TV Licence

[fred]

It has been announced that the cost of a TV licence is to rise by 3%.

I am not opposed to the principle of having TV channels not influenced by the commercial sector but is the present system fair?

In one house there can be a family with a large flatscreened TV in the living room, a smaller TV in the kitchen which is turned on at dawn for Breakfast TV and three children each with a TV in their bedrooms. In another house there is someone living alone and on low income who does other things most of the time and only switches their little portable on for the news and an occasional documentary, yet they both pay the same licence fee.

Wouldn't a one off point of sale tax on televisions be a much fairer method of financing the BBC? As it is the poor are subsidising the rich and it would save a lot of money presently spent on enforcing an unjust law.

[Angela]

I agree, but then I have only the one TV...
When does the cost go up? -mine's due the end of February.
I do enjoy programmes that aren't interrupted by ads, but there don't seem to be all that many good new programmes on, and I'm not sure that I wouldn't prefer to have the ads and not have to pay for the licence.

[henry20]

I grudge every penny I pay for my TV Licence as I don't think its good value for money. I refuse to pay for sky just so I can get a wider choice of rubbish to watch! Don't get me wrong, I do watch TV, but I choose to watch whichever is the least boring rather than the one I enjoy When I first bought my house I never had a tv and part of me wishes I'd never bothered - although I do need something to watch my dvd's on and for hubby to play his playstation.

[j4bberw0ck]

It's the ludicrous inefficiency of the TV License that bemuses me - not to mention the bluntly threatening ads they were running on TV a while back. In order to collect a tax of just over £100 a year, there are hi-tech vans, a quango and threatened prosecutions left, right and centre. If you choose not to have a TV, it's up to you to prove you don't have one. Civilian staff are authorised to interview you subject to the Police and Criminal Evidence Acts and to issue legal cautions. They have a special data feed from the Post Office, daily, to update their database of addresses. Having done that, they can't even manage their data properly.

Got home from work yesterday to find a red-edged letter from them threatening me with prosecution and informing me it is now illegal for me to use any TV equipment at the address. The letter is dated 2 January and requires, it says, a response from me by 16 January. It arrived on the 17th. In addition to which TV Licensing was the first government outfit I informed of change of address - and I have the reissued licence to prove it!

So now I'm to be reported to their local Investigators - all because they screwed up the postcode in their records and so generated a near-duplicate record. Just to cap it all, the letter is signed by "Customer Services" . The letter is in the shredder and I await the 4 a.m. tap on the door with interest.

In any rational country they'd just add the tax to income tax and have done with it. Then if you don't pay tax, you don't pay the fee. If you pay 40% tax, you pay more. Easy.....

[fred]

When does the cost go up? -mine's due the end of February.

It doesn't say, in the budget in April I would think.

[Angela]

I grudge every penny I pay for my TV Licence as I don't think its good value for money. I refuse to pay for sky just so I can get a wider choice of rubbish to watch! Don't get me wrong, I do watch TV, but I choose to watch whichever is the least boring rather than the one I enjoy When I first bought my house I never had a tv and part of me wishes I'd never bothered - although I do need something to watch my dvd's on and for hubby to play his playstation.

My daughter "lent" me her digibox since she moved to Perth where there's no coverage for digital TV. So I watch freeview as well, since it IS free - I agree it's mostly just a wider choice of rubbish, and finding the thing you dislike least! There is the odd good thing though for a winter evening.

I was thinking of joining up for DVD rentals by post - from Amazon probably.
When I take a DVD out of the local shop I find I never watch it in time.

[Angela]

Our TV licence was in my husband's name when he died. (some things were in my name, some in his)
It wasn't the first thing on my mind, but when payment was due for the next licence, I did get it changed to be in my name.
That certainly confused them - and I got letters telling me there wasn't a valid licence for my address...which took quite some time to sort out...and no apology either...

[henry20]

Unfortunately freeview doesn't work in my house or I may have considered it. Although it would result in more channel hopping!

[emb123]

I grudge every penny I pay for my TV Licence as I don't think its good value for money. I refuse to pay for sky just so I can get a wider choice of rubbish to watch! Don't get me wrong, I do watch TV, but I choose to watch whichever is the least boring rather than the one I enjoy When I first bought my house I never had a tv and part of me wishes I'd never bothered - although I do need something to watch my dvd's on and for hubby to play his playstation.

I don't have a TV - haven't had one for 8 years - don't want one either. They get on my nerves Saves loads of money too.

I watch DVD's on my PC - decodes the (AC3) surround sound no problem too. I have a very large monitor and the PC is located in a place where it's perfectly comfortable to push the chair out of the way and sit on the sofa. Gets round the DVD playback problem. For playstation you'd need a TV card either installed in your PC or a removable USB one which you just plug in as and when you need it.

Technically you need a TV license just for having a TV card I believe, but in practise if you never use it to watch TV (i.e. no antenna) but just for connecting the VCR or playstation to now and again then you'll have nothing to worry about. These people cannot insist that you let them have a look through your PC.

Of course, if you both want to do different things at the same time then you'll want two PC's!

