He has a point!

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Manx Cat
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He has a point!

Post by Manx Cat »

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7613938.stm

Just read this, involving Noel Edmunds and the BBC licence.

We get threats like this each year. We get a demanding letter threatening legal action if we dont pay for this licence. I always find it very worrying.


Yet, we dont own a TV. Dont watch TV. Live in an area without reception of anything... no local radio, no mobile and certainly no TV.

We dont own a TV dish or anything either. We have chosen to opt out of the TV media circus and it was the best thing we ever did. The kids are more rounded and more learned as they read all the time and have outside interests.

Yet, we have to endure this rubbish each year. Its not as if they have ever come to see for themselves... We invite them to do so as well.


Mary
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Mick F
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Post by Mick F »

Sad situation.

We haven't had the telly on for the past fortnight, and it wasn't on for a week or two before that. Our licence is due at the end of Oct..........
Mick F. Cornwall
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Post by bikepacker »

Mary
You need to get in touch with the author of outdoor books, Paddy Dillon. He has long running battles with the BBC over licence fees.

This is one thread he has contributed to on the Outdoors forum:
http://www.outdoorsmagic.com/forum/foru ... 8444883662

Drop him an email he's a nice guy and full of good advice.
There is your way. There is my way. But there is no "the way".
Asdace

Post by Asdace »

I find Television a load of old trash nowadays and spend most of my time on the Internet, to me, the licence is like dead money, money for nothing.

Ouch, there is a very long link.
thirdcrank
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Post by thirdcrank »

The BBC Trust is reported to be looking into the most recent series of ad's by the TV Licence Collection Nasty Bullying Squad. Apparently they've been amazed by the hostile public reaction - which shows how utterly out of touch these people in ivory towers are. They are also suddenly waking up to the fact that people don't like paying a licence to fund the BBC if they only ever watch other channels. Paying nearly £120 pa to keep so-called TV celebrities in clover and to help inflate the wages of footballers is not my idea of money well spent.

Post-Hutton, I've given up on the BBC radio news, the only bit of the BBC I really used in recent years.
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Post by eileithyia »

Always felt their attitude was slightly heavy handed from the days when I did not have a tv over 20 years ago. The opening line of their yearly letter was "Our records show you do not have a TV license registered at your premises..." I would always write across it, "Your records should also show that I do not posses a TV now stop harrassing me..."

Why they had to send out such yearly tosh was beyond me, If it was so easy to check who had TV's then they should not need to send out such letters.

These I do pay out for a license and sky as I prefer much of the stuff on other channels ( films without ads etc). I cannot understand why we cannot have some form of pay as you view tv, my sky card gives a variety of info about my viewing and whether or not I can tune into certain channels or not, and/or be charged for certain "extra" programmes should I wish to view them, surely we can have some system of being charged by what we watch similar to paying for how many minutes we spend on a phone call?
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Mick F
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Post by Mick F »

We have a prepayment electricity meter, the thing with a 'key'. It was in the place wne we bought it 11 years ago. I know that prepayment customers pay more than DD 'normal' meter customers, but we see no reason to change. We actually don't use that much 'lecky - gas cooker/solid fuel range in the kitchen and multifuel fire in the living room. (lit right now with twigs and branches from our fallen oak)

Same goes for telly. We've stopped watching it regularly, there seems to be little on worth switching it on for! We came back from our hols a fortnight ago, and before we left we unplugged everything (except for the freezer!) and now the telly would need re-programming for the channels. We can't be bothered.

So two weeks after getting back, the telly's still not been plugged in.

Why?

"There's nothing on the telly!"

So what we want, is a key meter for the telly.
Mick F. Cornwall
Manx Cat
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Post by Manx Cat »

These I do pay out for a license and sky as I prefer much of the stuff on other channels ( films without ads etc). I cannot understand why we cannot have some form of pay as you view tv, my sky card gives a variety of info about my viewing and whether or not I can tune into certain channels or not, and/or be charged for certain "extra" programmes should I wish to view them, surely we can have some system of being charged by what we watch similar to paying for how many minutes we spend on a phone call?
_________________


100% with you there!



We have even been asked if we have a computer, and do you use your computer like a tv?


Well, we play DVD's... so is the answer a 'yes'???


