TV Licence Resistance

[dutchmanswife]

DH has been running a campaign for years against the TV licence and has appeared in the Sunday Times this week.

entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/tv_and_radio/article6797727.ece

I'm feeling quite proud of him.

Does he want all tv to be commercial tv? Sounds an awful idea?

am with him 100%

"This is civil disobedience. I?m doing what the suffragettes once did.? What evading the licence fee because you don't like the tone of the letters equates to getting the vote for women?

i have to agree with your DH, dutchman!

i need cbeebies to make it through the day otherwise we would detune the tv and stop paying too.

when ds is a bit less demanding we will do it then.

it annoys me that people think you need a licence to own a telly

Sorry but I disagree 100%.

TV in the UK is only as good as it is because of the benchmark of the BBC. And services like local news, speech radio of the quality of BBC4 and 7, and the BBC website are simply not fundable under normal commercial pressures - witness the wholesale death of local news reporting from newspapers.

And of course you don't have to pay the TV license if you don't watch TV, you never did have to. Not sure what's so revolutionary about that.

I think the BBC does a fantastic job and am always when people happily pay £££ to sky, and then whine about £150 a year to the BBC.

He believes in free choice, the choice of whether to have a tv license or not. If that means all tv is commercial tv then he is happy with that.

I don't entirely follow this.

Because you can't receive live television, you are not required to pay for the TV licence. Good, marvellous, etc.

If the TV licence is abolished and all TV channels are commercial, they don't magically become zero-cost. The free-to-air channels are paid for by advertising, and the cost of that increases the cost of the goods we buy.

So everyone, even those who can't receive live television or don't have television sets at all, winds up paying.

I came back from living in the US for a couple of years entirely in favour of the license fee. Public service broadcasting is worth paying for.

well he's got a free choice - he doesn't have to watch TV does he?

He wants all tv to be commercial. Well, good for him. Most people don't want their tv filled up with ITV/SKY garbage. I'd be interested to know what programmes he watches - no BBC productions at all?

anyway, if the TV license is abolished as others have said, you still have to pay for commercial stations via advertising.

I don't see how that is any more of a "free choice". In fact it's considerably LESS of a free choice than the current situation where people at least have the option to ditch their tv and the license fee.

"He believes in free choice, the choice of whether to have a tv license or not."

It is a form of taxation payable under UK law. Does he think he should be allowed to opt out of car tax?

Well congratulation to your DH Let's all watch crap commerical TV and do without Radio 4, 3, 5 etc. If the BBC disappeared I suspect I would not bother with TV anyway.

tell you what, shall I start a campaign to deduct 0.00001% of the purchase price off any item advertised on C4, 5 or ITV, due to my "free choice" not to have to support those channels either?

Or, since that would be difficult to implement at the till, perhaps just shoplift one item a year in protest. I think I will start with that Poo at Paul's advert, as I find that the most offensive.

[puts on capacious mac and dark glasses and sidles off to Sainsburys]

oh yes.... someone deserves to compensate every TV watcher in the UK for that ad.

I think the quality of BBC programming throughout the summer months has been appalling as it always is, while they wait to unveil their autumn schedule.

However I would hate it to be like America where they seem to have ads about every 7 minutes or like Sky channels where the ad breaks are about 6 or 7 minutes long.

Agree about the tone of the letters. We haven't got a tv because we decided we didn't watch enough to bother. DS1 watches DVDs on the PC and that's it. We received letters from TVL which from day 1 had a very threatening tone and when I called them to say we have no tv I was asked if I understood an officer would be turning up to check... something I didn't have the guts to say no to (which I understand is my right from what I have read). If they do turn up while I'm alone I doubt very much I will be happy to let them in if it isn't a right they have. It all feels very harsh against people who are doing no harm, with the underlying suggestion that only weirdos have no tv .

But that's not an argument for no licence though.

We cancelled our licence and unplugged the telly from the aerial after a couple of years here. I can't believe you are expected to pay for that crap.

We watched King Kong on ITV on saturday night. Bloody ad breaks drove us mad. Don't often watch anything with ads.

I prefer to think of my license fee as going directly to The News Quiz and The Now Show. Other people's fees pay for Eastenders etc.

and just to add, I too think very highly of the BBC's output, especially after seeing what is on offer in other countries. If I was an avid watcher it would be worth paying for.

Do you not listen to radio Morloth?

i think the collection could be less heavy handed - my friend ad burly men call on her (oo-er) and say they'd detected a signal and wanted to search her house - she denied them entry - she didn't even have a TV!
they wrote to her on no less than three occasions threatening legal action. At no point did she own a TV.

though yes, i support the license fee only because the alternatives are worse and resul in a worse service. And i couldn't live without Radio 4.

The length of ads can be ridiculous. We've got one of those recorders where you can start recording a bit ahead of time and then fastforward the adverts. DH allowed half an hour in a 2-hour slot (a Star Trek double bill on Virgin) and he ran out of recording so had to watch the end in realtime with ads.

The other alternative in the US is PBS. Which was quite sweet in a way, when we were there 15 years ago it was mostly old Dr Who and 'Masterpiece Theatre' (aka British Agatha Christies fronted by Alistair Cooke). But then periodically you'd get a week in which they spent half the time pleading for donations to keep running... arghhh...