UKH

So i have a question hoping someone has an answer, i do not have or own a television and have not done for approx 18 years, roughly every 2 years i get a letter telling me that its illegal to have a tv without a licence or to watch or download  stuff on any device, therefore i have to let them know that i do not have or do such things, you would of thought after 18 years they might of got the message that I'm really not interested in owning a tv. Anyway my question is since ive decided to ignore the last 2 letters now ive got a red one im curious to know where this will end anyone been in this situation?

The letters go through an escalating cycle of fake threats, up to one carefully crafted to make you think you’ve got a court appointment.

Then the cycle resets to the beginning.  We’ve been through about 6 cycles now.

You may also get a visit from a tv licence inspector and it's great fun to invite them in and showing inside every cupboard and draw saying "look, no tv here either..."

Just ignore then. Nothing happens.

Ignore them. They have to prove that you’re using the relevant equipment. Even if someone does follow up with a visit you’re quite within your rights to tell them to leave. I wouldn’t even invite them in to see a lack of television purely based on how vile they are as a company (collection is run by Capita). It’s not up to you to prove your innocence.

Ps. Have a look on YouTube for 'tv licence goon' and you'll have hours fun! 

People do change their minds though, I have a telly (and a licence) now but didn't for many years.  Speaking of which..

The one time I had a visit from one his comic timing was absolutely perfect - I was moving and he turned up just as I'd done a quick idiot check and was about to lock the door for the last time.  I invited him in to take a look at my completely empty flat - no tv, also no furniture, carpet, curtains, nothing at all.  The look on his face was a picture.

You'll be up before the beak for twice using 'of' instead of 'have'. Other than that, no issues.

When they visited me, after about 4 years of threatening letters, I offered to show them around and they declined.

Ha ha they have special vans with a magical detector that patrols the streets at night. They KNOW. Did anyone actually believe that nonsense ever?

The onus is on them to prove you are using a TV or watching video on a laptop etc that is plugged in to the mains -- bizarrely if you unplug it and run on battery while you watch e.g. an embedded YouTube video in these forums, then it's OK. Who decides this nonsense.

Why don't we add 1p on income tax instead, this licence fee is nonsense and it costs money to send people those ridiculous threatening letters. Or is it a civil service job guarantee scheme?

Ask to see their pilots licence before allowing them in.

They're asking to see a licence for something you don't have, why not do the same?

This is like the good old days of UKC

When they came to our house, I invited him in, and he went to our telly, flicked through the channels and confirmed it was not receiving. I then insisted he checked the telly upstairs, he tried not to, but I insisted, he looked worried, but I would not let him leave until he had.

He then said we would receive no letters for two years, then it would all start again.

Except that the BBC (and public service broadcasting in general) is under threat like never before. 

I know the TV Licence is a very regressive tax and all, but being blessed that I can afford it it's one that I'm delighted to pay.  It's extraordinarily good value for money, especially compared to streaming services like Mad Nads's beloved Netflix, and thanks to previous cuts now also funds the World Service.  (Which is just about the only thing left that it's still possible to take some scrap of national pride in - one thing remaining that presents us to the citizens of other countries as anything other than a nation of utter f**kwits.)

E2A:
Also, having an actual telly in the house is more irrelevant than it's ever been.  Of course he didn't care whether your tv received anything through its antenna.  Nobody watches telly on an actual TV set any more, other than old farts like us, especially not in 'real time' as it's broadcast.  That's just a niche legacy service for the terminally uncool.

Rules changed a few years ago and you apparently now need a licence to watch all live programmes on tv and anything on demand through iPlayer, regardless of the device type or battery/mains power.

Quite so, so it's completely unenforceable.  Has been for decades anyway pretty much.

Times are tough and nobody should go hungry scrimping and saving to pay what is, as I said above, quite a regressive tax.

