The quickest way to do away with the damned thing is just to stop giving in to the extortion.

Great I decided specifically not to own a TV when moving into my own place since I do not want to support the BBC. But now I'm going to get taxed for something else I don't want!

I wondered why the BBC seemed so keen to make videos of their programmes available on the internet. Perhaps they'll be tracking IP addresses like the RIAA and extorting money through the courts too.

Meanwhile, anyone who visits radiotimes.com gets a cookie from this place - reporting.tvlicensing.com

Unfortunately your not having a TV Licence is actually regarded by the TVLA as you lying to them. Bear in mind that this is an organisation that has no problem charging you £63.25 to listen to the TV even if you are blind.

I recently bought a USB DVB-T digital receiver for my PC at a cost of £22, which allows me to do much the same with my computer as a digital set-top box would do for my TV. It's therefore a bit of a shock to learn that a £22 'television' will cost me £126.50 in order to legally use it in the UK.

Moriarty writes:

"Meanwhile, anyone who visits radiotimes.com gets a cookie from this place - reporting.tvlicensing.com"

Use Firefox, and tell it to delete 'cookies' whenever it's closed (has a more nauseatingly cutesy term for something so thoroughly obnoxious ever been created? The scumbag who invented it should be hanged, drawn and quartered - and then hurt some more).

I do use FF, I just block anything from tvlicensing.com anyway. Mainly I bleb.org or onthebox.com for the listings anyhow, they're a lot faster.

Easy squires and squireses,wait until pay as you go comes out then nickem.

There really is no need to pay a TV licence until they start getting heavy on you. They are not allowed to enter your home without an invite so there is actually nothing to fear.

So postpone buying a licence until they actually pay you a visit.

If everyone did it, they would go bankrupt. :)

The BBC is very good at arguing the exact opposite of course. As the "transition" to digital television is both challenging and expensive, this is a reason why the licence fee should be increased for the BBC to maintain its vital role for the people of the United Kingdom. Large amounts of the government are actually sympathetic to this argument, too.

Hm. Wireless Telegraphy Act, hm?

Would it still apply to non-wireless video, say, delivered via cable?

Has anyone considered manufacturing an antennaless television as a tax dodge (as most TVs seem to hook up to cable these days anyway...)?

Sort of reminds me of the attempt by the Post Office here in the US who wanted to tax e-mails since it cut into their profit base - essentially pay them even though you aren't using them.

Sir:
Your comment

It can not be long now before even politicians see the abolition or curtailment of the BBC licence fee as a no-brainer.

assumes facts not in evidence. To wit, that politicians have brains. Have you ever met (or heard of) a politician that rolls back a tax like this?

There's an additional wrinkle here. TV Licensing is not directly part of the BBC. It is a quasi-autonomous set of contractors--tax-farmers in other words--headed by that government favourite, Capita. So there are several sets of motivations and lobbying budgets involved.

One BBC concern is to stay wholly independent of Government, but where it is partly subscription- or sales-funded but subject to anticommercial constraints (as BBC Worldwide), receives a political grant from a departmental budget (as the World Service) or subsists on the license fee, it is not clear that it can ever be. The license fee itself is set by government, after all. So it is just not true that the way the BBC is funded keeps it independent, even though that is a credo of the Corporation repeated rapturously in its self-advertisements.

There would be nothing to stop the BBC getting a block grant voted by parliament on a free vote. Funding from taxation need not imply being subject to ministerial whim or direction. This would have two benefits pleasing to many people: (1) it would cease to be 'regressive' taxation, and (2) it would cease to involve a specially commissioned set of bullies spying on people and forcing themselves into people's homes.

