'Resisting the Licence-Fee...", The Sunday Times

Sunday, August 16, 2009

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Resisting the BBC Licence Fee 'Enforcers': We’re like the suffragettes, say a growing group of TV fee refuseniks. By James Silver

The news that the BBC would be running an expensive advertising campaign to promote Radio 1 DJs drew explosive reactions last week. “£300,000? That’s about 2,150 licence fees!” spluttered one blog post. The campaign had been put on hold in April by Mark Thompson, the director-general, amid fears that it “looked too expensive”. Now it seems the corporation has decided, once again, to ignore the views of many of those who fund it.

The furore delights Erik Oostveen, a Dutch telecoms engineer who is at the forefront of the campaign against the licence fee. He began his crusade soon after arriving in the UK in 2001. Receiving “an intimidating letter” demanding that he pay, he obeyed. “But I was being forced to pay for a service I hadn’t asked for and didn’t want,” he says. So he disconnected his television from the rooftop aerial, “detuned” his set and stopped paying.

He insists he and his family are not breaking the law as they cannot receive “live” television. But growing numbers are continuing to watch television while evading the charge: in the first half of this year the numbers of those caught rose by 5,000 to 214,000.

Oostveen has set up a website, www.tvlicensing.biz, which campaigns for the abolition of the licence and offers tips on “how to avoid being detected” by TV Licensing (TVL), the private company that collects the fee on the BBC’s behalf. His wheezes include instructions on how to build a “TV cloaking device” that he claims will “jam” surveillance equipment.

Oostveen’s campaign centres on what he sees as the “intimidating” tactics used by TVL. He has had a torrent of stiff letters and three home visits from TVL officers — a video of the last one, in April, is on his site.

“The BBC is creating fear,” he says. “The letters have a harsh tone and even if you tell them you don’t watch live broadcasts they may still send someone round to check. That says: we don’t trust you; you’re breaking the law.”

Oostveen is not alone. At least 50 Facebook groups call for the television licence to be boycotted. One protester, John, in his late thirties, admits that he watches television via Freeview and has “never” paid the fee.

He has been visited three times over nearly two decades. On the most recent occasion he answered a knock to find a man in “civvies” saying he was conducting a survey in the area. “He asked me my name and whether I was the householder,” he recalls. “I knew who he really was and told him to get on with it, so he flipped out an ID card that said ‘TV Licensing’, like he was from MI5 or something. I started laughing and shut the door in his face.”

Michael, 52, who hasn’t paid since 1974 and admits to rigging up a system that allows him to watch live television, wasn’t so lucky. He got caught when TVL officers turned up with three policemen and a search warrant. “They barged in while we were watching a DVD,” he says. “One of the police officers climbed over the back gate, while two more went to search upstairs.

“The licensing people said they had a warrant to inspect the equipment. I’d detuned the sets and cut the aerial lead. But I was caught out because I hadn’t detuned them properly. The TVL guy stuck a pen or a key in the back of a set and was able to get a very fuzzy, grainy picture. And that’s enough to convict.” He was fined £120 and ordered to make a £15 contribution to Victim Support. “That’s still less than the fee,” he says. “So what kind of deterrent was that?”

When asked about its representatives being “intimidating”, the BBC said it was reviewing the way it communicated, but evaders were still liable for prosecution. Another prosecution is precisely what Michael says he wants, as he seeks to provoke a test case to show the licence fee is ultimately “unenforceable” thanks to rapidly evolving technology, which enables millions to watch live television on their computer screens.

He says: “A TV tax shouldn’t exist. Debates aren’t working, lobbying MPs doesn’t work, so small people like us are making a difference. This is civil disobedience. I’m doing what the suffragettes once did.”

(The Sunday Times, August 16th 2009)

Posted by James Silver - On Sunday, August 16, 2009

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