TV License

The December before last me and my bf stopped watching tv. In the May of that year we thought we would take the plunge and got rid of the telly. In the June I wrote to the TV license people and told them and they cancelled the license and no more payments were made. For about the last 6 months the TV license people have been writing increasingly threatening letter which imply that they can come onto our property and check. They can't! All they can do is knock on your and ask to have a look. We are not willing to do this as I partly think its a stupid exercise. I could still have a telly (which we don't) and have it in another room or I could go out and buy one the next day and endless other things. The main reason I won't let them in or play ball is because I have told them I don't have one and I take offence at being asked to prove it. I looked up our legal situation and we are legally within our rights and they do not have any legal jurisdiction. They can't obtain a warrant, they can't search your property, the interview that they do is apparently illegal and they have no grounds for suspicion.
In our attempt to lighten the mood we thought up no end of licenses that if you don't have them you don't have to prove it. I don't have a license to practice medicine but the BMA aren't going to come round and check I'm not pretending to be a doctor. I do have a pilots licence, a driving licence, a fishing license, a dog license, a firearms license! I'm also not James Bond and don't have a license to kill Happy Rah rah rah

Okay, Rant over. Thank you for listening Happy

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18 replies since 26th February 2010 • Last reply 26th February 2010

Reply #1:

Hi Arty KitKat
You CAN legally have a TV in your house without a license so long as you do not receive a signal and only use it for playback of pre-recorded videos and DVD's. It is up to the licencing authority to prove that you are receiving a signal.

P.s I don't have a licence to perform brain surgery Lol x

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Reply #2:

Wait, what?! You need a tv liscence? That is the weirdest thing I ever heard.

And I don't have a license to have children. LOL

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Reply #3:

TV licence is a sore point with me just now....I just paid it today, £148!!!!! And I hardly ever watch TV, although everyone else in the house does.
Years ago, you had to have a dog license, I remember being sent to the post office to buy one when I was a child for our collie Lassie. I think that was abolished around 1978

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Reply #4:

Yeah, I forgot to say in England we have to pay to watch BBC programmes in England. It also goes towards radio transmissions. They don't have advertising or 'important messages from sponsors' as it's sometimes called. So they use the licence fee to make the programmes.

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Reply #5:

Blimey this ordeal sounds awful, but you keep fighting it. You are within your rights!! Keep at it Kat I'm 100% behind you.

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Reply #6:

Oooo....just thought of something. Do you know that a licenced hackney carriage (taxi in England) has to carry a bale of straw by law for the horse. It's an old law that has never been repealed. Lol

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Reply #7:

You still need a license for some dogs. But anyway you should see the letters they send - Enforcement offers have been authorised to visit 'my postcode'. What's that supposed to mean??? You don't need authorisation to visit a property, gaining entry is another matter.

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Reply #8:

You need a tv license to watch tv on your pc too.
Also relating to hackney carriage drivers is that they are allowed to wee at the roadside provided there's a policeman to hide him under his cape. Ah it's a grand life being a cab driver=)

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Reply #9:

Hi Laurel
That's cool, I didn't know that.

I only know one policeman who wears a cape. He used to 'advise' us on night security when I worked at a nursing home somewhere around tea and biscuit time.

now who's stalking who!!! Lol x

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Reply #10:

I guess that makes sense if you don't have commercials. Me and my hubby got rid of our cable tv. The boys watch their dvd's on the tv, and any of the shows me and the hubby watch we watch them on the computer. You get a lot more done when their isn't a tv for distraction. (=

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Reply #11:

Hi Tara
We have commercials on the independent channels and don't pay for them. It's only the BBC that we pay for!!!!
There's no way of not receiving those channels so we are stuck with paying.

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Reply #12:

Hmmmm. There should be some way around that then. Like here we have the regular channels you don't pay for those. ABC, NBC, ect. But then we have cable and satilite and depending on how many channels you want it could go from like $50 bucks to hundreds.

Interesting though... I never knew about tv licenses before.

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Reply #13:

We have some satilite freeview channels but have to pay for extra channels like Sky, Virgin etc on top of our TV licence.

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Reply #14:

It makes you wonder where the license fee goes when they are closing down possibly the best two radio stations cos of cash shortages.

Ha! Now I'm stalking you, how do you like them apples lol=)

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