By heck aren’t the the people of STW a bunch of morally upholding citizens!

Let’s face it people are only giving hostile replies because because they only wish they’d been able to get away for it so long too!

The “We know where you live and have the technolgy to get you…blah, blah, blah” adverts they run on TV are pretty intimidating. TBH they piss me off and I’ve often considered not renewing my license to put them to the test (don’t worry I’m all paid up – call off the dogs!) I say it’s a person’s individual choice as to whether they wish to pay the license fee or not – so long as they appreciate the risks involved and take it on the nose if caught.

The “We know where you live and have the technolgy to get you…blah, blah, blah” adverts they run on TV are pretty intimidating. TBH they piss me off and I’ve often considered not renewing my license to put them to the test

So what are they……… “intimidating” …..OR, do they just make people want to “put them to the test” ?

I need to know 😕

Let’s face it people are only giving hostile replies because because they only wish they’d been able to get away for it so long too!

No I’m not I just prefer not to steal.

For the last ten years I’ve successfully avoided having a shit. I move around a lot, and Im naturally suspicious of unannounced callers to my back door. Recently though I slipped up – while buying a loo roll at Tesco’s I gave my name, when asked as you do. Foolishly I gave my real name. Lo and behold a few days later I received a threatening letter from the Nazis informing me they’d received details from Tesco that I had purchased poop receiving equipment.

That’s the last correspondence I recieved from them (they still send threats to the two previous occupants of my house) but……twice now I’ve heard suspicious knocking at my door in the evening in the last month or so. Roughly around the same time. I haven’t seen the person as I wont go to the door as Im afraid I’ll get served with some sort of demand.

My question is this – what powers do these people have and how do they go about gathering info? Could they for example get info from the dmv as to who my car is registered to or the like? I dont really know much about them but Im not keen to fork out £100 to the f****ing Tesco for some sweetcorn and bran flakes.

As far as better quality entertainment goes, try Mininova…you can download films from there, you know, the sort of thing the bbc doesn’t do too well these days. Most hbo television series are a good start.

I do wonder at the mentality of people who are happy to be bullied into paying for something whether they use it or not. Is it altruism? Do they believe they are paying for a genuine service for the education and betterment of all? Or perhaps they are just simple minded cowards, afraid to upset the status quo and receive the self righteous opprobium of the dhimmy class.

We’ll see how you all feel when it becomes a pc tax, or a mobile phone tax or when it hits £200+ in a year or two.

yawn…………………………..

sodafarls, as someone pointed out earlier (you can read cant you, if nnt maybe some education and betterment for all, especialy you, is a good thing) your TV doesnt pay for the BBC, its a licence to ow TV recieving equipment. Just like road fund licence is a licence to run a car o public roads. It in no way directly pays for the roads, thats the job of your council tax (and the hihways agency for the motorways/trunkroads).

scaremongering makes you look like an idiot, i hope theres an idiot tax i a few years as well.

Aaaah, so you like stealing stuff off the internet instead… gotcha! :oD

So why exactly do you need a TV?

Or the mentality od those people who understand that the vast majority of the BBC’s output just wouldn’t exist if it was a commercial organisation… just take a look at ITV! Just the amazing quality of the natural history programs are worth the licence fee!

thisisnotaspoon – Member
i hope theres an idiot tax i a few years as well.

Pretty masochistic of you.

‘Tonight with Trevor McDonald’

They don’t have that on the BBC. Top quality news reporting that is.

That’s “Sir” Trevor McDonald btw – he’s so good that they made him a Sir.

Re ernie_lynch:

I certainly feel the ads are intimidating (no doubt this is their intention) and yes, I felt quite tempted to see if their super-dooper technology actually works. That’s my opinion, yours might be different but this is a forum to express your personal viewpoint, no?

You have confused me thisisnotaspoon.
I have to admit, I cannot read, my secretary is reading, and typing on my behalf. I wish the bbc could teach me how to read, and write for that matter.