But at the risk of being a bit strident, I'll add a bit more emphasis to what I said above.  At this point anyone who should pay it and can afford it but chooses not to is a selfish arse no better than a flytipper.

Haa !!  yep or his shotgun licence, fishing rod licence and anything else we could add to the list 😅

This, unless you genuinely never utilise any BBC output (tv, radio, websites, recipies etc).

In a world of subscription services the licence fee is pretty good value for a multi channel service 

Go on Netflix, it's only £7 a month

Can I get the BBC on Netflix?

Yes, you can get everything but Richard Osman's House of Games

In theory with the crts it could work hence the tempest countermeasures.

In reality I think it was due more to the requirement to report the sale of a television and hence the easy cross checking with that vs the license db.

Oh yes I remember, when we bought a TV my partner gave his details and subsequently got a very agro letter telling him he didn't have a TV licence - no he didn't, because it was in my name for our shared address.

Some years ago, we went through the difficult process of telling them we no longer had a TV and didn't need a TV licence, the website to try and do this was a nightmare - no idea if it's improved.

The letters asking us to confirm "licence not needed" go straight in the bin, why the f**k should I have to re-confirm any such thing to them when I've previously told them.

I didn't realise that there were further degrees of escalation - I look forward to receiving them.

I am same position as you, never had TV last 15 years, never responded to letters, I have had red letters numerous times and just put them in the bin without opening, think of the cost of letters and postage over 15 years, crazy waste of money, they have appeared at my door once at old flat, I was happy to show the chap around and he was content I didn’t actually have a tv or watched tv, after that I stopped getting letters but since moving to new flat I have been bombarded with letters again, chance of them catching you in is slim, but no real problem inviting them in when they do finally attend.

They can't enter your house, whether you have a TV or not, so don't invite them in. I haven't had a TV for over 30 years and ignored every letter. After about 25 years, someone randomly knocked on the door and said, "Do you have a TV?" "No", I replied. "Ok, thanks", ticked their box and off they went. Don't worry about it at all.

Absolutely it was theoretically possible. The technology was originally developed by Peter Wright (technical chief at MI5) for detecting who was listening to specific (Russian) radio stations. Imagine blowing across the top of a milk bottle it resonates, now the tuning circuit of a radio is a bit like adjusting the volume of your milk bottle to match the frequency of the input across the top, so it resonates to a particular frequency (note the twiddly variable capacitor with a big tuning knob that radios used to have). When you are tuned to a frequency that has a signal the tuning circuit resonates and emits at the same frequency and harmonics. The valves also produced signal to detect. You can set your own "radio" and directional antenna to detect people tuned into radio or TV stations... Back in the analogue days anyway. In the case of Russian numbers stations they did use it to confirm embassies listening (already knew) but according to Peter Wright they did at least one low flight over London at the times the stations transmitted and did vaguely detect something but nothing useful came of it.

As far as I know the TV detector van was a flimsy myth. Certainly I've not yet met anyone who believed it

Twaddle. Detection has just become a lot harder with each generation of viewing device.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_detector_van

I remember reading that the amount of court time taken up with TV licence cases was a huge burden on the legal system. Wiki provided the number 178k court cases in 2013. Its easy for them to walk down a terraced street and look through the windows. Making it more likely that lower income households are disproportionally affected. Also, women are more likely to be fined than men.

"In total, 39,742 women were convicted in 2020 but the number of men was 12,634."

The link below also suggests that ~45% of non motoring convictions for women, were to do with tv licence evasion. These are criminal convictions, and will affect the chances of employment in certain sectors.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/bbc-tv-licence-fine-women-men-nadine-dorries-1925...?

The BBC are an entertainment company, ffs. Its outrageous that a the state will gleefully prosecute people and clog up the courts, in the name of entertainment.

I like the idea of an independent BBC. But the tv licence and criminal proceedings are not the way forward. Neither is being a political tool used by parties to spread their agenda. In this day and age there are better funding models, where you dont assume your audience are criminals, who need to prove their innocence at regular intervals.