In this case, should we now have a BBC licence, cos we watch rented DVD's??


Mary
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Mick F
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Post by Mick F »

Manx Cat wrote:We have even been asked if we have a computer, and do you use your computer like a tv?
Well, we play DVD's... so is the answer a 'yes'???
In this case, should we now have a BBC licence, cos we watch rented DVD's?


No.

You only need a licence if you record or watch LIVE tv.
Or have the equipment capable of doing so.


The trouble is, the way the system is, you are guilty unless you prove otherwise. This goes against Magna Carta!!!
Mick F. Cornwall
Manx Cat
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Post by Manx Cat »

Thank you for this Mick....

I can rest easy now.

Mary
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Post by AlanD »

In my first year of living in my current home, a new property, I started getting Red warning letters from the Licencing people. I do have a TV and do have a licence. Before the threats started, I had previously contacted them to inform them of a change of address on the existing licence. They replied with an acknowledgement and even sent me a schedule of DD payments for the coming year. Talk about the left hand not knowing what the right is doing....
After several threats I decided to reply. I dod not say if I had a licence or not, I just asked them if they realised what effect their behaviour could have on a vunerable person and suggested that they check their correspondence. I was prepared to appear before a magistrate and take my licence with me. They assumed that I was a criminal and I wanted to rub their arrogant noses in their own mistake. Well it never went that far, I just got a letter acknowledging that they had lost my record in a changed postcode.

If I had no TV and I kept getting threatening letters, I'd probably write back and invite them to take me to court or leave me alone.
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Mick F
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Post by Mick F »

Alan D wrote:If I had no TV and I kept getting threatening letters, I'd probably write back and invite them to take me to court or leave me alone.


I think the recommended way ahead is to ignore all the letters, but keep them in a file, until they take steps. Then sue for harassment.
Mick F. Cornwall
kwackers
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Post by kwackers »

The license fee is pretty cheap for what you get - imo Radio 4 alone is worth it. People seem happy to pay several hundred pounds a year for the American tripe that Sky tends to show...

Many years ago some economist (who's name I can't remember) said that as we moved to a market led economy public infrastructure would suffer as people got wealthier and demanded more say into what they spent their money on.

When you look around you, he had a point. I remember when parks were properly managed, when people were proud to live somewhere and not treat it like a bin.

I see the growing resentment of paying the license fee as more of the same, lets face it, it costs practically nothing.

And don't forget (all the Sky supporters amongst you) if the BBC became a normal commercial organisation that you paid for, the removal of a high quality 'free' alternative to Sky would leave Sky with the ability to set it's prices at whatever level they saw fit. A decent chunk of the 'savings' would simply be eaten up by new prices and line Ruperts pockets.
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Post by thirdcrank »

The point about Sky increasing prices is that you can always leave (which is why they are keen to tie everybody in with long deals.) Everybody is stuck with financing the BBC whether they choose to watch or not. The BBC may be good for the soul but a large part of the population does not seek salvation.

Historically, the public financing of the BBC has only served to push up the cost of TV in this country. (It may be the case that we have the best quality TV on earth, whatever that means, but we now spend more and more paying silly salaries to so-called celebrities to tie them in to presenting trivia.) For many years, having commercial telly (with what were once bottomless sacks of £££) competing with publicly financed telly meant that wages were pushed up to stupid levels.

Now, the future of TV advertising seems doubtful: the internet is much more targeted, can be done more cheaply and the chill wind of economic change is blowing.

I would once have been happy to pay a lot for the independence of BBC radio news. Unfortunately, Blair hinted that they might lose the £££ and it's not worth turning the radio on for. IMO.
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Mick F
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Post by Mick F »

Agree, TC.

If we do away with the telly soon, we may replace it with an iMac. Large screen, and connect it to a sound system. We could then have digital radio (and Listen Again) via internet, watch DVDs, watch BBC iPlayer, and any other stuff out there. We have a laptop each, and all this could be done with them, but it's a palarva to connect it all up, so don't bother very often.

"There's nothing on the telly" for us. The telly yet again never got plugged in last evening, and I can't see it getting plugged in again unless we want to watch one of our few DVDs.

The BBC licence is dead in the water IMHO.
Mick F. Cornwall
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