However, it would have some massive disbenefits for politicians: (1) it would actually strengthen BBC independence, since there would no longer be shadow boxing with the DCMS, sorry... dcms, about charter renewal and licence fee levels; (2) it would remove scope to patronise certain segments of the population who can be impressed by the generosity of the government in giving TV Licence breaks and discounts to, for example, the old and the blind; and (3) it would cease to involve a specially commissioned set of bullies spying on people and forcing themselves into people's homes, who can be both helpmeet and pretext for the more generalised surveillance agenda.

Of course a block grant would also give Capita and chums no farmed tax and one less cause for lobbying, reduce the number of forms and TV license stamps handled by the Post Office, remove the compulsion from electrical retailers to identify and report their TV customers and keep records to prove they've done it for inspection, take those offensive bullying ads out of all media, and make almost the entire population's lives easier. It would obviously never do...

Such a policy wouldn't satisfy the BBC-haters out there, who just wish it destroyed, but I hope I've shown that one could make a simple policy change with positive effects for liberty without shocking public cultural expectations of a continuing BBC. And it might just make it less craven in the face of direct Government pressure.

Guy, good points. Capita is known as Crapita for a reason. That firm has its hands in many government projects and I would imagine it is gagging to run the ID card, as well as the Oyster Card on the Tube. A very modern example of the blurring lines between the state and big business. I would not be surprised if it has a few MPs in its pocket.

This is a business that deserves the toughest possible scrutiny by the media.

So what are BBC going to do about foreigners who bring video-capable mobile devices into the UK? Charge them the license fee for a week's vacation? And what if you brought two and gave one to an English friend? Are they going to insist they get the tax for any device capable of showing Brit TV, anywhere in the world? I sense a prime hacking opportunity. The Internet routes around damage. I suppose, though, they'd just raise general taxation a tad to extort money for the BBC. But then at least the poor would get their prime-time opiate for "free". And the BBC could no longer pretend to be independent.

"It can not be long now before even politicians see the abolition or curtailment of the BBC licence fee as a no-brainer."

That's what they were saying 20 years ago in Thatcher's heyday, when the Beeb was a lot smaller.

£131 a year? Bloody good value. Long live the BBC-- the best of British. And may Murdoch's crap continue to sink BSkyB's share price.

£131 a year? Bloody good value. Long live the BBC-- the best of British. And may Murdoch's crap continue to sink BSkyB's share price.

Best of British? Sure, and the NHS is the "envy of the world" no doubt. Typical sheeple.

No one makes you pay for Sky. Feel free to watch the shite on the Beeb if you like but pay for it yourself, parasite.

I like the DUP platform of trying to stop the elderly from having to pay it. And those who live with them. And those who.... There's too many people who think that we couldn't have the kind of highbrow quality programming that Footballers Wives represents in the private sector to do away with the Beeb at the moment. The only way forward is to expose its constant lies and eat away at its funding even as it goes after new channels.

Incidentally, since we seem to have some Beeb supporters, why do you feel it is that the state should be in the business of making trashy drama? I'm genuinely curious. Alternatively, beeb haters, I'm curious if any of you were aware of the official argument for it.

The BBC makes trash cheaper than the private sector, and a lot besides which the Murdochs of this world would never do. The total hidden cost of TV advertising (passed on through irrecoverable markups in goods and services) is higher than the direct cost of the licence in terms of hours per viewer; and the licence is transparent and honest whereas TV commercials are an indiscriminate stealth tax. Pay-TV is even worse value for money, which is why most viewers don't want it, whereas they went a bundle on Freeview.

I'm not necessarily defending the size and scope of the present BBC, which has become something of an octopus. But I want a big not-for-profit sector in broadcasting, just as I want good public transport because I'd rather be driven than drive-- I don't want every damn programme smothered in stupid, irrelevant commercials.

Libbos are as airy-fairy about broadcasting as they are about most things. The BBC is the best of British, as the world acknowledges. Wanting to kill it is sheer sadistic perversity which keeps you in the cranky vandal class, like the Taliban blowing up Buddhas. You should concentrate on genuine examples of waste in the public sector such as 'defence' spending.