The BBC has vowed to crack down hard on TV licence evaders after a recent surge in the official evasion rate.
The national broadcaster's elite squad of TV licence enforcement goons, one of whom is pictured above in the back of a TV Licensing wank wagon, stand poised to mete out severe punishment on anyone refusing to buy a TV licence, irrespective of their legal need to do so.
We're sure our readers are bricking it already.
The official evasion rate, since we mentioned it, is actually calculated using mathematical modelling and bit of guess work. TV Licensing has no way of knowing for sure which unlicensed properties do require a TV licence, which is why it churns out its shitty threatograms at such an eye-watering pace. As a further demonstration of how little it actually knows, the BBC freely admits that more than 80 percent of the aforementioned shitty threatograms actually land on the doormats of correctly unlicensed properties.
According to figures published by the House of Commons Library the UK evasion rate increased from 5 percent in 2014/15 to 7 percent in 2017/18. Evasion in Scotland is even higher than the UK average, with one-in-ten households said to be receiving TV programmes (or using the BBC iPlayer) without a valid TV licence.
The National Audit Office, which oversees the finances of the BBC, said that the Corporation hoped to reduce the evasion rate by better field enforcement activities and improved identification of false No Licence Needed (NLN) declarations.
You can read more about NLN declaration in our earlier posts (here and here). In short, no-one is under any obligation to declare or prove their no licence status to TV Licensing and doing so is a totally futile effort.
The NAO commented: "With the shift towards on demand viewing looking likely to grow, the BBC needs to continue exploring with urgency methods to ensure its evasion model remains fit for purpose."
The BBC received £3.8 billion in licence fee revenue in 2017/18, with almost £100 million of that being spent on TV licence administration and enforcement.
We do not believe the TV licence evasion rate is increasing. People are becoming more aware of the legalities of the TV licence and choosing alternative legally-licence-free methods of viewing. They are also becoming very aware of the many inadequacies of TV Licensing. We are very happy to have been a part of that.
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14 comments:
I've never wanted to withhold my licence fee more than now, after the increasingly disgraceful bias of BBC news and its current affairs show "presenters" (and they're usually gobby women) in the last few years against Jeremy Corbyn/Palestine/etc, culminating last week in Question Time/Fiona Bruce's disgraceful treatment of Dianne Abbott.
Someone ought to tell Ms Bruce and her ilk, you're moderators, not participants; interviewers, not interrogators!
But is there a bulletproof method of avoiding the fee, without having to live in anxiety, waiting for the knock at the door?
Don't watch or record live tv as it's broadcast. Get rid of virgin or sky & research other means of watching catchup. (Except BBC iPlayer, they've closed that loophole)
There are plenty of other means of legally watching your favourite shows without the BBC & the capita goons having their boot on your throat.
This press release (also sent to other newspapers) does reveal one interesting point - making a NLN declaration makes you a target for Clown-Goons. It also reveals the growing difficulties in maintaining the TV Licence system. Of course, there is nothing more the Clowns can do to "crack down on evaders". All they do is what they've always done -plod around the streets trying to get people to incriminate themselves by signing a TVL178 form.
Why don't they take me to court like I dared them to . Better than sending the same threat over and over again for years .?
Must cost them something to send me a message I told them I'm going to ignore .
Modern day highway robbery, nothing more and allowed by the government. Shame on them.
Nibor, the BBC's threatograms are generated by a computer database. The language in the letters varies depending on how long the property has been unlicensed. After a couple of years or so, the BBC runs out of new threatogram formulations and simply repeats the same pattern - "starting investigations", "X days to get licensed", "will you be in on "XY January?", "setting a date at your local court", etc etc. All these can be safely ignored if you are legally licence free. I've ignored them for many years now and it's clear that the threats are empty.
If you contact the BBC and make a No Licence Needed claim, then almost certainly, Clown-Goons will come a-calling, hoping to earn some commission by stitching you up using the TVL178 self-incrimination form.
GET RID OF THE LICENCE FEE ITS WELL OUT DATED BBC IS DOOMED WON'T BE LONG NOW
IN SO MANY YEARS IT WILL BE GONE JUST
LIKE AUSTRALIA DID Bye Bye C ya.
The TV licence does not give you anything except repeats and rubbish. They could scramble the channel like sky do but they won't because its a tax. They put the thumbs refs on people and threaten them with court. They have no more right to rob you than I do.
The BBC had a Royal Charter to provide an unbiased news service and for this the public would fund it through a license fee. In 2013 David Cameron made it legal for the BBC to broadcast propaganda. We no longer have an unbiased news service and therefore the BBC have broken their charter. Not fit for purpose.
Maybe it's WAY past time the BBC take a look at their OWN responsibility in this farcical dystopian nonsense...
It's NOT a LEGAL requirement...to pay a license fee! It is a RULE! Laws ARE universal... NOT man made!
So if you wish to MAKE money out of me... be prepared for a fight!
Oh, I do NOT watch BBC live OR on iplayer! Can't stand the 'nanny state' channel any longer! And as for your 'news' coverage... STOP PANDERING TO GOVERNMENT D-NOTICES!
ps I only listen to the radio repeats.. are you going to reintroduce a radio license? That'll be fun attempting to collect all the fee's for that little nest egg, won't it...
oh and by the way, how MUCH does it COST the bbc to collect all these unpaid fees.
answers to questions required!
I am puzzled. In the old days, a detector van could detect the radiation from a cathode ray tube in the old TVs. But now most a flat-screen. Do they emit too.
What the BBC should do is to broadcast in two separate areas. The first is as now with no commercials. That should be broadcast only over the internet for a fee. The second may be free but with commercials. All should be on-line and the transmitter towers dispensed with.
What puzzles me having read the NOA document is the number of evaders. There is no mention of NLR households. By implication are these being accused of license evading to massage the stated evading figure's or am I just being cynical about the BBC who never lies but is economic with the truth.
Thanks for this
Richard Ahearn said...
"I am puzzled. In the old days, a detector van could detect the radiation from a cathode ray tube in the old TVs. But now most a flat-screen. Do they emit too. ..."
As I understand it - not quite, essentially what they detected was that your TV was tuned to a given frequency. In order to receive a certain channel, the tuner inside your TV generates a signal at a specific frequency - this is then subtracted from the TV signal broadcast at that frequency to return the original signal. So the fact that your TV was emitting the frequency of a given channel meant you were almost certainly watching that channel, this is what they were detecting. This would be used by any TV - CRT, plasma or LCD. Even if your TV didn't have a tuner inside it - but you were using another tuner (e.g., inside a VCR) in theory they'd still be able to detect the signal. Equally with digital (terrestrial) TV you're tuned into the broadcast frequency. But it wouldn't work with services provided via the internet, which could still be showing live TV programs (and therefore be licensable).
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