channels