The BBC have no problem with those taking illicit peeks at top secret government docs…but if you watch the Telly, without a license…maybe not even the BBC, you’d better watch out…(via Guido)
TV LICENSING offences now account for more than a tenth of all criminal prosecutions in the UK, City A.M. can reveal.
More than 180,000 people – almost 3,500 a week – appeared in front of magistrates during 2012 after being accused of watching TV without paying the £145.50 fee.
Magistrates handled a total of 1.48m cases last year, meaning a record 12 per cent of court cases now involve TV licensing.
Women are disproportionately affected by the fee – which funds the BBC – with two thirds of cases brought against females. Last night the TV Licensing authority said the gender imbalance was because women are more likely to be at home when their inspectors call.
In total, 155,000 prosecutions resulted in a conviction, which can lead to a fine of up to £1,000. Those who refuse to pay can face jail.
The Ministry of Justice figures were published following a parliamentary question tabled by Lord Laird.
Hopefully more to come and even more hopefully a rise in the groundswell of opinion against the bias.
Not necessarily the bias, but onto State subsidies.
They can be biased as much as they want (or choose).
On. Their. Own. Money.
Interesting a few one-line merchants there too, all seemingly very keen on draconian imposition of all laws possible (as with Roger Tallbloke) in these cases, and oddly cool on ‘disproportionality’ too, but currently as you say also not such fans if seeing law and order used (and maybe abused) elsewhere.
It would be good to hear here from those in Journalism or Law, say, who frequent these pages, why that may be.
‘There’ being..
http://order-order.com/2013/08/21/155000-people-criminalised-by-bbc-last-year/
Love the duplicate. Whether left cubicle/lefter cubicle mix-up or crafty false flag, who knows. Any more.
Good point about Tallbloke. Where was all the BBC moaning about draconian laws which are abused and free speech and freedom of information and all that when the US Government had the local British authorities round him up and take his computers away? He got a few seconds on air, and no more was heard. Of course, he was not in possession of any documents or any sensitive information but was engaging in heresy which must be stamped out at all costs, while Miranda was helping heroes speak truth to power.
It’s a heavy price to pay for the BBC’s independence. Why can’t they be funded by a block grant from general taxation if we must have a public broadcaster?
I have raised this issue before with my MP but he is of the opinion that the current system is cheap to administer but what could be cheaper than someone in the Treasury signing a cheque?
Considering that the BBC and the Labour party are quick to challenge any perceived tax giveaways to the ‘rich’ one would have thought that the fixed licence fee system would have gone years ago. The current system charges the ‘poor’ and ‘students’ while the millionaire with the live-in extended family, (including ‘granny’), can get away with paying nothing.
Tax giveaway’s to the rich? Labour MP? Anyone’s name spring to mind?
‘Why can’t they be funded by a block grant from general taxation’
Not sure that would in any way resolve issues of accuracy or bias.
Rich people accross Europe outside the UK can watch the BBC Live FOR FREE the Sky Sattelite (Astra) and accross the world via iPlayer
http://www.theninjaproxy.org/ninja/how-to-watch-bbc-iplayer-on-your-ipad-from-outside-the-uk/
whilst the poor hear get banged-up to pay for
You can only be prosecuted and taken to court if you admit to the muppet who calls to your house that you have been watching television without a license. They have no powers of entry and if the householder does not admit to watching TV there is nothing they can do. They will ask to come in to check but the householder just needs to refuse. Some might try to fool the householder by saying they will return with a policeman. Firstly they won’t do this and secondly it is at that stage (ie provided the householder has not admitted to watching TV ) just a civil matter and the police have no authority to enter the house. If an admission has been made than it does become a criminal offense.
There is no such thing as a Detector van, they are a means to intimidate. The technology does not and never has been available. There has NEVER been a prosecution brought on evidence supposedly gained by a Detector van. Such an action would fail as no evidence could be brought forward, they rely on the householder thinking they have been caught and admitting it or allowing the representative into the house to check.
