OT : TV licensing - must I compy? - Page 2

Badger wrote:


That was why I said "loosly clings"... i.e. I am aware of things like
the RIP Act, but as far as I am aware such far reaching powers have not
been extended to TV Licensing (yet)!

--
Cheers,

John.

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John Rumm wrote:


That will be the next thing to happen.

Cars capable of more than 50mph will be banned from suburbia.

Politicians (capable of lying) banned from the houses of parliament

--
geoff

I understand that a TV run from batteries is exempt (well it used to be)

So, a couple of car batteries and an inverter then ...

--
geoff

Not exactly. There is a provision for televisions used (inter alia) by
students living away from home, and (I believe) caravanners.

I'm pretty sure (from memory) that the batteries have to be 'internal'.

Also (more importantly) that this relates only to being able to use a
'base' licence to cover the portable set in question, so there must be a
TV 'back home' with a real licence.

--
Bob Eager
begin   a new life...dump Windows!

Bob Eager wrote:

The "student" exemption was withdrawn a good while ago (20 years back?)


That, I think, is the case - "solely powered by internal batteries". It
would take dedication of a uk.d-i-y variety to make up a spaceframe
around the bulk of an existing TV set, with two or four deep-discharge
lead-acid batteries, layered in photovoltaic cells to keep 'em topped up ;-)

wrote:


Sorry, what I meant was that students can only use the 'batteries'
exemption - I know students who do.


I did actually wonder about covering that point! Dunno about multiple
sets of rechargeable, exchangeable batteries, tho'!

--
Bob Eager
begin   a new life...dump Windows!

The wording is "Use, by the persons referred to overleaf, of a
television receiver anywhere, providing it is powered only by
internal batteries". It might be argued that this would only
apply if the licence was in the student's name at home, which
wouldn't be a problem unless you had more than one child wanting
to make use of this provision at the same time.

Another factor which might cover the set at Uni is if the hall has
a licence and the hall provides meals. When I was in a hall of
residence, I wrote asking what licences we needed. The answer was
that a licence was required for each 'family unit' in a multiple
occupancy premise, and a 'family unit' was defined as a group of
people who would normally eat at least one meal a day together,
which covered all 420 people in my hall as it had a refectory
providing 2 meals/day all inclusive in the charges, and no
self-catering facilities. OTOH, a self-catering hall would not be
covered by this.

However, it seemed that each time anyone asked TV Licensing what
the rules were, they got a different answer, so don't assume this
still holds true today.

--
Andrew Gabriel

So does my son, away at Uni, need a license for his tv in halls ?

--
geoff

raden wrote:


Yes, assuming he has his "own" room (separate-lock-on-the-door is
indicative, "real" criterion is the tenancy agreement: if you're a
shared student house where all of you are named on one joint tenancy
agreement, you're a single household and need just the one licence for
the whole house; if the rooms are let separately, with each person
having their own tenancy agreement (or similar arrangement with the Uni
authorities), you need your own licence if you watch any TV.

That's wot it sez on the TV licensing website, anyway!

HTH - Stefek

Glad I made him get one then

--
geoff

Yes, unless it runs solely from internal batteries.

--
Bob Eager
begin   a new life...dump Windows!

All the above is correct.


If it's an ordinary mains telly, and if he's living in a place where he
has an individual dwelling, IE room in halls, or room in a shared
student house where he has a seperate tenancy agreement with the
landlord all of his own... YES!

If a number of them share one single tenancy, they can share a licence.

I took my daughter to uni and the woman in charge of the halls said she
was letting 500 rooms that day. That amounts to over 50,000 in TV
licenses. The Uni overall has about 15,000 students that is about
1,500,000 in TV licenses. Scandalous, bearing in mind when my daughter
lived at home we had 8 TV sets on one licence completely legally.

DG

Derek * wrote:


Scanda-nothing, from where I sit. When I Were A Lad, I knew exactually
one pair of students - emulating a Darby-n-Joan couple, her cooking his
meals every day, in her pick slippers (i kid you not) - who kept a TV in
their room. The rest of us piled into the nearest common room, bar, or
pub on those utterly infrequent occasions when there was something
earth-shattering going on; the ones with the incomprehensible-to-Stefek
sporting addiction did this a tad more often than us normal types; the
absence of a TV made najjer-all difference to the quality of social
life, amount of beer and whiskey taken on board, flings and romances
suitable and unsuitable, and late-night essay-writing on the 42nd day of
a 6-week deadline.

The idea that every one of the 15,000 students you mention would want
their own TV as part of their basic lifestyle paints a bizarrely dismal,
atomised, isolated picture of student life that's unrelated either to my
experience or the one lived by my older kids' year-or-two-older
already-at-Uni mates. When she starts in September, I'm fully expecting
to shell out for a desktop iMac or iBook, and the CD/radio thang in her
room will doubtless travel with her; but I can't imagine she'll have the
slightest inclination to take a TV. Mind you, ours are deprived kids -
in the alleged minority of kids who don't have an idiotbox in their
bedrooms...

"Stefek Zaba" wrote
| Scanda-nothing, from where I sit. When I Were A Lad, I knew
| exactually one pair of students - ... - who kept a TV in
| their room.

I knew two people, and one of those was because the TV was primarily used as
a monitor for the BBC Micro. Both TVs were black-and-white, for which the
licence is about 35.

| .. the absence of a TV made najjer-all difference to the quality of
| social life, amount of beer and whiskey taken on board, flings and
| romances suitable and unsuitable,

the absence of TV probably increased all that :-)

Owain

Owain wrote:


sounds like a positive incentive to not have one then ;-)

--
Cheers,

John.

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|          Internode Ltd -  http://www.internode.co.uk |
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|        John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk              |
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Harvey Van Sickle wrote:


Innocent until proven guilty is the thesis.

OK its not a criminal offence, so its merely the burden of evidence
being most likley to point etc. etc.

In orher words, would an ordeinary man in teh street, walking into your
house and turning ion teh TV, discover a station or would he have to do
somethig like find an earila lead, or tune the set up etc etc.

The Natural Philosopher wrote:


It most certainly *is* a criminal offence - it's not a commercial
contract you enter into with the Beeb, it's a condition of using
apparatus to receive broadcast TV signals in the UK. And non-possession
of a licence is a criminabubble offencifier.

Which is part of what's offensive about their snotty, guilt-assuming
letters...

Stefek Zaba wrote:


I'd like a lawyer's opionion on that.

Sickle" harvey.news@ntlworld.com says...

"to receive television programme services" - if the aerial isn't
hooked up, and the TV isn't tuned in to available broadcast channels,
then it's not "installed" and it can't be used to receive broadcasts.