Couple's TV licence trick foiled (Tinfoiled TV busted)

A COUPLE IN Aberdeen wrapped their television in a parcel of tin foil to try to avoid paying their licence.

They believed the silver foil would make their set invisible to hi-tech detector vans.

But the couple got a shock when a TV licensing squad came knocking on their door after their state-of-the art equipment picked up the set.

The lengths householders will go to dodge paying a licence fee were revealed yesterday by TV Licensing, the firm which detects rogue viewers. A wide range of weird and wonderful excuses were recorded across the country over the last year, but inspectors believe the citizens of the granite city - allegedly notorious for parsimony - were by far and away the most inventive.

One household in the area told detectives they only used their television for their cat to sleep on because it was "nice and warm". Others said their set was broken and that the standby light was only on to stop the damp getting in.

And one woman claimed she had never seen the television before and her husband must have bought it for their son.

"Wrapping your TV in tin foil is not going to help. You are going to get caught out and no excuse will get you out of it. Technology is developing all the time and we are finding better and quicker ways to catch people who are not paying their fees."

were an urban legend.

The US spin on this simple "trick" is the billboard that takes note of the currently tuned radio stations of passing vehicles and displays
messages for the demographic groups that the stations target.

I dislike such "targeted" ads because, in some weird way, I'd like to see what I'm "missing". I'd prefer to do my own
filtering, thank you.

"However, in the UK, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a government agency that has the power to tax and enforce laws".

I'm afraid this simply isn't true, although it's a misconception quite widely held outside the UK. The BBC is a public corporation operating under a Royal Charter, which has fiercely defended its independence from government ever since its first Director-General, John Reith. Indeed one of the perennial rituals of British public life is the government of the day, of whichever party, attacking the BBC for being biassed against it. There was a spectacular example of this as recently as yesterday, when Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's powerful communications director, was called before a House of Commons committee to be questioned about the government's news management during the Iraq war, especially the publication of the controversial intelligence dossiers on WMD. Instead of defending his own position, most of his evidence was taken up with a fierce attack on the BBC's news coverage of the issue. The idea that Alastair Campbell can tell the BBC what to say is palpably absurd.

That's not to say that the government has no influence at all on the BBC. There are two crucial areas in which this influence is exercised. One is the appointment of the Chair of the BBC's Governors. However, this only happens when the term of the existing Chair expires: so that it's quite common to have a Labour-supporting Chair under a Conservative government, or vice-versa. The other is the periodic renewal of the legislation which governs the power to collect the licence fee and the renewal of the Royal Charter. This is due to come up again shortly, when there will be, as there always is, a big political debate about the whole arrangement.

As far as the "power to tax and enforce laws" is concerned, this power belongs to the TV Licensing Authority, not the BBC itself. The TVLA is a completely separate agency, which IS accountable to government. A complicated, very British arrangement, which has both strengths and weaknesses. But I do think it's necessary to quash the myth of the BBC as some kind of Orwellian government mouthpiece.

The detector vans have long been in use in England to ferret out unlicensed TVs ... at least 20 years.

But the odd thing is that something even more insidious has been used in the US. There aren't any TV license fees here, but it is possible to rig up radar-like equipment in a van to detect which channel is being watched in the nearest house. This has been used by TV rating services as (possibly) more reliable and convenient that the diaries of the Nielson service; they simply drive the van down the suburban street during prime time and make a note of how many houses are watching this or that channel. More recently it has also been used to tell cable companies if someone (who hasn't paid for cable) is somehow watching cable channels.

Do they tax radio's also??

There's no separate tax on radio in the UK (but there is a separate one in Germany). The cash from the TV licence funds the BBC TV channels and also the 5+ ad-free BBC radio stations as well as the BBC Online news site - which is why it has no ads.

Because the BBC now broadcasts some of its TV programming through the internet there's an interesting debate if the licence fee has to be payed if the person has no TV and is only watching through their computer. Apparently, those who decide are saying yes.

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