They aren't inspectors they are salespeople who get commission from selling you a licence. They have no right of access, despite what they say. We haven't had a licence for years and only really watch YouTube. It's only illegal to watch any form of live broadcast but any catch-up is fine with the exception of BBC.

I don't understand the argument that -- the license fee is essential rather than government grant, in order to main the BBCs political neutrality (Ignoring for now the debate on whether they're neutral and unbiased or not)

The current system depends on legislation and government support and the amount of the fees needs government support (defacto if not legislative) at the least to stop increases getting vetoed. How legislation for funding be different from legislation for fees. As long as the funding was legally ring-fenced to stop it being used to manipulate the BBC I can't see any justification to continue this nonsense.

The BBC was set up purely to block commercial radio, as they didn't want commercial radio stations in the UK like America had. The foundation of the BBC was based on stifling and controlling, the history isn't as noble as their PR people would have you believe 

I wonder why they don't adopt a subscription model like Sky, Netflix or Amazon prime? I imagine (but maybe I'm wrong) that many viewers watch BBC content over broadband or satellite dish and a subscription model could ensure you can only watch if you subscribe. 

Because they know not enough people would subscribe to make it viable and certainly not enough to justify the over inflated salaries and sense of self importance.

I certainly wouldn't subscribe, I pay my licence fee because I record things on other channels. the only BBC content I watch os Bake off and the sewing bee and thats about it, I stopped listening to the BBC radio when Terry Wogan stopped doing the breakfast show so if there was an option that wasn't breaking the law to not pay and lose the few programs I bother with I would stop paying tomorrow.

Misrepresentative twaddle again. What's got into you Tom? Radio broadcast space is precious and having no control on that leads to chaos and interference with important state functions like military comms. There were indeed plenty of less than noble actions so why not state them instead (like being very one-sided during the general strike)?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC

Folks on here don't seem to like doing it, because they shouldn't have to or whatever, but I filled in this a long time ago https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one/topics/telling-us-you-d... and they prompt me again every couple of years or so in case we've changed our usage, and it works fine and I've only had a visit from an inspector once in two decades, shortly after moving to a new house.

I let him in, showed him around, showed him our TV - which is entirely capable of receiving live TV (like every internet-connected TV, computer or phone), or of running iplayer. I told him we don't do so, and he said to let them know if that changed and went on his way.

So, yeah, you don't have to fill in the form, and you don't have to let an inspector in, but I've had no problems doing so.

But then, I -don't- watch TV as it's being broadcast, or use iplayer, so I'm not required to have a TV license. You don't say whether this is true of you - it's about that, not whether you have a device capable of receiving (as, e.g. every smartphone is).

I sometimes wonder how much I would be prepared to pay for the BBC. I think at least 5 or maybe 10 times the present licence fee. In fact I would probably pay that for R4 alone! I find it hard to imagine life without it. 

... which would be simply out of the question for low-income households, and which well illustrates the problem of having a public service funded by what effectively is a flat tax, with no progressive element based on ability to pay.

Yes, of course. I would prefer it to be funded from progressive general taxation.

I'm in a similar position. I use Prime, Disney+ and Netflix on a TV, phone etc but consume no live TV, record it or use iPlayer.

I used to inform the BBC of this, but I've got annoyed with it, and now just bin their letters. Let them waste their money chasing me, I know I'm in the right here. I wont let them in, I don't let strangers in my house.

What I hate about the whole license setup is you need a license to watch live TV that the BBC don't even produce. So if you want to watch Sky News you have to pay the BBC. That would be like having to pay Tesco for the privileged of buying at Asda. And then Tesco asking you to prove you haven't been stealing form them if you don't pay them.

Also at £13 a month, it's terrible value. All the services I subscribe to are much cheaper and have more and better content (in my view).