People who receive a letter from the licensing dept reply saying they do not watch live tv and that normally stops any further inquiry for 12 months. Should they send an inspector to the house the the householder just tells them they do not watch live tv and please go away and don’t bother them anymore. This stops them coming for another 12 months.
This could very well spell the end of the BBC license fee if enough people cotton on.
NB I do watch live tv and I do pay the license fee, but there is no reason why I should not share this information with others.
General. You are actually wrong about the technology for detector vans. In the days of cathode ray tubes (old tellies) it was a simple matter to identify where the TV was and even what was being shown.
Two things have stifled this, flat screens and, if I remember correctly provisions in one of the computer acts. When CRTs were used the detectors could inadvertently view a computer screen and that is illegal.
Old tellies?
My telly’s got a cathode ray tube.
Not so, The General, my granddaughter received a notification from a bailiff that she had been found guilty in her absence of watching TV without a licence and they were coming to seize her goods. I was on hand fortunately and advised the company that if they turned up they would be met with the police. I discovered that the BBC had sent her summons to the wrong address and then I got a confirmation from the Beeb that she did in fact have a licence at the time of the alleged offence. It didn’t help because they wouldn’t back down from their fraudulent prosecution. We were left with no alternative but to turn up at court and go through the humiliation of appearing before the magistrates. I was not allowed to appear before them but I had coached my granddaughter beforehand and she produced the relevant documents and the bench dismissed the case in a matter of minutes. I wrote to the BBC in the hope of getting an apology but failed. It all started because a man from Crapita turned one night and demanded to see her TV licence I happened to be there and told him to get lost. He claimed to be questioning us under a caution. I explained to him that he was a liar and he had no such right then I closed the door on him. I suspect that the rest of the story was revenge for being told the truth (and the loss of his commission). They don’t like it up ’em. It all turned out right for my granddaughter eventually but I shudder to think what would have happened if I had not been around.
Well done Alf Stone
I just want to qualify your comment General.
You have to be sure that there is no obvious sign that can be seen from outside that you watch TV. Like a Sky Dish, or a TV visible through the front room window. In which case a Crapita agent can get a warrant and come back with a policeman to inspect your property.
Other than this they have no right of access, any more than a door to door salesman.
Alf, you are wrong. As you said the summons was sent to the wrong address and your granddaughter did in fact have a license, so in your case it was error on behalf of either Capita or the BBC, presumably they were trying to prosecute another person who had admitted to watching TV without a license.
Teddy, even if you have a dish you only need to say it was installed at a time when I did watch live TV and that is no longer the case, or that it was on the house when you moved in. If the Capita representative sees a tv operating through the window he has no way of telling if you are watching live TV ( illegal) or videos or other non live applications which is perfectly legal. Capita or the police have no right of entry until it has been proved or you admit to any offense and if you deny the offense and deny them entry they have no proof.
A Sky dish or an aerial is no evidence that you watch live TV.
My house has a Sky dish that was on it when I bought the place in 1998. I am under no obligation to remove it just to satisfy the BBC’s snoopers.
Essentially, unless you display your TV showing live programming to the outside world you are never going to get fined.
Throw all BBC letters in the bin and tell the director general, in writing, that TV licence staff have no access to you garden or driveway etc.
I am sure that this licence tax hits the poor hardest and look forward to the TUC supplying buses for Left Unity, People’s Assembly and other comradely folk to demonstrate outside BBC HQ. Now released from prison St Caroline and the Martyrs of Balcombe might be moved to stage an illegal demonstration against the tax somewhere. The times might be a changin’.
The next time the BBC moan about cuts in the justice system perhaps someone can point out that 12% of its time is spent making criminals out of people who don’t want to pay to view Dr Who and Eastenders.
12% is a shockingly high proportion of the total- I wonder how that compares with, say, council tax avoidance and conviction? I did try to find out, but those figures by definition are quite hard to get hold of (because the data is fragmented and you’d have to go through every council’s return in this respect), but it would be interesting to know.