I feel even more humble like now, as even with some help, I cannot understand the point I assume you are trying to make with your post. My tv has paid for nothing, nothing at all, in fact I paid for it! And if I may ask, what does the automobile metaphor have to do with the subject at hand? are you drunk?

If I am to gain some meaning from (what my aide claims is a barely literate) posting, may I enquire why on earth I should pay a fee under umbrage to a politically biased institution for receiving electronic messages through the ether? Do you have an answer for that, my downtrodden and browbeaten comrade?

“So why exactly do you need a TV?”

I like watching dvds, some I have paid to hire, some I download for free, ie steal. I feel quite comfortable with that. When did the movie business become your bestest mate? Do their profits “trickle down” into your pockets?

That’s my opinion, yours might be different but this is a forum to express your personal viewpoint, no?

Well since I couldn’t figure out what your opinion was, it was kinda difficult to work out if mine was any different……..

‘Intimidating’ and yet, …..’challenging’ you say ? Mmmm…….

*scratches chin in deep thought*

Hang on, a debate about the TV licence fee, and I’ve not seen it yet???

(Elbows way through to front of crowd)

I’ve ‘avoided paying the licence’, and I’ve lived in places where I’ve paid it. Currently, I don’t have a licence, as I don’t have a telescreen. TVLA have been round, and are ‘satisfied that I do not have equipment capable of receiving a live broadcast’.

However, I do have several computers, and a broadband connection. Which means I am now able to receive BBC’s beta ‘live’ streams. Apparently, I need a TV licence to watch this content. £135 a year. So, suddenly, because the BBC have decided to launch this service, I now possess equipment that can receive a program as broadcast live. I haven’t gone and bought owt, and don’t even want to watch live BBC stuff, yet I am legally obliged to pay for a licence fee??

**** off! If the BBC want to have such a service, then they can **** well work out some form of login system, so only licence payers can access such content. Cheeky ****! Of course, it is relatively easy to find out who is watching, through yer IP thingy. I daren’t go near the site!

As part of thelicence agreement, the BBC is obliged to provide Public Service Broadcasting.

Public service broadcasting is based on the principles of universality of service, diversity of programming, provision for minority audiences including the disadvantaged, sustaining an informed electorate, and cultural and educational enrichment.

Hmm.

How much of the Beeb’s current live broadcast programs, fulfil that remit?

Jonathon Woss, on £6 million a year? Dog Borstal? New Dog Borstal? Celebrity Come Dancing? EastEnders? Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps?

Granted, the BBC (or rather, other companies contracted by the BBC), produce some fantastic stuff. A lot of which, the Beeb whore out to other countries, and commercial stations (UKTV Gold, Dave…)

And advertising? What is the point of sycophantic shite like Wossy, if not to promote the careers and commercial ventures of various ‘slebs’? Is that not advertising?? That licence fee payers actually pay for!!!!

I have no real problem with anyone making whatever programs they want, and broadcast them. Just don’t assume that i am going to want to pay for them.

Personally, I would have no problem with a Pay-Per-View scheme, where you can choose which channels you want, and pay only for them. I’d quite happily pay a few quid a year, for documentary stuff, sport and news.

You go to a restaurant; you pay only for the food you eat. You don’t pay for the entire menu.

An increasing proportion of telly licence money seems to be going toward funding shite like some of the aforementioned rubbish,and less and less, on Public Service Broadcasting.

Like many others, I watch DVDs, and films that other kind folk choose to share with me, on tinternet. 😉

I would like to watch iPlayer stuff, and even be willing to pay a little bit for the stuff I choose to watch, but my lovely ISP throttles iPlayer content,so I can’t. Ho hum.

Why did I bother with all that bolox; everyone’s gone to bed.

(Toddles off to read a book, look at pron, watch free stuff on YouTube, fettle with bike, listen to radio, build a scale model of the Tower of London from matchsticks….)

your TV doesnt pay for the BBC, its a licence to ow TV recieving equipment.

