None so totalitarian as the BBC;
The BBC is using laws designed to catch terrorists and organised crime networks to track down people who dodge the licence fee, it emerged yesterday. The publicly-funded corporation uses the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), designed by the last Labour government to fight terrorism, to catch those who evade paying the £145.50 fee. Now, however, its ability to use sweeping surveillance powers could be stopped by a new review announced yesterday by culture secretary Sajid Javid. Mr Javid’s independent inquiry into TV licence fee enforcement will examine the corporation’s use of covert surveillance operations on those it thinks have not paid the obligatory licence fee.
where is Dez to defend this?
The ever-watchful Dez is very picky with his posts these days.
Either that or he finds very little to argue with.
these come from https://www.thelasthope.in/Services
To be concluded by June next year? What the hell can take 8 months???
Get in…get the information required…get out, write your report and cut off the head of the serpent by decliminlising not paying the licence fee!
Mailman
I think David must have missed Question Time last night It was awful. Maclusky, Caroline Flint, Alex Salmon and a UKIP woman. All against the poor conservative including Dimblebey The audience was completely hostile not one comment in support of the Conservative. I was nearly sick when Dimbles said to Salmon are you going for a Westminster seat? Salmon smirked back that he was considering it. The conservative was continually interrupted and even when talking Flint was pulling faces as a way to argue.
‘Flint was pulling faces as a way to argue”
Clearly a technique Labour’s Babe Ministers are well schooled in, especially as they have shown that using actual debate they couldn’t argue their way into an ISIS bukkake session.
The only problem is getting the cooperation of the camera director to marry other party commenting with focus on their gurning. With the BBC, not apparently a problem.
Pulling faces as a way to argue.
Yes. I have noticed this. At last we have an argument in favour of a requirment to wear the burka – at least on Question Time
What a great idea.
Flint was on Any Questions a couple of weeks ago. The microphones were sensitive to pick up that she was constantly muttering silly comments, that she obviously thought nobody else could hear, to distract the UKIP panel member whenever he was talking. She really is a childish little nobody.
I was at an Oxford recording of QT when Flint was a guest. She had a rough time of things because the department she was then in charge of had messed up an IT project. It was clear from her ace that a hostile QT audience was not what she expected and her aide went and had a chat with a producer afterwards. Seems he and Flint got their way.
A younger family member and her family stopped watching their TV, they prefer computers, games, etc. The TV aerial was unplugged and tied up out of the way. The inevitable knock on the door came enquiring why they did not have a TV licence as previously. The family member explained that nobody ever watched it and he was welcome to come in and see the now unused, except for DVDs, set in the corner. The offer was made twice. The offer was declined as the shock of actually being invited in made him believe what he had been told. He asked why they no longer watched the TV and my relative (in colourful language apparently) told him why. This brought complete agreement and they had a conversation on turning the TV into a home entertainment centre, before the relative was marked off as not using the service and he left.
I haven’t paid mine for years. I actually like the idea that they’re watching me, it’s nice to have a bit of attention. Wasting their time though.
What did Oscar Wilde say about there only being one thing worse than getting attention, and that is not getting any attention?
No payment for five years, no knock at the door from the Crapita goons. I’d recommend it to anyone.
Interestingly, I bought a TV from PC World yesterday!
The transaction could not be concluded until I had supplied my address in order to confirm that it had a valid licence.
Big Brother or what?
I bought a TV online for my FiL a few yeas ago. No request for a TV licence proof was required.
All that concerned them was that it was to be delivered to a different address to the one on the card I paid with.
They should not have asked for an address as that law was abolished last year.
Bought a TV for our son a couple of weeks ago in London although he wasn’t quite at the point of moving out. So we just gave our address 200 miles away and it wasn’t queried.
It must be 10 years since I had a TV. The radio and iplayer does me fine. So the BBC gets no money from me. And it’s all legal.
The BBC prefer Muslim terrorists to those who dodge the license tax.
I don’t want to go into specifics, but for a number of years before I retired, part of my remit was the advising on, and processing of matters under something called IOCA, and then under RIPA which superseded it.
This involved dealings with the Office of Surveillance Commissioners (OSC) and the Interception of Communications Commissioners Office (IOCCO) to whom we were accountable. The OSC was our authorising body on specific applications. The latter was oversight on authorisations of our applications to Ministers of State, usually the Home Sec.
Our targets were usually transnational in nature and their activities lent themselves to this kind of examination.
We were, to put it bluntly, gobsmacked when we found out that just about every Tom, Adibole and Hamza from local authorities were utilising RIPA. Someone in our outfit found, I think 42 separate types of organisation outside of intelligence and law enforcement that were involved.
Knowing how it all worked, and what for the life of me I don’t understand is why the commissioners would authorise any such activity by the BBC.
There is absolutely no way that TV tax evasion falls within the definition of serious and organised crime.
So for what other purposes are the BBC using RIPA?
If it in any way involves “journalistic investigation” then I would suggest those at the BBC who are part of this are committing criminal offences.
