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Dear All
Hello
Now who can remember this?!
In early 1952, TV detector vans were used for the first time to track down
people watching TV without a licence. (Ahem)
The first TV detector van was demonstrated in front of Postmaster-General,
Lord De La Warr and Assistant Postmaster-General Mr Gammans.
The detection equipment was developed at short notice at the radio experimental laboratories of the Post Office in Dollis Hill, London.
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The units consisted of three horizontal loop aerials fixed to the roof of a van which received signals from TV sets and converted them to radio waves to give audio and video information. (Great technology for the time)
Its inventors said the system was sensitive enough to pick up the vast majority of television receivers, through external or internal aerials.
Detector vans began to pass slowly along roads and TV detection officers made doorstep inquiries as they proceeded.
According to Post Office estimates, there were between 100,000 and 150,000 people watching television without a licence.
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It is allright you can turn emerge from behind the sofa and
turn the lights back on!! :-D
Take gentle care <3
Best wishes
Elizabeth,
xx
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Now at the age where we don't have to pay any more.........but my OH often says, referring to some of the rubbish broadcast these days...........
"and we pay for a licence to watch this?"
And I in the manner of Michael Winner say
keep calm Dear WE are not paying, any more!!"
Bob
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We don't have a TV licence in Oz.
We were shocked when we had to pay for one in Europe. No detector van, they just assume everyone has a TV! It wasn't even our TV, it belonged to the landlord.
:-(
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Not all EU countries require a TV licence eg Netherlands, Spain. In France there is no tv licence as such as the fee is collected as part of local taxes - no opt out, low collection cost.
The USA and Canada have no fee but it has not stopped the production of excellent TV from "Breaking Bad" to "Band of Brothers", "Friends" and "South Park" not to forget "The SImpsons".
The UK detector vans were mythical in that there were never more than a half dozen of them and their technical efficiency was poor. They worked on the scarecrow principal and "making an example" of non-payers. Success in collecting the licence fee was mainly due to social attitudes at the time of the vans when most people queued, paid their bus fare and so on.
I object to the licence fee. Media has moved on a whole lot from the 1970s and the BBC is now just one of many commercial organisations providing news and entertainment. The big difference is that this large elephant in the room is financed by compulsory state fee backed up with criminal sanctions. This is commercial nonsense and a democratic disaster. It is not even efficient as the news of one debacle after another comes to light. On top of it all we now know that even the BBC news can be very biased and evasive.
There are similar objections to the compulsory payment of a line fee to BT OpenReach which is ostensibly used to subsidise phone lines for remote communities. Quite where lies the social sense in a stony broke resident of a London studio flat helping to pay for a Scottish castle's phone line I am not sure. Taken together the tv licence and phone line fee of over £ 25 pm are a significant tax on the poor.
So, good bye to the licence fee.
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