This is completely untrue. You only need a licence if you are receiving live broadcast signals, it is nothing to do with what equipment you possess.

Careful rudeboy, sounds like you might have an opinion of your own which makes you a troll apparently.

I wonder how many of those singing the praises of the bbc, and condemning non-fee payers to a life of shame, would actually pay if it were voluntary? If not, then surely it is just the threat of a fine hanging over their head that compels them to do so? How can they then comment on somebody like the OP who is willing to take that risk?

Most of the TV I watch comes via my computer hooked up to my TV from a Slingbox attached a second cable box sat in the spare room of my brother’s house in Michigan.

I pay $20 a month towards the overall cost, which gives me a whole host of movie channels, sports channels including my favorite NHLN, HD ice hockey, brilliant! All without needing a TV licence (though we do have one).

BBC America is also available and I’ve been informed that because I watch it from a non-UK based subscription service I wouldn’t require a TV licence to watch that either.

I really hope they catch you and nail you. I think a fine equivalent to the total amount of licence that you have evaded would be lenient.

You put up the cost of the licence for the rest of us. You also talk out of your ar5e when you say that all the programmes are regional sh1te: something like Planet Earth is worth the licence fee alone.

I almost have a little more sympathy with the NAZIs chasing us (because our empty and uninhabitable) house doesn’t have a licence.

You come across as some sort of grungy crusty – not a good look.

“You come across as some sort of grungy crusty – not a good look.”

hahahahhahahahahhahahahahahahhahahhahahahahhahahahhahahha…… 🙂

I’d imagine that ….smarts…

How about this…judging from the willy waving on the rather crass “how much do you earn? ” thread a couple of weeks ago, a fair proportion of the posters on this site are what I would consider rather high earners. Good for them I say! However, since the £139.50 makes up a much higher percentage of my total net income, than it does for them, I wonder how they would feel paying, say £500 quid per annum, with no choice to opt out? Would a series like Planet Earth be worth that?

You put up the cost of the licence for the rest of us

Unlike VAT, or Council Tax, or whatever, you DON’T have to pay for a TV licence. You can simply choose not to have a TV, if you resent ‘freeloaders’ that much. Dad-daaa! Problem solved.

Or, you can suck it up, and sit safe in the knowledge that you are financing the careers of Wossy, Graham Norton, Chris Moyles and other tw4ts, who offer **** all int terms of ‘sustaining an informed electorate, and cultural and educational enrichment.’.

As I said earlier, there is less and less good nutritious stuff on the BBC, and an increasing amount of ‘junk food’.

Sport: Pumping the undoubted millions into F1 means there is less money to show other sports. Which means that some sports don’t get the coverage they need, to promote themselves, and get the funding so that their athletes can progress at the top level.

I say it’s time the BBC was drastically reshaped. One wing for PSB, and another for all the junk. Stuff like most of Radio One, which seems to operate merely to promote the already grossly over-resourced ‘music industry’. And at least they ditched that awful TOTP.

And have the licence fee funding the good stuff, whilst the ‘entertainment’ can be funded through advertising. Anyone who sits through ‘Celebrities Dancing on Cum’ (©Sodyfarls2008) won’t have much of an attention span anyway, and will probbly welcome ads every 10 minutes…

£50-60 a year, for Planet Earth, serious docus, news, sport etc.; thattud be fine. I wouldn’t have a problem with that.

BTW do you live in a house? rather than a flat as you might want to keep an eye out for detector van’s as the leakage from your TV can be picked up by the van and can be used as evidence.

Also if you get caught, you don’t just get charged for a license you get fined as well (around £1000).

GNARGNAR: Car tax and income tax are scaleable. If you dont pay your road tax you can still cycle on the road. You can choose to drive a small car with a small engine and pay virtually zero road tax or a large car with a large engine and pay a fortune. It’s not simply one blanket tax. Similarly with income tax we aren’t all taxed the same amount.