As a by the by, although the detectors can detect and read your PC monitors (provided they are the old CRT type) it is illegal for them to do so (they operate at completely different screen frequencies and these people should not be looking at what you're doing on your PC - to do so would contravene so many laws that the use of detectors would probably be banned by Europe if word got out as an infringement of human rights (privacy), not to mention an offense under the Data Protection Act, so they keep it quiet that they can do it.)

[Angela]

Unfortunately freeview doesn't work in my house or I may have considered it. Although it would result in more channel hopping!

Yes, I've found that to be the case. Anything I fancy watching is always on at the same time as something else that looks a possibilty!

I've been following the Big Brother thread on the forum -I've never watched BB and I'd no idea what was going on until I watched the news last night. I see there's yet another reality TV show coming up - Dancing on Ice - which I don't think is exactly providing viewers with value for money!

Of the 11 "celebs" taking parts, I only seem to have heard of one -obviously I don't watch enough TV!

[lassieinfife]

Apart from the David Attenbrough stuff all i have been following is Waking the Dead and Body of Evidence ......... both on at same time on mondays..... plus the odd afternoon movie so I really grudge paying fee.
I do have freeview but this area has limited no of progs available

[Angela]

Apart from the David Attenbrough stuff all i have been following is Waking the Dead and Body of Evidence ......... both on at same time on mondays..... plus the odd afternoon movie so I really grudge paying fee.
I do have freeview but this area has limited no of progs available

Same here - I watch Waking the Dead and would've recorded Body of Evidence, but sadly my VCR's broken. I decided not to get a new one because I thought I'd only end up recording programmes I never got the time to watch!
Have you ever watched Meerkat Manor - I haven't, but I see there's a new series of it starting next week which I'm looking forward to - Meerkats just seem so cute (silly, I know)...
Has anybody noticed how UK series seem to get shorter and shorter (maybe only 3 progs) while US series seem to go on to about 25 progs in a row?

[lassieinfife]

Well if the BBC paid likes of Jonathan Ross /Terry Wogan/Bruce Forstyh less and spent more on producing new dramas etc we wouldn't need to get price hikes ........ no new decent progs,though plenty sport[sighs.....] and repeats and more of the second class presenters they keep foisting on us

[henry20]

I'm sort of in agreement with you there - although I like Jonathon Ross, but thats where problems arise - you have such a wide variation of tastes, it must be impossible to please everyone. I don't object to sport being on - although I don't watch much of it, but as for repeats - surely if we have to re-new our licence every year, they should re-new the programmes

[cuddlepop]

At my daughters halls they are insisting that all the students have a tv license as well as the one the halls have for the tele in the common room.
Thought the building only required the one?

[Angela]

Luckily I quite enjoy watching some sports, including football (depending who's playing).
I know tastes differ & you can't please everybody all of the time.
A lot of current progs just seem to be made because they're cheap to make though & they generate more-of-the-same spin-offs. There seem to a lot of not-very-good presenters as well.
Maybe BBC channels should only be allowed to show a certain percentage of repeats (or is that the case already?)

[henry20]

At my daughters halls they are insisting that all the students have a tv license as well as the one the halls have for the tele in the common room.
Thought the building only required the one?

No, each student requires a tv licence if they have their own tv. Same as a lodger in a house requires a seperate tv licence unless they only have access to the communal tv. If 3 students joint share a flat, they only need 1 licence as the household is in all names. If the houshold was rented by one of the students, then rooms rented out to 2 other students with tv's in their own room, 3 licences are required. Crazy really. A 5 bedroomed house could have 7 tv's and only 1 licence, but under different circumstances would require 5 seperate licences!

[Angela]

I think I've just PMd the wrong info to Cuddlepop ! When my daughter was at Stirling Uni staying in a Uni flat (no separate lving room) this came up, but in the end it seemed her little portable was covered by our home licence as she wasn't staying at Uni all the time. So she didn't need a separate licence. Did we maybe get the wrong info or have things changed recently?

[henry20]

I looked into it a couple of years ago as I was taking in lodgers and they had to have seperate licences. I also checked the tv licence website earlier, so it is definitely current. It used to be that you could take a tv on holiday with you (ie to visit family with no licence or in a caravan) and your home licence would cover you. However, you are only covered by your home licence if no tv will be on in your home at the time (although they'd have to be pretty clever to be monitoring both at the same time)

[Angela]

I looked into it a couple of years ago as I was taking in lodgers and they had to have seperate licences. I also checked the tv licence website earlier, so it is definitely current. It used to be that you could take a tv on holiday with you (ie to visit family with no licence or in a caravan) and your home licence would cover you. However, you are only covered by your home licence if no tv will be on in your home at the time (although they'd have to be pretty clever to be monitoring both at the same time)

Thanks for the info -it seems a crazy system though doesn't it? They don't give you a rebate if you go away on holiday and don't watch TV at all!
My daughter's just moved into a flat with friends & has, yes, the same small portable TV she had at Uni, in her own room. Again, there's no living area.
She pays her share of rent & council tax of course, but if the lease is only in one name, does that mean the other two girls have to have separate licences? I have a horrible feeling that it must do...