Do not cooperate with attempts by the state to take your property without prior consent… and have some fun playing with them in the process.
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32 comments to Inspiring |
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They’ll take my property when they pry it from my cold dead hands. Never say never. Never say DIE!!! Knowledge is Power
Childish or what?
The doughty licence refusenik perhaps needs to understand that:
a) it is the premises and not the person that is licenced;
b) the electoral roll is updated monthly;
c) technical hair-splitting about what type of equipment produces what frequency of radiation is irrelevant;
d) a licence is required by law to install equipment capable of receiving TV pictures, whether that is a conventional TV, a computer TV tuner card, a computer monitor, whatever;
e) personal objection to a given law does not make it unjust.
I don’t pay a licence fee. Then again, I don’t have a TV, having sold it earlier this year. I can watch movies on my computer, get all the news and current affairs stuff I need from the net or from radio and would rather read a book than watch the brain-deadening drivel that passes for entertainment on the box.
If you want to watch TV, then until and unless the law changes, get a licence or be prepared to suffer the consequences. Alternatively, exercise your mind and don’t bother with the thing at all. If you object enough, do something constructive about it – petition for a change in the law, encourage public debate, and so on. Writing silly and puerile letters to the TV Licensing people won’t help you, them or anyone else.
You don’t get to pick and choose which laws you must obey. Deal with it.
EG
Knowledge is power, eh?
Sheesh, I read years ago (about 1997 or so, ISTR) a construction article in a popular electronics magazine that showed how to build a brain-wave sensor device that interfaced to a computer, complete with listings for a program in which you used only the frequency of your brain-waves (you can change this quite easily, it seems, with practice) to move a character across a screen and over an obstacle. All this was for home construction by the amateur hobbyist.
Instead of using your brain to operate your arm, which then operates a machine, the idea is to use your brain to operate an interface, which then operates a machine.
Technically, it’s not hard and it’s not new. Making it work reliably enough for military operations is another thing, of course.
I think the tinfoil hat can be put away, Potencia.
EG
Euan, the point isn’t whether she is right on the law, the point is that she is acting like a citizen, not a subject, and that if more did so, the entire license fee apparatus would collapse.
I would think that a political party promising to abolish the license fee would enjoy a great deal of support.
Citizens still don’t get to cherry-pick the law any more than subjects do. A subject of the crown or a citizen of a free republic each has the same obligation to obey the law or pay the penalty. All of the law, not just the bits they happen to agree with. You can complain, campaign and persuade, but there is nothing especially noble in evading a tv licence – defying racial segregation law or internal passport systems, yes, but not refusing to pay a humble tv licence.
Let’s assume there are 25m households in the country with a tv set, and that the overwhleming majority actually pay for a licence. This yields around 3bn per annum. So if you abolish the licence fee, then you need to get the cash from somewhere else and likely would have to increase income tax by 1.5% or so, or do the same for VAT. It may well be that a party offering to abolish the licence would pick up votes, but it would lose more when it said it would have to raise taxes to compensate.
It’s not a question of whether the licence fee is immoral or objectionable or some form of legalised theft, nor is it about people acting like citizens rather than subjects. What it boils down to is a question of whether or not the BBC should continue to exist as a tax-funded organisation. Cultural arguments will be used to defend it, and the abolitionists will be labelled Philistine. In the end, at least in the medium term, I think the BBC will continue. But not forever.
It costs about 32p a day for a tv licence. People will happily spend £200/month on booze (report in today’s Metro) and think it’s ok, but baulk at 32p a day for 5 channels of 24 hour tv? I agree tv quality sucks, but if you want to watch it then pay up.
EG
Hmm. Hot-button topic with me.
There are, to the best of my knowledge, no other laws where the self-styled enforcement agency (and its “officers” – FFS!) where an individual is *required* by them to inform that they are not committing an offence.
Never cooperating with the TVLA may seem daft to some, but it beats watching television…
Where did this obligation come from. If it is an obligation, then I owe a duty to uphold it. Given this, who do I owe the duty to, how did I come to owe the duty, and where did the recicpient of my duty bound allegiance get their right to demand this duty of me?
On top of this, I think you are wrong. People who hid Jews rather than turn them over to stormtroopers did the right thing. Turning Jews over would have been the wrong thing, even though it was the legally required thing. Likewise, the people who maintained the Underground Railroad did the right thing, though the legal thing would ahve been to return runaway slaves to their owners.