Yes, but that’s not a very good example as “Road Tax” isn’t linked to actual usage or income either.
You can have a car with a massive engine that you only drive a couple of times a year for car rallies and you’d have to pay more road tax than someone who drives 100 miles every day in a small engine car.

(Also as a cyclist you should know that “road tax” doesn’t pay for roads, so the fact you can cycle on roads without paying it is irrelevant)

Alb: Let’s face it people are only giving hostile replies because because they only wish they’d been able to get away for it so long too!

err.. no. I suspect we are hostile because GNARGNAR has been stealing from us for ten years and appears to be proud of it. Like all social taxes, if people illegally avoid paying it then the honest ones are left with a bigger bill.

Apparently about one in twenty households dodge the payment.

RudeBoy: Jonathon Woss, on £6 million a year? Dog Borstal? New Dog Borstal? Celebrity Come Dancing? EastEnders? Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps?

Eastenders is one of the most watched shows in the UK, pulling in 35-45% of the viewing audience. Last monday was 9.49 million.

You might not like it. I don’t either. But you can hardly complain that they aren’t giving people what they want.

Likewise, Wossy is expensive and overpaid, but it is the going-rate and people watch him. The Beeb could pay less and have some B-lister that no-one has heard of who has guests no-one has heard of. But then they would be Five.

RudeBoy: Granted, the BBC (or rather, other companies contracted by the BBC), produce some fantastic stuff. A lot of which, the Beeb whore out to other countries, and commercial stations (UKTV Gold, Dave…)

Yes, damn them for keeping our licence fee costs down by selling on their content and making a profit so they can fund less commercial shows 🙄

RudeBoy (still): I would like to watch iPlayer stuff, and even be willing to pay a little bit for the stuff I choose to watch, but my lovely ISP throttles iPlayer content,so I can’t. Ho hum.

Not the Beebs fault. Get a better ISP.

sodafarls: However, since the £139.50 makes up a much higher percentage of my total net income…

Linking it to income would be grossly unfair and (like most income related tax) would unfairly punish people who earn more. The elderly and those in residential care do get free or cheap licences already.

I agree that linking it to usage would be much fairer – but sadly that would be hugely impractical.

BTW do you live in a house? rather than a flat as you might want to keep an eye out for detector van’s as the leakage from your TV can be picked up by the van and can be used as evidence.

Hate to say it, but the “detector vans” are just a scare tactic.

They just use a database and people knocking on doors.

My GF has finally agreed to drop TV from our house. Hate it with a passion especially the amount you have to pay. The majority of the TV I watch is on DVD anyway (bought). Since Blackadder etc I havent really seen anything of note from the BBC. One small glimmer was the Tribe series and River Cottage (C4). All of which I bought on DVD so I dont know what I’d be missing. We are looking into commercial Plasma’s (no tv pickup). Cant wait. Sick of paying the BBC to push shit on me.

Yes, upto 2004 I didnt pay for a licence but then again I didnt watch TV. I only used a set for DVD playback and didnt have an ariel fitted. Sadly GF let in a nosey licence lad and he advised her that we really should get one as its a ‘grey area’. If I was in I’d have shoo’d him down the street. The only time we have had one of those knock. Well theres uni but 😉

If this makes me a criminal, taking money out of the BBC’s pocket?! The same beeb that has over 300 staff on 6-figure+ salaries?!

Yes, damn them for keeping our licence fee costs down by selling on their content and making a profit so they can fund less commercial shows

Trouble is, that revenue appears to increasingly go to funding crap, and paying grossly over-inflated wages to egotistical sycophantic twunts.

As for EastEnders, since when did quantity equal quality? Corrie gets massive viewing figures too, and that’s on ITV; commercially funded. And I fail to see where EE fits in with PSB.

In an odd little aside, Adam Woodyat, who plays Ian Beale in EE, recently won the Architectural Photographer of the Year Award at the Society of Wedding and Portrait Photographers 2008 Awards.