No it isn't, because the BBC is not a subscription service and the TV licence is not a subscription.  It's a tax, which funds a publicly funded national broadcaster.  Being flat-rate it's really quite a regressive tax, and undoubtedly it would be better for it to be funded out of general taxation, but the upside of that is that it effectively ringfences the money and makes it relatively difficult for governments to slash the funding on the sly. 

(Particularly recent governments, who would probably like to disband it altogether - apart from any other reason, because Rupert Murdoch really really wants them to.)

This is just semantics. You can call it what you like, tax or subscription the result is the same.

We pay £156 (or whatever it is these days) if you want to watch Sky or some Indian channel or whatever and that money is used to fund the BBC.

If you want to call it a tax, then I'm being taxed to watch something that's either free to watch or I've already paid for it, to fund the BBC that I generally don't want to watch. That is exactly like paying Tesco to shop at Asda and it's not on.

Is it though? If benefits / tax credits are deemed to cover the cost in some form then it's not.

Unless you think a majority of people should be on benefits so that such a graduated tax can apply to the majority of people, it really is.

No, whilst I do spout some odd nonsense from time to time I think I'm pretty secure here.

The reasoning that they were protecting important radio use is spurious because it was suggested that the government licenced and regulated commercial radio which would have prevented problem. Marconi wanted to buy a licence for example. But they declined to follow that model wanting to avoid the US model and formed the BBC to prevent commercial radio instead.

Look at how long it took before they were forced to relent... 1973!! (LBC) and that's only due to the popularity of Radio Caroline (following Radio Luxembourg, Radio Atlanta and many related stations popularity) which they couldn't stamp out despite enormous efforts to do so. They only started licencing commercial radio in the UK as they were embarrassingly no longer able to suppress it.

The situation between the wars,  when the BBC was set-up, was very different to that in 1960s and 70s. At best you are massively exaggerating about it's foundations in saying "The BBC was set up purely to block commercial radio, as they didn't want commercial radio stations in the UK like America had. The foundation of the BBC was based on stifling and controlling."

Why not tell us what is wrong with the wikipedia article I linked.

I'd happily pay a decent amount for radio 4 & radio 6, but they'd have to pay me to listen to radio 1.

Which is all a bit strange anyway, because you can listen to the radio for free.

From Wikipedia 

"...However, this public enthusiasm was not shared in official circles where such broadcasts were held to interfere with important military and civil communications. By late 1920, pressure from these quarters and uneasiness among the staff of the licensing authority, the General Post Office (GPO), was sufficient to lead to a ban on further Chelmsford broadcasts.

But by 1922, the GPO had received nearly 100 broadcast licence requests[18] and moved to rescind its ban in the wake of a petition by 63 wireless societies with over 3,000 members.[19] Anxious to avoid the same chaotic expansion experienced in the United States, the GPO proposed that it would issue a single broadcasting licence to a company jointly owned by a consortium of leading wireless receiver manufacturers, to be known as the British Broadcasting Company Ltd. .."

They (GPO) didn't like commercial Radio, they banned it despite being able to control/regulate airspace licencing if they wished but they didn't like that model. So they outright banned commercial broadcasts and formed the BBC as an alternative to commercial radio licences. Which remained banned until 1973 (LBC). What of this doesn't fit the quoted text from Wikipedia?

Make the BBC a subscription service. Charge exactly the same price for their service as a TV licence costs and sink or swim BBC. If they're as good as what they say, then they'll be fine.

No, they would only be "fine" if they dumbed themselves down to become something much worse than they correctly say they are at the moment. You have completely missed the point of public service broadcasting.

Yes, but it is paid for out of the license fee.

We don 't have one and don't need one. Ignored the letters but spoke with one of the licence men and pretty much begged him to get himself an honourable job as I felt what he was doing was well below his level of possible contribution. I suggested he hand in his notice and find employment somewhere else. At this point he admitted the job was just a filler for a while and agreed that the model was outdated, didn't agree with it and realised it's days were numbered. We parted as friends, I wished him well.