No, you won’t need to get the cash from somewhere else, since the government does not need the cash. If the only legitimate task of a government is to protect person and property aginst force and fraud, and to maintain the rule of law, then the govertment does not need as much money as it is currently getting. Given this, the idea that we would need to raise another tax to compensate for the loss of the TV license only follows if government needs the current level of “revenue” it is getting.
“…each has the same obligation to obey the law or pay the penalty”
Yes, but you don’t have an obligation to make life easy for law enforcers. You don’t have to let the police search your house unless they have a valid warrant, you don’t have to answer their questions. These actions are perfectly legal, and the point is – you are urged to use all legal means available to make enforcement difficult, rather than cooperating voluntarily and paying up, sparing the authorities the effort of collecting the fee.
The state. Technically in the UK to the person of the Crown, but let’s not quibble.
By being born and continuing to live within the boundaries of said state.
It’s the price of living in society and gaining the rewards thereof. If you live in a primitive tribal society, you owe fealty to the tribal chieftain – and just try arguing about it and see what you get. If you live in a monarchy, to the Crown, if in a republic, to the president, the constitution, the “people” or the state. The majority of people see this as reasonable enough provided the state acts with an equally reasonable degree of restraint. Many would argue our current state is a tad excessive in some respects, but that doesn’t alter the general principle.
People will argue that this “problem” would not arise under anarcho-capitalism, true libertarianism, etc. Well, it would, it’s just that the remedy in some (but I suspect not all) cases is to sell your loyalty to a different corporation. Either way, you accept it or you leave – leave the country, or leave the company, depending on how anarchically capitalist your society is.
I hardly think it’s fair to compare people who risked their lives sheltering innocents from brutal exterminators to a bunch of selfish whiners who refuse to pay to watch tv. The moral comparison is not, in my view, compelling.
It does, because it is doing many other things as well. Whether you or I agree with what it is doing is another matter, but the overwhelming majority of the people seem to want things like welfare, the NHS, etc. Nobody is going to get anywhere in British politics by advocating that these things should be taken away, so perhaps it would be as well to say hello to reality and accept that the state is not, realistically, going to restrict itself to what you consider to be theoretically justifiable, nor are the people going to be particularly impressed with any party which suggests this would be a good idea.
The tax hikes would be needed to compensate for abolition of the licence fee, assuming the BBC was still centrally funded. Like I said, the question is not about the ethics of the fee but about whether the BBC should exist in its current form. If the BBC was privatised, sure, you don’t need the fee or the tax hikes.
Which increases the cost, and in the end this will either result in collapse of that specific system, a change in the law or higher taxes. It’s like not paying your gas bill until you get the final demand because you then keep the cash in the bank longer and hence gain interest. But you’ve got to pay at some point, and the cash you gain is lost to the gas company, which passes it back to you in the form of increased prices, so really you can’t win. This is one of the reasons why paying your bills by direct debit can get you a discount.
It’s not hard to deal with the TV licence people. You write or phone cancelling the licence, and you get your refund payment if applicable (in a week in my case). Then you just ignore them. If they send someone round to verify you don’t have a tv, fine – let them see. On the other hand, if you actually have a tv, why not just pay when they ask you to comply with your legal obligation to do so? Refusing to pay isn’t going to make them go away, and it isn’t going to change the rules. Use other means to persuade the state of a need to change the rules.
EG
Euan Gray,
You don’t get to pick and choose which laws you must obey. Deal with it.
Not quite as simple as that. You make the law sound like nothing more than a handed-down mandamus and that’s that. Granted, it has taken on those characteristics of late but it should not be so.
It is not a given that the law must be respected. It must earn that respect by itself acting respectably and if it will not do so then the citizens are morally entitled to make other arranagements.
There is simply no justification for maintaining this outdated, paternalistic relic we call the ‘TV Licence fee’. It is kept alive by a combination of inertia and the special lobbying power of the BBC.
But the difference is that the duties I owe to companies, such as my duty to work hard for my employer, are voluntary. Voluntary means that I have consented, and the consent was given freely without fear for my rights.