The revelation that 10% of all criminal prosecutions, 180,000 per year are for non-payment of the BBC license fee is horrifying, said Lord Pearson, the UKIP leader in the House of Lords.
The former leader of UKIP is calling for major reform of the way in which the license fee is protected by turning any non-payment offence from the Criminal Justice system to the Civil system.
“It is outrageous that so many people are brought in to the criminal justicesystem through this means. I believe that non payment should be treated in the way that parking tickets are.”
“It is absurd that the courts are being clogged up by such a minor offence” he said.
Lord Pearson’ Bill received its first reading on the 30th of July.
It is calling for this reform and for the Trustees of the BBC to be elected by the license fee payers.
http://ukip.org/newsroom/news/842-ukip-call-for-bbc-non-payment-to-be-made-a-civil-not-criminal-offence
Lord Pearson’ Bill…
http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2013-14/bbctrusteeelectionandlicencefee.html
Nice idea until you read the detail. It makes the BBC responsible for setting civil penalties and the arbiter for appeals. Not sure that this is really the way to go.
This is no surprise to me, the BBC recently tried to criminalize my Grandfather, despite him being dead since March…………………….
I presume they consider it a poor excuse for not contributing towards the excesses of our friends at the Beeb.
never watch live programmes on the bbc,why should i when i can watch programmes after they have been transmitted on i player which you do not require buy a tv livence,that the bbc does not like you to know.
Another BBC article in defense of those poor criminals. What is it with this cuddling up to the Howard League recently?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-surrey-23778279
It’s a less than useful piece of reporting anyway.
My first thought was ‘why is she isolated’? We are not told of the context. There’s a hint at something the authorities are needing to work around, but the BBC reporter (via the #prasnews provider) seems to be working on the basis that the circumstances are irrelevant to the situation.
But we are left without a clue as to what these may be.
Interesting to note the glass ceiling has not prevented another champion of directorship equality rise to the top, and the BBC’s baleful glare.
To get from ‘help manage women with complex needs’ to torture maybe warrants a bit more than provided here?
Especially as ‘complex needs’ seems to be a euphemism for ‘.. in poor mental and physical health, addicted to drugs and drink and[/or] traumatised by separation from their children.’
The last warrants sympathy and sensitivity, but one presumes they have been jailed for knowingly breaking the law… or maybe simply failing to pay their BBC TV licence.
However, addicts may actually be impossible to treat in ways that idealists who ‘visit’ like to think is possible.
Your link page suggests that she is far too dangerous to be allowed near the other prisoners, hence her 6-year segregation. But perhaps her “complex needs” could be accommodated in New Broadcasting House, along with Hannibal Lecter’s. Washed down with a fine chianti – aaaaaah!
Taxed for our own brainwashing, you’ve got to admit it’s a pretty ingenious system.
180,000 people appear in front of magistrates resulting in 155,000 convictions. Assuming that none of those 180,000 people appear twice in a year, that makes 25,000 people dragged before the beak without enough of a case to secure a conviction.
‘Justice’ by scattergun & production line legal process.
Interesting for a cradle of democracy.
One presumes that, like poorly-enforced parking fine attempts, if a guilty-by-attrition attempts fails, the worst TVL suffers is having to close the file, having subjected some poor sod to ever escalating threats trying to scare them into paying up when there’s no proof they are anything but innocent?
I would like a government (or opposition) response to why this is a criminal vs. a civil process, given the nature of the ‘crime’.
Abusing legal process for commercial gain is a unique the BBC really might find hard to explain away. Or its wet patsies in power.
What is the definition of ‘live’ – I assume there has to be one.
I think it means “as it is broadcast” not live in the sense that you watch a sporting event live….but that’s covered too.
Hence, being able to watch the same shite on iPlayer for free.
(I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong on this)
I believe…hope… Chop to be correct. If it’s beaming out from the channel at that point, you are watching it live if you are watching it at that point…. or… capturing it for later viewing… at that point.