But then again I remember a High Court judge ripping the BBC a second arsehole (actually they’ve got too many arseholes to count) after they falsified evidence and intimidated witnesses in one of their “miscarriage of justice investigations”
So maybe I shouldn’t be surprised.
I assume they are using RIPA to catch those using a computer to watch live TV. Presumably there is some way of finding the physical location of allocated IP addresses and then checking to see if there is a TV licence at that physical address?
Not if you use VPN. Dead cheap these days.
even the communist north korean and chinese goverments would not stoop to these levels that the stalinist bbc are doing to persecute old age pensioners who chose betreen heating there homes this winter and paying this illegal poll tax dressed up as a tv license,go to hell bbc,itv,channel 5 and channel 4 dont come round are doors harrasing to pay to watch there channels,if we want to pay for sky that is are choice,noel edmonds is right,he has not payed his tv licence for 10 years,he says if you think i am watching the tv prove it and you are not stepping a foot inside my house,the bbc should just get with the 21st century and go commercial like itv and other broadcasting corperations,do it now bbc.just do it.
I think it could be the beginning of the end of the licence fee, there have been far too many media reports on how the beeb is going to move away from a compulsory fee to a subscription type fee. With today’s digital age of Sky, Virgin, Freeview and t’internet I can’t believe that any right thinking government would allow the fee to continue.
The BBC’s use of RIPA is actually nothing new. They’ve been doing it for years, as described here.
As previously noted, I look after a family members property which is currently empty but a lot nearer us than the owner. Month after month the threat letters are delivered. They could save themselves a fortune by sending their super sensitive detecting equipment down to discover there is no TV on the property. As I’m sure it really works…really.
How can the bbc collect the licence fee without resorting to the rentier way of debt collection ? How many people have been prosecuted from the lower income bands ? How many people are taken to court for non payment? What is the debt to income percentage ? In the last 10 years how much is owed to the bbc and what do they do to recover debt
I haven’t had a t.v. licence since I moved into my house in 1999. There is a simple enough reason for it, really: I haven’t got a t.v. – though I am unsure how much weight the beeb and their friends in high places are inclined to give to that technicality. The first three or four times the letter came, I filled it in and sent it off. Then I started putting them on the fire and now I write ‘Return to Sender’ on them and put them back in the box. (I don’t know if they actually get returned or not). But they keep coming with regularity, wasting paper and money.
Recently I have had a note pushed into my mail box (in the locked gate, 200 yards – oh, sorry Aunty, I meant metres, I really did – from the house) to the effect that I am “under investigation”. Curiously, I ignored one just like it a couple of years ago. I was never told how that “investigation” went, but if one takes the bits of paper at face value, they have either decided to investigate me again or they are still at it. So, in the land of Sherlock Holmes, special investigative powers, G.C.H.Q., detector vans etc., they can’t get to the bottom of whether I’ve got a lobotomy box or not, despite the fact that I have rather helpfully – albeit a while ago – told them I haven’t. Furthermore, the note tells me that I have failed to respond to the letters I have been sent: not true; I responded to the first few after which I gave up.
So a couple of things puzzle me about this pantomime. Firstly, why do we tolerate this massive bureaucracy trying to squeeze money out of people for the privilege of having government propaganda pushed down their throats? Secondly, what exactly do you have to do to get busted for not having a licence – ie. how does anybody actually end up fined or imprisoned for it? And thirdly, how much does this rather ineffective effort at collection all cost? How much does the bloke who pushes the note into my mail box get paid? Is he on commission? What do the costs of all the office staff, the bureaucracy and the court time add up to? Is there anyone prepared to suggest that the whole thing is a complete waste of time and money?
Ps. It’s just occurred to me that the letters I get, while they have my address on them, lack my name. They are addressed to “The Occupier”. Could that be the reason that I haven’t been done? In order to get me to court they would have to be specific about my moniker – it’s Grigory Rasputin, by the way, but shhhhhh.
Noir have we, but I have fun with Capita, writing to them to note such as
“What is it about ‘We do not have a TV’ that you do not understand?”
And this shuts them up for a couple of years
“You appear to be saying that I am lying. Please put this on paper, then we can commence legal action against you”
We’ve done the usual and noted to them that their common law right to access our property has been withdrawn. but if they send a detector van, then be sure that those manning it can knock on our door if they need a pee, or a cup of tea.
Of course, if we get a letter addressed to
“The householder”
That gets returned, with the legend
“NOT KNOWN HERE”
on it.
Fuck ’em, have fun with them, and taunt them.
Who bothers to watch the tele, anyway? Mostly bollocks with admitedly, a few gems thrown in. Still you can always get the DVD or download off the netty, interweby thingy. Luckily I don’t live in the UK. in Nuzzyland there is no compulsory fee- just adverts every 6 minutes. Makes me want to burn stuff, it really does. Not that I need much encouraging. And before you judge: everyone needs a hobby. Gets me out of the house and while I’m setting fire to stuff I’m not watching tele.
“Privatise the BBC”
By TIM CONGDON.
http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/node/5796/full