That’s fair – there is an obvious difference between hiding Jews from those that would take them to death camps and evading paying the TV license. However, the principle remains the same. You asserted as a basic principle that people are obliged to obey the law, any law, no matter how unjust when you said, “Citizens still don’t get to cherry-pick the law any more than subjects do. A subject of the crown or a citizen of a free republic each has the same obligation to obey the law or pay the penalty. All of the law, not just the bits they happen to agree with.” This would obviously also include laws against hiding Jews from Nazi Stormtroopers or runaway slaves.
Who said anything about getting anywhere in politics? Scrapping the license fee would be the right thing to do, and thats it. The fact that current levels of theft aren’t high enough to fund everything the government does without it is irrelevent.
Perhaps not, but it is so and is likely to be so for the indefinite future. Just because you don’t want to play doesn’t mean the game is going to stop.
I agree. Respecting the law and obeying it are two different things, though.
Hmm, I don’t think I could agree with that, unless of course you mean make alternative arrangements by electing a government which will repeal or modify the law in question. I do not think it can be justified for a small number of people to refuse to accept a law which is accepted (even if reluctantly, no-one likes being compelled to pay) by the majority, just because they don’t like it. However, it’s true enough that the state can only really govern with the broad consent of the people, or at least without their active opposition. If an act of the state is generally deeply reviled by the people, then popular unrest will probably result in its repeal or amendment – consider the poll tax law, for example, or the excessive taxation on fuel. Whilst people don’t necessarily like the tv licence fee, only a small minority of (frequently very eccentric) people actively oppose it. As I said before, the question is NOT the merits or otherwise of the licence fee, it is whether or not there should be a taxpayer funded BBC. If there is not, then the question doesn’t or shouldn’t arise.
But if there is, it needs to be funded somehow. You can do this through general taxation or through a licensing system. Since 98% of households have a tv and hence can be assumed to enjoy the sometimes dubious benefits of the BBC, the argument for funding via general taxation is strong.
Of course, one can equally argue that the licensing system is fairer, since only those who actually use the service pay for it – given the dislike here of general taxation and the desire to have everything on a pay-for-use basis, I’d have thought the TV licensing system would be preferable to generalised taxation…
Having said all of that, I don’t really agree with the licencing system because I don’t see the need for a centrally funded broadcaster.
EG
We don’t live in that kind of society, so the assertion is silly.
R C Dean did.
EG
Euan
Just because you don’t want to play doesn’t mean the game is going to stop.
This is not the issue. The ‘game’ will certainly not stop until enough people begin to challenge the assumptions behind the game. You seem to be telling me to shut up and lump it.
You also seem to be of the view that the only legitimate means of instigating change is to lobby politicians (which is exactly what various special interest groups do all the time). Why? This is precisely the received wisdom that should be confronted.
Not in so many words, but part of living in a society is abiding by the rules of that society, even if you don’t like them – certainly in the case of a more or less democratic society such as ours. Since it is the settled law that you need to buy a licence to install a tv, and since this law doesn’t seem to provoke significant anguish beyond a tiny and somewhat eccentric minority, then yes to that extent you should accept it. This doesn’t mean you should not object if you see fit, of course.
It’s one way, but I can’t recall ever saying I thought it was or should be the only way. You can also launch your own publicity campaign for change, attempt to mobilise public opinion at large, etc. It’s still, whatever fears people have in these parts, pretty much a free country, after all.
I could be misinterpreting you here, but you seem to suggest that extra-parliamentary means of forcing a change in the law are acceptable or even desirable. I don’t agree with that, if that’s what you’re suggesting. Perhaps I should clarify that I think it is perfectly ok to hold demonstrations and marches, lobby politicians, raise petitions, and what-not, but the authority to make and change law should, in my view, be vested in parliament and not in the mob, nor in small groups who wish to choose which laws to obey and which to ignore.
I suppose the alternative in mind is the libertarian or anarcho-capitalist society where people could (sort of) choose the law they wish. This will never fly in the British polity, but perhaps you could have a whip-round and buy your own group of islands somewhere and try the experiment?
Any thoughts on the equity of the licensing system as a fee based on use rather than a blanket tax? No?
EG
OK, so what about the Cat Detector Van?
But seriously folks, it should be relatively easy to come up with a circuit that mimics the signature of a TV, and that requires no more wattage than a simple torch. An AA battery at most. Spread enough of these in various places, and enforcement becomes impossible.
