Yes it's true we do have to pay a TV Licence.

It's for a good cause though. 80% of the funds go directly back into making sure our Tea and Crumpets are prepared adequately for when we watch TV so that our viewing pleasure is enhanced, Tally Ho!

Yeah, but it was all bullshit though. I think that they stopped doing it as the newspapers caught them out. in a nutshell their logic was [any household] = [owns a TV].

It doesn't matter if you own a TV or not. They'll send out the threatening letters to any and all households that don't own a TV license.

TBH the American system makes somewhat more sense in this case. Everybody pays taxes and a very, very small amount of that goes to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

It is a tad different in that the US is much larger both in terms of land mass and in terms of population, but it's a bit easier to fund as it's just included in the taxes. Although, we do spend less both per capita and in total for the service, as well as getting a lot less.

Back in Romania they just add the TV & radio license fee into the electricity bill and call it a day; if you don't want to pay it you have to go through a lengthy process to get it removed and few people do.

In the UK, well, we don't have a TV in the house, so the guy came, we let him in, he saw a bunch of people playing Starcraft in the common room, asked if we have a TV and left after we told him that we don't.

Seeing as it essentially is just another tax, yes it does make more sense to be honest about it and handle it that way. Not least of all because it would give those enforcing payment more legal leverage here.

TV detectors did work in the days of CRT televisions, they could pick up the radio "click" of the scan lines resetting. The system was called tempest I think.

You only need a license if you are watching live TV, you don't need it for i-player or any other delayed broadcast method.

If you don't want to pay it is simple, you write to the c***s that administer TV licensing and notify them that you will be charging a fee for each letter you receive from them and you are revoking any explicit or implicit right of access to your property. If any of their gestapo show up at your door you can then sue them for trespass. though it is hard to enforce if you don't have a garden.

Even if you don't do this they can't do anything unless you admit to owning and watching a tv.

I personly object to anything to do with the British Bullshit Corporation (except Doctor Who). All they actually do anyway is spread government propaganda and make people miserable by beaming arseenders into their heads.

Phone up the BBC and ask them why they never reported Allegations of Bayer's "accidental" release of 72Kg (100,000 doses) of live bird flu virus labeled as seasonal flu jabs throughout europe in 2009. Or why they never tell anyone how the banking system ACTUALLY works in any current affairs program.

Oooops! getting too political here.

No ... try Jonathon Ross's bank account .. ;)

Obviously there's downsides to handling it like that, but it's significantly less complicated and makes it a lot less of a pain. From what I gather one only has to pay if one has a TV or other viewing device, the problem being that you have one unless they say you don't.

Our system does have issues as NPR, PBS and the CPB are constantly under attack from conservatives that are opposed to anything that educates or questions their views. But on the whole it's just a lot easier to handle things in that manner.

I suppose the other option would be to give everybody a free converter box that pays the tax. Something which requires inspections and such in somebody's private residence is just going to be a PITA for everybody involved.

Nah, the license fee goes to people scouting torrent sites, so that a month after someone uploads a clean believed-lost recording of a 60's show the BBC has it on air with someone explaining that they found a "master copy".

Classic...

It's a tax. 98% of the houses in the UK pay it, about 1% unfairly don't pay it. People like me (about 0.5%) don't pay it because I don't have a live TV, just iplayer (really I should pay it). Then 0.5% really don't qualify. I wish they'd just cut all the bureaucracy, and just take it straight out of income tax (along with about 50 other stealth taxes like N.I that I'm fed up with).

Anyway, it does have one advantage, it's good for practical jokes. A former colleague of mine from South Africa was totally confused by the need for one of these things, so we convinced him that he also had to pass his "operator test" for the license to be valid. He ended up calling the TV license authority to arrange a test to demonstrate he could operate a TV. For a programmer, that's pretty embarrassing (we all laughed as he did it). It could have been done much better in retrospect. We should have given him 'the number to call' and arranged the exam. Unfortunately it was a spur of the moment thing.

Of course it's classic, that's been going on for a very long time. It's not a shock that the party of Creationism, Sophistry and anti-intellectualism in general would be opposed to those entities. Hell, they don't even bother to pretend like they aren't doing it.

Strictly just TVs. Not monitors, even if you watch TV channels on it. At least that's the way it was last I heard. But given the arbitrary way it's handled I can't really be too sure of the specifics.
Redundant. You covered this with 'educates'. :P

Sorry my anti-ittellectuesm, anti-intelligencialberry, anti-something or other forced me to withdraw.