How to deal with Football

[djtaylor]

Do you still have to buy a license for your tv's over there? I used to work for a guy who was from Kent and he told me stories of special tv detecting trucks that would drive down the street from time to time. Apparantly if these people detected a working tv in your home and you were not licensed they had the authority to search your home and issue heavy fines.

This would be unthinkable in the states and I only half believed him.

Yep but they don't drive down the street anymore. They make the assumption that everyone has a TV and that if you don't you should expect a few nasty letters first, then a visit. It's a much simpler system, just dump a database report of "don't have's" and then pay them a visit.

Originally the licence fee was to support the development of the BBC (as the only broadcaster), it was a good idea at the time. On the other hand, you have channels riddled with commercials, the BBC ones don't have commercials.

David.

[djtaylor]

Yep. They have a database of every address in the UK which doesn't have a TV licence.

You think I'm joking? They advertise this as a reminder to get people to renew their licence.

I phoned up to complain once because the advert was a huge poster saying something like:-

"Mr Jones of 43 Hilltop Street doesn't have a TV licence, it's a 1000 pound fine!"

I pointed out that it is NOT an offence to not have a TV licence. It is merely an offence to *use* a TV without a licence, it is NOT an offence to own a TV, VCR etc. The burden of proof remains that the person should be proven to have been using a device at the time.

I can tell you that they lie in court too! When I was a student, we bought a licence for our flat, they claimed that every room was a seperate residence and I was prosecuted. They offered the evidence that a TV was "detected" in use by a hand held scanner. This was totally untrue as the device was turned off at the time and they merely knocked on the door, asked who had TV's and asked to see the licence which was produced and queried.

I was young then, perjury is a custodial sentence, they lied simple as that, they should have been exposed and locked up.

David.

[HtV]

This takes me back about 40 years: The dutch 8 o'clock news pulled a nice april-fools-day-joke, they had an item about the tv-license controllers being able to establish from outside the house if there was a tv in the house. Then they added this could be prevented by wrapping the tv in aluminium foil. The next day no aluminium foil could be found in the shops anymore, complete sold out