How so? If 98% of all households have a tv, and if it is the premises that must be licensed, it is not hard to see that basically all the TVLA people have to do is check up on the 2% of addresses that are not licensed. This is, indeed, exactly what they do.
When you tell them you don’t have a tv, their default assumption is that you are lying – after all, surely everyone wants television, so why would you say you don’t have one? They then tell you they will in due course send an inspector to verify you don’t have a set, and if he sees that you don’t they won’t bother that address for 24 months. Many people will be happy enough to let them come in and see for themselves, me included – I am not so paranoid and anally retentive about my property that I won’t allow someone inside to fulfil a harmless legal obligation. I’d suppose most (but not all) people who don’t have a tv wouldn’t object too much.
This leaves the small number of people who have an unlicensed tv or, in your scenario, sneaky little transmitters to fool the detectors. Modern tv detection equipment, AFAIK, is sensitive enough to pin down the emissions to within a couple of metres, and it is not impossible to discriminate between a working tv receiver and a dummy transmitter.
Oh, and by the way, sir, you do have a licence for that dummy transmitter, don’t you? No? Oh dear, I’m afraid you’re breaking the law by (a) having a tv set in unlicensed premises and (b) operating an unlicensed radio transmitter. See you in court.
EG
Since I am an innocent person who has suffered for innocently letting a cop into my apartment for innocent reasons, I object to your statement. (What happened? The cop was looking for my roommate’s ex-boyfriend, who had at some point left a couple joints on the bookcase in her room. Long story.) The upshot? Trouble for me, trouble for my roommate (who broke up with the guy when she found out he was using pot), trouble for everyone but the person responsible, all because I “did the right thing” by letting a cop into my apartment. Never again.
Everyone’s circumstances and inclinations are different, and I sympathise with the unpleasantness of your experience. I’ve had similar experiences myself, BTW, although nothing to do with drugs. However, it’s not reasonable to object to someone’s statement about their own personal inclination or a reasonable assumption that many people would think likewise.
EG
Euan,
I appreciate that we are all still at liberty to campaign and protest against what we may consider to be unjust or iniquitous laws (and, conversely, many people campaign and protest for the enactment of laws where there are presently none).
I am also aware that such campaigns can and have been successful in influencing the climate of opinion and, thereby, forcing our elected representatives to respond accordingly (e.g. the ‘women’s lib’ movement).
However, I believe that it is still legitimate for citizens to retain the right to withdraw co-operation or disobey the will of parliament. The power to do this is, if you will, an insurance policy for the individual against the overwheening power of the state or the (often-times) tyrrany of the majority.
How, when, where and by what means such co-operation should be withdrawn are questions of degree which I could not possibly prescribe but, as a general ‘longstop position’, the ultimate threat of civil disobediance is not a danger to a free society but a safeguard of it.
As for disapproval of ‘breaking the law’ well, that is easier done than you might think. I bet that if I was given a short time, maybe an hour or so, to rummage through your personal records and affairs, I could find some law that you have broken or regulation which you have infringed. The same goes for me as well. We are all law-breakers now, Eaun, and that is the precitable result of a monstrously over-governed society.
In extremis, yes, I’d agree – but tv licences aren’t a case in point, I think. Tricky question, though, where do you draw the line? Nearly all would agree that sheltering innocent Jews from the Nazis is a justifiable breach of the law, but refusing to pay a tv licence?
It wouldn’t take you long to find a law or two I’ve broken, but I was young, stupid and drunk and have, as they say, paid my debt to society a long time ago. But I take your point, it’s probably impossible to go through life without breaking the law at least technically. This is a problem, and there is far too much law.
Yes, the possibility of civil disobedience does indeed strengthen the chances of sane and responsible government, but I think it should be reserved for serious things. I think the idea is weakened somewhat if people co-opt it for trivia like not wanting to pay a tv licence when there are far more serious issues to deal with.
EG
I’m still stunned that you folks have to pay a Freaking TV liscense! I havn’t had mine ON since the Oscars, but if I had to PAY to not watch it…
Hmmmm…
Smells like Bad Stuff to me.
Agreed, however, that people WITH TVs should be the only ones PAYing for the content.
Great Conversation…Interesting.
