If you don’t pay for it, you get a harassing letter every month. You can find them documented here.. Occasionally, someone from TV licencing may visit. You have no obligation to let them in.
Most people who do get convicted are the ones who engage with TV licensing. For example, they admit to using the iPlayer. They miss a payment on a weekly payment plan for it and then say something like “My mum was in hospital and I wanted to keep the kids entertained”. Someone I know almost got caught out because they tried to do the “right thing” and sent them an email saying they didn’t need a tv licence (they were doing it on behalf of their elderly father. They personally owned a licence) and TV Licensing detected their email was attached to the BBC iPlayer. Or they were let into the house and set up the TV for them.
If you just ignore the letters, and shut the door as soon as they show up, basically nothing can happen. There is very little way they can prove you were watching TV. Someone else mentioned “detector vans” but these were most likely fake (The BBC claimed they did that but didn’t let anyone see how they work, even the Ministry of Defence who was very interested in such a technology), and definitely wasn’t admissible in court.
Personally I pay for the licence. I like the BBC. It’s high quality. I think it’s the right thing to do. You get a free streaming service along with it (bbc iplayer) which is far better than the likes of Netflix.
That sounds like the American IRS.you got to TRY to get arrested… they just want their money and since it’s a government they think long term “you only got 20 every other Friday? Well take that”
I imagine it’s like that with tv licenses “well you have to backpay and theirs a fine… but we’ll wave the fine if you set up a payment schedule “
This greentext put me in mind of Monty Python’s Cat Fish License skit and you just come in here and casually drop the fact that there actually were detector vans (real or fake doesn’t matter). You learn something every day.
Read the letters they sent in the link. They actually are threatening.
My favourite line they often use is to the tune of “We have scheduled a visit to inspect this address. It could be the 7th of July. It could be next week. Or it even could be tomorrow!”
Yes. It funds the BBC which is public service broadcasting, usually very high quality and has no advertisements. You aren’t allowed to watch BBC or any live television whatsoever in the UK without a TV licence.
Can you be arrested for not paying it?
Not any more. It’s now a civil rather than criminal offence. The conservatives didn’t like that they even today tend to report facts alongside opinions, so they threatened to remove the licence fee. Instead they made of civil rather than criminal, so non payment is only punishable by a fine, which of course means it’s only illegal for poor people who can’t gamble the fine.
They used to send detector vans round to addresses that don’t have a licence for enforcement. The ads said they could tell if you were watching telly. I suspect they detected aerials, but that was in the days of Cathode Ray Tubes, and maybe you can detect them being on, I don’t know.
How does it work exactly?
They just send a bill to everyone in the post, warning of the consequences of non payment. You can pay by direct debit for less paperwork. Compliance is pretty high. It used to be higher before the conservatives started meddling.
The conservatives would love to get rid of the BBC and the NHS but they know it would be an absolute disaster for them politically because the people love them, flawed as they are, so they just underfund them badly and then complain about how bad they are.
+++
That strategy initially worked with the trains, which the conservatives privatised in the 1980s on the grounds that the reliability was poor and the rolling stock was badly out of date, but after a few decades of privatised rail, the promise of competition driving up quality and driving down prices has proven very hollow indeed, and now nationalisation is popular in every demographic group including conservative voters.
The East Coast Main Line went bust so many times that no commercial operators would touch it and the government was forced to step in. The civil servants were told to look for efficiency savings and make it more commercially viable, but when they did that it became the most reliable and punctual line in the UK with the best customer satisfaction, and cost far less in subsidies than the privatised lines. Who knew that extracting the most money possible for shareholders would drive down quality whilst driving up prices and government costs?
The current labour government is nationalising rail on the cheap by simply not renewing the franchises when they expire. Manchester’s buses have come back under local authority regulatory control. Some things are getting better under labour, but some things are not and the prime minister seems to think that Biden is the best example to follow in many ways.
The ads said they could tell if you were watching telly. I suspect they detected aerials, but that was in the days of Cathode Ray Tubes, and maybe you can detect them being on, I don’t know.
You can absolutely detect a CRT from outside. A CRT is basically a small particle accelerator with a magnetic deflection system, inside an unshielded plastic (or wooden, if you go back far enough) box. Of course, it will need to be turned on, just the presence of a TV doesn’t show up. It’s probably a fair bit harder to actually detect which house the signal comes from, but you can solve that with a big enough directional antenna. With analog TV, you might even be able to detect which channel they’re watching, based on the exact frequency, which makes it easy to tell a TV from a computer monitor too.
Basically, if you’re converting an analogue radio signal into a picture, you’re using that frequency. And any leaks would be detectable by another antenna. From that point, it’s “only” a matter a building the right antenna, aiming it correctly and filtering out the stuff that comes from other directions.
Spotting a flatscreen/LCD/TFT or really, any non-analog TV is probably a LOT harder, and distinguishing between a TV recieving a signal and computer monitor seems (to my lay skills) pretty much impossible.
Yeah, considering that the TV has enough noise to be heard by the human ear, it doesn’t seem far fetched that specialised equipment can tell much more about it.
heard by the human ear
I mean the screen, not the audio output from the speakers
Do y’all brits actually pay for the license? Can you be arrested for not paying it? How does it work exactly?
