The people of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland pay £142.50, approximately $232 US, annually to their socialist government to be able to watch TV inside their living rooms, TVs that they bought and paid for with their own money, hopefully, even if they only watch cable TV, for which they are paying the usual subscription charges. Amazing!
So, the BBC is my bible, as you can tell from the frequency that it is quoted on this site. And, I was reading an editorial blog post about changes to the BBC website, which removes the old system of selecting your version of the BBC site. You used to be able to select between the international and UK versions, much like what CNN still allows. The news was the same but the order of importance given to the different topics varied in the two versions.
Now what the BBC has come up with is auto-detection. You don’t need to pick a version anymore – the BBC site does for you, for free! Gosh, what an awfully useful feature! The site already prevents international visitors from viewing most of the video content, some of which can be pretty good. Videos on the BBC Sports site have been out of our reach for a long time now. You’d get a mere image when trying to view any such restricted videos, thus:
So, I thought, proxies are a good way to beat the system. I googled for proxies in the UK, and I was shocked to find the first result showed socialism in the UK is so prevalent that people are required to pay a tax to watch TV! Apparently, I wasn’t the first one to come up with the idea of a UK proxy to view BBC videos. But, I was appalled at the following post:
Remember, in the uk (sic) you need a licence to own a TV, and they actually have TV police that actively drives around in VAN’s (sic) with detection equipment, looking for illegal TV signals. Really, im serious !(sic)
Apart from the terrible English, I didn’t really take this guy seriously, until another Google search yielded…
You must be covered by a valid TV Licence if you watch or record television programmes as they’re being shown on TV. It makes no difference what equipment you use – whether it’s a laptop, PC, mobile phone, digital box, DVD recorder or a TV set – you still need a licence.
You do not need a TV Licence to view video clips on the internet, as long as what you are viewing is not being shown on TV at the same time as you are viewing it.
If you use a digital box with a hi-fi system, or another device that can only be used to produce sounds and can’t display TV programmes, and you don’t install or use any other TV receiving equipment, you don’t need a TV Licence.
Wow! And that too £142.50 per year. For hotels, the fee is almost punitive. For an establishment with 1,000 rooms, the tax would be … wait a second, relax … £28,000 per year, in addition to the TV and cable costs.
But, I thought, UK might have a stupid TV tax, but the part about the TV police was too ludicruous. But, no!
Using TV receiving equipment to watch or record television programmes as they’re being shown on TV without a valid licence is against the law.
It is an offence which could lead to prosecution and a fine of up to £1,000 (plus legal costs), not to mention the embarrassment and hassle of a court appearance…
It is a criminal offence to use TV receiving equipment to watch or record TV programmes without a valid licence, and there’s no excuse for doing so. Still people try. In fact, we’ve heard all the excuses in the book and here you can read some of our favourites.
The embarassment of a court appearance? How about the embarassment of paying a TV tax, in the first place? And, wait there’s more…
There are a number of ways we can find out [whether you're evading the license fee]
At the heart of our operation is the TV Licensing database. This contains more than 29.5 million home, business and student addresses, telling us which of these have a TV Licence. All of our Enforcement Officers have access to this database and can check whether or not you have a licence.
We also have a fleet of detector vans, which are capable of detecting the use of TV receiving equipment within 20 seconds, and many of our Enforcement Officers carry hand-held detection devices too.
Of course, the following section was absolutely hilarious:
Our TV detector vans are equipped with state-of-the-art detection equipment which can tell in just 20 seconds whether you are using TV.
How do the detector vans work?
Our vans feature a range of detection tools. Some aspects of the equipment have been developed in such secrecy that engineers working on specific detection methods work in isolation, so not even they know how the other detection methods work. This gives us the best chance of catching licence evaders.
What if you can’t get close enough to detect my TV from your van?
Our Enforcement Officers may use a hand-held detection device instead. This measures both the direction and the strength of a TV signal, making it easy for us to locate TV receiving equipment in even the hardest to reach places.
Q would be proud of the detector vans … not even the engineers who created them know how they work!
Do these guys honestly expect us to believe that their equipment is so “advanced” that they can detect that I am watching TV on my desktop computer and fine me? I know enough about technology to say: NO, STOP BULSHITTING US. STOP TRYING TO JUSTIFY AND IMPOSE MORE OF YOUR STUPID TAXES, YOU SOCIALIST PIGS. A poster on the forum mentioned above put it succinctly:
And I thought the Allies won World War II
And, what is the tax used for? The BBC, of course! My favorite BBC is funded by such a ridiculous tax. Gosh. Well, the Brits can pay for my indulgence. Thank you very much, sirs.