Hence we have disconnected any means of ariel/dish-based receipt. Though it remains on the wall. If that is used as an excuse to try and gain entry I will advise, and if they persist resist, and suggest they first check with SKY whether there is a service (there is no longer).
I am presuming that online catch-up services are, by definition, not live.
The only loss is to news or sport. The latter I was never interested in, and the former is now totally compromised.
Yes, does sky+ count as live and how long do you need to be recording before it isn’t? I suspect these areas are deliberately vague.
My DVD recorder freeview is one second slower than my telly freeview, even my wireless clock cannot be accurate because of the speed of light, but it is relatively “Live”.
If it arrives slower than the speed of light, then it is not “Live”.
About those MPs who claim for free TV licenses…..nuff said.
the stalinist soviet controlled bbc must stop this human rights abuse of the poor and vulnerable being forced to pay this tv llicence with the threat of imprisoment
“UKIP call for BBC non-payment to be made a civil not criminal offence”
http://www.ukip.org/newsroom/news/842-ukip-call-for-bbc-non-payment-to-be-made-a-civil-not-criminal-offence?
The Mail offers a few more snippets, in particular this one:
The data from the Ministry of Justice also showed that women are disproportionately affected, being involved in two thirds of the prosecutions brought.
The TV Licensing authority told City AM that the gender imbalance was due to women being more likely to be at home when inspectors call.
Notice how they avoid stating that most of the women are single mothers.
About 3,000 people a WEEK prosecuted for not having a TV licence (and there are calls for it to be treated like a parking ticket)
What I do notice….
‘Criminals should be given a bill to cover the cost of processing their case or jailing them, a report says today.
The influential Policy Exchange think-tank says….’
Of course, inherent in ‘criminals’ is guilt, but I’d suggest even then the logistics of securing debts may get complex.
There’s also the matter of the precedent in reverse, which does appeal, namely flippant punts by authorities being rewarded with bills from innocents from the get-go for time, stress and costs dealing with them.
‘‘TV licence evasion cases take up a small proportion of court time as they are dealt with in bulk in dedicated sessions, and very few defendants attend court.’
That probably sounded a lot more compelling in the PR man’s head.
As it reads as a travesty of the justice system, which is a bit more important than intimidating people to pay when they don’t need to to uniquely fund everything from Helen Boaden’s Savile testimony lawyers to Newsnight’s McAlpine compo to Mark Byford’s pension.
This tweet doing the rounds:
‘Abolish the BBC and reduce crime by 12% overnight.’
Of course that does set precedent.
However, it may already be set, with the police banning people or entities on the basis of what others may do, in actual illegality of violence, in response.
Hence if the new legal system is about preventing the costs of such eventualities (seems police do get issued to act as security to TVL ‘officers’, in parkas and jeans, merely on the possibility of a breach of the peace) then the suggestion may have merit.
In free democratic societies outside of the EU, they allow people to voluntarily subscribe to whatever media they wish to read, hear or watch.
Hopefully another nail in the coffin of the License Fee and hence the BBC. Look at the corporation’s record over the past few years:
> increasingly blatant bias across the whole range of their output, examples being too numerous to count
> sex scandals by the boat load and then using the public’s money to defend themselves
> paying themselves huge salaries and redundancy payments that their ( admittedly useless )regulator knew nothing about and now being under investigation by the police
> having to pay out of court settlements for libel
> building hugely expensive media centres that are white elephants and having to pay for daily commutes from London to them
> clogging up the criminal justice system in their eagerness to get their hands on the public’s money
How much longer does the public have to fund such wanton waste of money paying for a service that is increasingly unrepresentative of what the British people actually want or think ? Surely the time has come for the end of public funding of broadcasting.
Supplementary.