If you don’t pay for it, you get a harassing letter every month. You can find them documented here.. Occasionally, someone from TV licencing may visit. You have no obligation to let them in.
Most people who do get convicted are the ones who engage with TV licensing. For example, they admit to using the iPlayer. They miss a payment on a weekly payment plan for it and then say something like “My mum was in hospital and I wanted to keep the kids entertained”. Someone I know almost got caught out because they tried to do the “right thing” and sent them an email saying they didn’t need a tv licence (they were doing it on behalf of their elderly father. They personally owned a licence) and TV Licensing detected their email was attached to the BBC iPlayer. Or they were let into the house and set up the TV for them.
If you just ignore the letters, and shut the door as soon as they show up, basically nothing can happen. There is very little way they can prove you were watching TV. Someone else mentioned “detector vans” but these were most likely fake (The BBC claimed they did that but didn’t let anyone see how they work, even the Ministry of Defence who was very interested in such a technology), and definitely wasn’t admissible in court.
Personally I pay for the licence. I like the BBC. It’s high quality. I think it’s the right thing to do. You get a free streaming service along with it (bbc iplayer) which is far better than the likes of Netflix.
That sounds like the American IRS.you got to TRY to get arrested… they just want their money and since it’s a government they think long term “you only got 20 every other Friday? Well take that”
I imagine it’s like that with tv licenses “well you have to backpay and theirs a fine… but we’ll wave the fine if you set up a payment schedule “
This greentext put me in mind of Monty Python’s
CatFish License skit and you just come in here and casually drop the fact that there actually were detector vans (real or fake doesn’t matter). You learn something every day.Read the letters they sent in the link. They actually are threatening.
My favourite line they often use is to the tune of “We have scheduled a visit to inspect this address. It could be the 7th of July. It could be next week. Or it even could be tomorrow!”
Which is literally a contradiction
Nice. Hope that stays for long
Licence. (Lisense is a verb in British English.)
Yes. It funds the BBC which is public service broadcasting, usually very high quality and has no advertisements. You aren’t allowed to watch BBC or any live television whatsoever in the UK without a TV licence.
Not any more. It’s now a civil rather than criminal offence. The conservatives didn’t like that they even today tend to report facts alongside opinions, so they threatened to remove the licence fee. Instead they made of civil rather than criminal, so non payment is only punishable by a fine, which of course means it’s only illegal for poor people who can’t gamble the fine.
They used to send detector vans round to addresses that don’t have a licence for enforcement. The ads said they could tell if you were watching telly. I suspect they detected aerials, but that was in the days of Cathode Ray Tubes, and maybe you can detect them being on, I don’t know.
They just send a bill to everyone in the post, warning of the consequences of non payment. You can pay by direct debit for less paperwork. Compliance is pretty high. It used to be higher before the conservatives started meddling.
The conservatives would love to get rid of the BBC and the NHS but they know it would be an absolute disaster for them politically because the people love them, flawed as they are, so they just underfund them badly and then complain about how bad they are.
+++
That strategy initially worked with the trains, which the conservatives privatised in the 1980s on the grounds that the reliability was poor and the rolling stock was badly out of date, but after a few decades of privatised rail, the promise of competition driving up quality and driving down prices has proven very hollow indeed, and now nationalisation is popular in every demographic group including conservative voters.
The East Coast Main Line went bust so many times that no commercial operators would touch it and the government was forced to step in. The civil servants were told to look for efficiency savings and make it more commercially viable, but when they did that it became the most reliable and punctual line in the UK with the best customer satisfaction, and cost far less in subsidies than the privatised lines. Who knew that extracting the most money possible for shareholders would drive down quality whilst driving up prices and government costs?
The current labour government is nationalising rail on the cheap by simply not renewing the franchises when they expire. Manchester’s buses have come back under local authority regulatory control. Some things are getting better under labour, but some things are not and the prime minister seems to think that Biden is the best example to follow in many ways.
You can absolutely detect a CRT from outside. A CRT is basically a small particle accelerator with a magnetic deflection system, inside an unshielded plastic (or wooden, if you go back far enough) box. Of course, it will need to be turned on, just the presence of a TV doesn’t show up. It’s probably a fair bit harder to actually detect which house the signal comes from, but you can solve that with a big enough directional antenna. With analog TV, you might even be able to detect which channel they’re watching, based on the exact frequency, which makes it easy to tell a TV from a computer monitor too.
Basically, if you’re converting an analogue radio signal into a picture, you’re using that frequency. And any leaks would be detectable by another antenna. From that point, it’s “only” a matter a building the right antenna, aiming it correctly and filtering out the stuff that comes from other directions.
Spotting a flatscreen/LCD/TFT or really, any non-analog TV is probably a LOT harder, and distinguishing between a TV recieving a signal and computer monitor seems (to my lay skills) pretty much impossible.
Yeah, considering that the TV has enough noise to be heard by the human ear, it doesn’t seem far fetched that specialised equipment can tell much more about it.
I mean the screen, not the audio output from the speakers
You are fantastic. Thank you.
It works more or less the same in Denmark, except we now switched to paying it over our taxes automatically