If I was king of the world, I’d give you the big medal for that one.

Which bit of  "Anxious to avoid the same chaotic expansion experienced in the United States." do you not understand, especially bearing in mind the US is a huge country with much less interference problems from stations on the same channel, nor having nearish neighbours they had recently been at war with? I suspect if we sat down over a pint we might even agree but what you said in that first post remains a serious misrepresentation. Even more so was your statement on TV detector vans being a flimsy myth. I certainly don't support the current BBC action on prosecution of non payment of licences for the poor.

I see this used frequently.  Given that semantics is to do with "meaning", I would have thought semantics to be the entire point of holding a discussion in the first place.

If people didn't create pointless side debates over a word that has been used that has no impact on the original intent then they wouldn't need to be called out for it.

Sometimes correctly, if there is pointless quibbling over the precise meaning of a particular word going on.  Other times people use it thinking they're being very clever and they're really not.

Eg: the difference between a tax and a subscription is real, and is obviously obviously not mere semantics. Paying a tv licence even though you don't watch BBC programmes isn't like paying Tesco to shop at Asda - it's like paying taxes to fund schools even though you don't have kids, and to fund fire brigades even though your house is not on fire.

FWIW I think the main problem with the idea of moving the BBC to a subscription model isn't that it would be a wheeze by the Tories to underfund and ultimately cripple it (though it would.)  It's that it would immediately destroy the BBC in the sense that the moment you put it behind a paywall it ceases to be a state broadcaster.  The whole point of a state broadcaster is that anyone in the country who watches telly can watch BBC telly, anyone who listens to the radio can listen to BBC radio etc.

The Tories used to want rid because the billionaire owners of the private sector media, Murdoch et al, that they bend the knee to want rid.  For pure commercial reasons mostly, it's competition for them.  Now it's more than that.  In spite of their attempts to move news and current affairs coverage in a certain direction, the BBC's journalism remains relatively impartial and widely respected.  (Independent of the government, but also of the handful of sociopathic pro-tory billionaires who own most of the private sector media between them.)

Channel 4 does rather better than the BBC in that regard these days, so clearly that has to go as well.  (And while some sort of reform for the regressive TV tax we call the 'licence' is clearly overdue, the proposed privatisation of Channel 4 makes absolutely no f**king sense.)

If it's in the interest of the country as a whole to have a broadcaster not under the Thumb of a Murdoch (or similar) then that's a good argument for the state to pay it a ring fenced annual grant (ring fenced and protected in law) and the management to be kept at a distance from private or government interference. In other words a BBC paid out of taxes not a licence fee.

Not quite sure what you mean here. 

Are you saying that if you can use your benefits/tax credits to pay the tax then it's not regressive? That would make no tax regressive which is surely not what you are implying.

Just because they don't want chaos (quite understandable) didn't necessitate blocking, effectively outlawing commercial radio by refusing to grant any licences for  51 years (and then only because offshore and Pirate was so popular). They could have issued broadcast licences in a coordinated and regulated manner, there were even petitions at the time calling for a licence model so it's not like nobody thought of it.

I'm not saying BBC employees all swore some oath each morning to crush commercial radio, or that Bush house had a carving of an iron first crushing an antenna over the door but definitely the GPO decision to take the BBC route rather than licensing was driven by that.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a supporter of having the BBC, I just think this odd quirk of now fairly remote history should be remembered.

The history is important and interesting. Exaggerating things or applying faults which were clearly the case after WW2 when they didn't really fairly apply early on (especially as the BBC was initially a commercial licenced body) is not history; nor is bracketing earlier generations of TV detector vans into your general (presumably current) view of being a "flimsy myth".

What a load of nonsense.