“TV license fee clampdown puts BBC behind 12 per cent of criminal prosecutions. ”
By John Glenday.
http://www.thedrum.com/news/2013/08/22/tv-license-fee-clampdown-puts-bbc-behind-12-cent-criminal-prosecutions#oMevlkKhw5fyz9Y0.99
There’s no point in moaning about being dragged through the courts after refusing to pay the licence fee. These are the consequences of disobeying a law no matter how bad that law is. This is especially so because, as “the general” notes, playing a straight bat on this one (ie refusing to confess all to the scum from Crapita) is sufficient to prevent prosecution.
On another point which seems to have been ignored, turning non-payment of the licence into a civil offence will result in more not fewer people being dragged through the courts. Why? Because the proof required reduces from “beyond a reasonable doubt” (which is why at present a confession is in effect always required) to a “balance of probabilities”. Accordingly, the presence of a TV aerial/satellite dish will be sufficient to provide acceptably probable grounds that someone is evading the licence fee. A criminal prosecution would follow non-payment of the civil debt created. As usual UKIP plays a good hand (annoyance at the BBC licence fee/persecution of the poor) extremely badly.
“turning non-payment of the licence into a civil offence will result in more not fewer people being dragged through the courts”
By my calculations, that would mean a potential seven fold increase in prosecutions, crippling the legal system. I think that would put an end to the BBC, but if you are wrong, then the UKIP plan could only fail if it made little difference to the number of prosecutions and the legal system could cope.
Laws fail if virtually everyone breaks it, or the legal system cannot cope. Advice that UKIP would have got from the wise old academics of the Freedom Association.
“Crippling the legal system” was not, I suspect, the reasoning behind UKIP’s policy to de-criminalise non-payment of the licence. The reasons were 1. to stop non-payers becoming stigmatised as criminals 2. to prevent the strain on the courts and 3. (the major policy driver as UKIP morphs into an organisation not unlike the main political parties) to gain a spurious short-term political advantage while refusing to attack squarely the underlying problem. UKIP’s policy vis-a-vis the BBC is not, AFAIAA, to stop (by direct or indirect means) compulsory funding of the BBC through a tax system or, more directly, break up the BBC.
Unfortunately for your argument (which implies a deviousness and intelligence on the part of UKIP’s policy mavens notoriously absent from most of their other strategic and tactical planning), the “prosecution” of a civil offence is less demanding of the court’s time and resources than a criminal one. I don’t know how you computed that a 7-fold increase would follow decriminalisation but I suspect the system (and Crapita) could deal quite happily with a substantial increase over the present numbers.
I know someone who doesn’t have a TV licence and watches live TV.
I know that person very well indeed.
HMRC don’t collect the telly tax. If they did ……
Always a useful source of factual snippets, this site is also on occasion an insight into mindsets, too:
http://tradingaswdr.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/trends.html
Beyond full marks for mathematical pedantry that would rival a Gold Clinton-starred graduate gracing these pages, there is also this:
‘Surely, in Charles Moore-land, that’s justice – 25,000 proved their innocence.’
Or… outside of Lord Hall-Hall’s fundament-land, that’s 25,000 people scooped in and belched out of a shotgun-based system run through a meat grinder when there was no cause?
Which he alludes to but doesn’t quite get his head around.
The good people of Dublin have been watching the BBC for decades and pay no contribution at all.
The SNP are selling independence on the zero contribution that the Scots will pay toward the Beeb if they go it alone. Alex Salmond has said that the Scots could still watch the BBC on freeview.
Unfortunately the rest of us will have to keep shelling out by law for its output of Eastenders and biased news to overpaid and underworked staff.
By the way partner worked as an “independent” at BBC Shepherds Bush a few years back…work practices there would make your toes curl. “Independents”, as they are called are usually gobsmacked by the sheer weight of staff to one job, nepotism, idleness and peculiar work practice’s at the Beeb.
“Case in point” said my partner “Watch the credits on a BBC production and compare that to an independent.”
My partner is right I watched the credits to Mastermind to day the number of names for static straightforward show is staggering. Try it yourself.