TV licence wait this title has already been used? Fuck it, we go again đŸ“ș

It was due to be decriminalised, but the government postponed it:

I don’t quite follow the maths on these two paragraphs though

Almost a third of women’s convictions are for not paying the TV licence fee - with women being ten times more likely to be convicted for not paying the £157.50 annual fee than men, Ministry of Justice data recently released showed.

Any individual who watches or records live TV or utilises iPlayer without a TV licence is guilty of a criminal offence and could be sent to jail for not paying their court fine. Some 74 per cent of the 114,000 convictions for licence fee dodging in 2019 were for women – up 3 per cent since 2015.

EDIT: maybe they mean that out of the prosecutions that are brought, the rate of conviction for women is ten times that of men, which leads to 74% of all convictions being women.

I don’t really view things as “MY taxes go to THIS”, but if I did want to start thinking like that then I’d already have a lot of pretty awful shit to get aggy about paying for before I get to the BBC. In the grand scheme of rotten British institutions they’re pretty low on the totem.

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The only thing I can think is that maybe way more men are charged and acquitted and that’s what the first para is alluding to? And the second para is just a breakdown of total convictions?

Haha you edited just after I posted :smiley:

Yeah, I got there in the end.

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Men are less likely to admit to the crime of illegally watching telly in court.

There is no “detector van”, and no evidence unless you admit to watching telly.

The only people who get convicted of not having a TV licence are the people who admit to watching TV.

Without meaning to generalise, women tend to be more passive and honest, whereas men will threaten the TV licence man with a broom and hear no more of it.

The good people of popular music forum Drowned In Sound dot com disagree:

Do you need it to listen to radio? Hope I don’t get put in licence fee jail for sometimes having radio 3 on in the car. It’s only for short local trips when it’s not worth putting a CD in, and that’s only about once a month, even less these days, your honour. Please be lenient, all I did was turn the car on, I can’t remember the last time I touched the radio itself.

No. The clue is in the name.

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i like some of radio 1. i always have radio 4 on and i think the only thing i don’t hate is clive james. don’t have a digital radio. who makes don’t tell the bride?

You don’t need it for radio

Well that’s me told then.

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Just following on from what @TheBarbieMovie2023 says in the original post, and without wishing to out myself in any way, I do know prosecutions against women for tv licence nonpayment has something to do with protecting the breadwinner (usually a man, in a traditional nuclear family) from receiving a conviction that would affect employment prospects

If they bring Robot Wars back again then all is forgiven in my eyes, I’ll pay the fee. Shunt would probably sort out the transphobes and far right cranks given the chance.

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yeah the current set up seems really archaic

If you had told me that stat about a third of all female convictions were due to this to my face i would have said,

you fucking what bab?!

That’s nuts.

BBC and license fee are far from perfect, but I suspect it’s better than the alternative. Happy to pay it tbh.

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Nah. Kuenssberg giving Prince Andrew a grilling for example. Or the fella on the One Show asking David Cameron “how do you sleep?”. Or Gary Lineker’s pro-refugee stance.

I agree with you that the right tend to moan about its cultural/arts programming. Most of the panel shows are left-leaning, but they wouldn’t really be funny if they were right-wing.

I do not have a TV license. Keep getting letters from people saying they’re going to come around our house and they never do.

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If they do, do not give them permission to enter the premises, and threaten them with a broom. Works a treat.

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Neither the One Show nor Match Of The Day are news programmes (and the BBC have changed their policy as a direct result of the likes of Lineker expressing mild empathy on twitter).

It wasn’t Kuenssberg who did the Prince Andrew interview, btw, it was Emily Maitlis.

I think most of the panel shows are packed with middle of the road small ‘c’ conservative centrist dad comedians.

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