Fair play. That’s a cracking shot, that.

so on that logic (that the film industry is neither my friend or direcly benifiting me) gnargnar i could nick your bike, seeing as i neither know you as a friend or get any benifit from you owning the bike?

going back to my poo analogy, im sure that probably costs £100 a year byt the time ive paid the water bill, bought paper, a book to read etc.

Hate to say it, but the “detector vans” are just a scare tactic.

I’m fairly sure they’re not, they can identify the emissions from the screen and electronics of a CRT and can identify exactly what you’re watching. However they only work on CRTs as LCDs and plasmas rely on different technology obviously, making them more and more redundant.

IMO pay up you stealing cheapskate.

My point is, in the grand scheme of things its a forgivable crime in my books.

Didn’t one of the top BBC bods go on record a few years back saying that a TV license isn’t as relevant as it was when it was 1st introduced way back when and that its days are increasingly numbered!

I fail to see where EE fits in with PSB.

Then you are not looking very hard. Eastys has long been used as tool to educate and promote debate amongst people who wouldn’t necessarily sit down to watch a documentary about the social effects of AIDs, or the prevalence of low level racism in Britain.

…won the Architectural Photographer of the Year Award at the Society of Wedding and Portrait Photographers 2008 Awards.

Isn’t that like winning the “Best Dog” prize at a cat show?

GrahamS; I spose, if you look at it that way, then you have a slight point.

Only a slight one, mind. Don’t get too excited…

I’m fairly sure they’re not, they can identify the emissions from the screen and electronics of a CRT and can identify exactly what you’re watching.

They were asked about them recently, under the Freedom of Information Act, but gained an exemption because:
“…it relies on the public perception that the vans could be used at any time to catch evaders” and “To release information which relates to the number of detection devices and how often they are used will change the public’s perception of their effectiveness. If the deterrent effect is lost, the BBC believes that a significant number of people would decide not to pay their licence fee.”

The full findings are here:
Freedom of Information Act 2000: Decision Notice. 16 October 2008 (PDF)

It is probably technically possible to build such equipment, but it would be very expensive and complex. It is far cheaper to stick a couple of fake aerials on a van and just have a guy looking for the flicker of TVs at people’s windows.

(image from Gizmodo)

For the last ten years I’ve successfully avoided buying anything from Wheelsonfire. I move around a lot, and Im naturally suspicious of unannounced callers to my back door(nobody needs to fund their bike fetish THAT way). Recently though I slipped up – while buying a pile of second hand inner tubes I gave my name, when asked as you do. Foolishly I gave my real name. Lo and behold a few days later I received an email from him informing me they’d received details from a forum user that I had purchased inners.

That’s the last correspondence I recieved from him (he still sends really old fox forks to the two previous occupants of my house) but……twice now I’ve heard suspicious knocking at my door in the evening in the last month or so. Roughly around the same time. I haven’t seen the person as I wont go to the door as Im afraid I’ll get served with some sort of parcel.

My question is this – what powers do these people have and how do they go about gathering info? Could they for example get info from the website as to who my car is registered to or the like? I dont really know much about them but Im not keen to fork out £500 to Peter for something I won’t use.

thats harsh, ive bought and sold loads of stuff with WOF, and usualy got a good deal out of it.

Trusted him enough to let him off for not paying 4 weeks afer collecting some wheels. Although he did have a good excuse (my handwriting).

Interesting to see the moral outrage at licence fee evasion (which is largely just going to fund the BBC, and the prodigous coke habits of its employees), compared to the lack of outrage directed at the evasion of import tax on bike components, despite this being proper tax which might actually get spent on something useful.

I only used wheels as he is the first large scale shifter of stuff that came to mind.Mind, pypdjl DOES make a good point. Does the op grudge spending money on a licence, despite the fact he was obviously flush enough to pay cash for a new telly (hence the needing to ask his name) AND he moves about a lot…has a mistrust of anybody coming to his door…Can they not hear you moving around inside the caravan?