Regardless of the above, in what way does it's definition being either tax or subscription make any difference to my original point that's it's something I don't consume and therefore don't want to pay for and don't agree I should have to pay it to consume none BBC services?

If you want to keep pushing how important it is whether it's a tax or subscription then which of the following does not describe a TV license payment (source: Cambridge dictionary).

Subscription:

"an amount of money that you pay regularly to receive a product or service"

Tax:

"(an amount of) money paid to the government that is based on your income or the cost of goods or services you have bought:"

Granted, their tax definition is a bit wobbly when related to TV licenses, but based on these definitions you can describe a TV license as either a tax or a Subscription. Both are valid, and quite frankly irrelevant to my original point, hence Semantics!

If you want to make a reasonable side debate along these lines, perhaps discuss if the TV License should be considered a critical public service, like the NHS, Fire, Police etc.

Or is it really just a source of optional information and entertainment, just like the internet, or a newspaper?

Definitely a lot closer to the later in my view.

That depends on how much you value democracy, or how much you appreciate the necessity of impartial information in the democratic process.

This has been the recent battleground in the government vendetta against the BBC. On the one hand, I'm sure there is at least top-down pressure on BBC news editors to conform with what their government-appointed managers consider impartial (which likely differs from what many others consider impartial.) On the other hand we now have some government mouthpieces insisting that the BBC is anti-government. This could be seen as accusing your opponent of that which you yourself are guilty (an increasingly common political tactic), but equally could be interpreted as engendering dissatisfaction with the BBC from both sides, thereby starving it of a support base.

The UK desperately needs unbiased news and political commentary, and the way things are going right now we're going to end up with little more than opposing propaganda.

I don't think this argument stands up for two reasons.

1. You're only referring to the news element of the BBC. You may be able to make an argument for that proportion of the license fee, but what about the bit that funds Eastenders. Why am I paying for that?

2. More importantly, channel 4 is wholly advertisement funded and they have to remain impartial. They are often accused of pandering to advertisers, but if they are caught doing it they are in breach. You don't need the license fee to achieve what you are promoting.

Both fair points, but I can't help noting that Channel 4 appears to be the least right wing national TV broadcaster in the UK right now and it's very much in the sights of government to be abolished.

However it's achieved, impartial news broadcasting should be seen as a democratic essential, and it's very hard to see how that can be mandated and enforced via privately owned media alone.

It's perfectly normal to pay taxes that contribute to funding services you don't personally use, that's why.  It really isn't that hard a concept to get your head around.

Then start a discussion on whether it's a critical public service rather than arguing about whether I used the right term to describe the payment.

Yes, I stand corrected on TV detector vans. I've learned that at least some existed, it's not clear if they actually were effective and worked for detection of if their role was to be seen in public?

I wasn't equating the quirky initial history of the BBC and detector vans (or my believed lack of) as driven by some sinister BBC plot to crush other broadcasting, but placing them in the same thread as I though both had a relation to the topic. I'd thought the history was just an interesting historical aside. Didn't think it would get quite so laboured. Although I still believe the people at the GPO did wish to prevent commercial broadcasting. I realise the BBC was a ltd company so "commercial" in that pendant sense, but it's what we'd these days call a quango and a company run by "the right people" was in effect an arm's length extension of the GPO or at least their old buddies

So the question I  would like to ask those without TV, is how will they watch the footy tonight!

Just no.

I can't stand watching football. It might be the noise (Urgghhhj, arrghhhhhn, ughhhhh)

I’m not sure what you’ve been watching, but that doesn’t sound like any football match I’ve ever seen! 

Sounds like all the ones I've seen. Terrible game in every respect 

I’m not a fan of the game but where is this noise coming from? All I can ever hear when I have watched it is air horns and chanting. 

“Urgghhhj, arrghhhhhn, ughhhhh” sounds more like sport climbing videos than football 

The spectators. Happy to have a better suggestion for spelling. Not sure how best to spell urghhhhboooo