Made more so after taking a wee look deeper into the rest of the site surrounding the original link.
For me, the context brings up all manner of stuff on intent.
Should she (the assumed author of the tract) be applauded for stickin’ it to da man, or should she continue to be pitied with tin-foil tears, or maybe even scolded for essentially being a chronic ward of the state – refusing to pay that state for TV whilst drawing apparently substantial cash benefits from said state?
Taxpayers support that state and I presume most of them are quite unaware that they are essentially footing the bill to provide benefits to maintain such an experimental mind.
To my fascist yank reckoning, she’s suffering a honking case of the state having the power to take away what they have given her fairy dust disease; which is often carried by apathetic electorates.
Anyway, for the .2¢ it’s worth, I find myself of late mingling amongst those within the used-to-be empathetic, but currently sitting on his dearly-earned arse-customized couch and cracking open a frosty beer after work whilst bitching about skyrocketing cable costs…camp.
In other words: Great idea, crappy Intent.
Like most people, I reckon the BBC’s panoply of services is fair value for the price of a pint once a week. The poll tax was shot down because a lot of Britons thought it was unfair. I don’t see them rioting over the licence fee.
But I do object to being forced to subsidise commercial TV channels through a covert sales tax: the cost of their moronic, disruptive advertising is embodied in retail prices, and economists have calculated that only 50% of it is recovered through efficiencies associated with the extra sales stimulated by advertising.
How do I opt out of subsidising ITV, Channel 4, etc?
How typical of that national socialist WJ Phillips to fail to understand the difference between a force backed tax that funds the BBC and the ability to not buy a product if you don’t like the what it is advertised.
Irrelevant, because we are not even talking about society. If I choose to ignore society’s rules, by, say, by being impolite or wearing ugly clothes or have loud sadomasochistic sex, people will treat me as a person who is impolite or wears ugly clothes or has loud sadomasochistic sex and presumably disassociate with me (or not). But I am free to do so. Remember punk rock? Were you under the impression the punks were either abiding by society’s rules or being locked up for refusing to do so?
Your error comes from you confusing state with society… and they are quite different things(Link). It is the violence backed rules the state makes (like imposing a TV tax) which one disobeys at one’s physical peril, in much the same way one does when declining to pay the mafia some protection money that they think you owe them.
That the state generally has the power to compel compliance with many of its laws is beyond reasonable debate… what is also beyond reasonable is that when a law is unjust (or even just unpopular), working within the political system is FAR from the only way to confound the state’s wishes. Don’t believe me? Then cast your mind back to the days of the Poll tax… or perhaps ponder the enduring existence of Sinn Fein. Sorry, but being politically weaker than supporters of a law imposes no moral obligation on me to not do what I can to make it as hard as possible for that law to be imposed on me.
Excellent post, Perry.
I went for several years without a TV and got hassled by mail quite a bit – I used to delight in filling out the form as to “why you don’t need a license ” (erm, I don’t have a TV, like duh!) in crayon – usually something along the lines of TV is the tool of satan, go away evil minions, until the whole form was covered. Funnily enough they never came to visit though.
I got a summons several years before: I had a valid license and had tried to hire a TV but the company spelt my name wrong. this info was passed onto the license pests – hence a summons. Stupidly I phoned them up and got it sorted out. Looking back on it, I should have made them drag me into court.
Perry,
I’ll probably come back to the point about the state versus society. Right now, it’s late and I’m tired 🙂
What’s the fundamental difference between a state saying you must pay to watch tv and private companies saying you must pay to watch tv?
You cannot compare the tv licence to the poll tax. In the latter case, the tax was deeply unpopular and provoked riots in the streets. Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t see the people massing on the streets to protest the tv licence. Again, personal objection to a law does not make it unjust.
Frankly, I’d have thought that the tv licence idea would appeal to libertarians as a pay-per-use alternative to a generalised taxation irrespective of use. I’ve suggested this a couple of times, and the silence of the response is deafening…
EG
So, which private company requires me to pay them for their TV channel if I have not specifically signed up for it? I did not sign up for the BBC and if I decline to watch the BBC altogether, why do I have to pay for the bloody thing? That you cannot tell the material difference between the cost of the BBC being imposed on me by the state and an elective choice to subscribe (or not) to SkySports is remarkable.
I really do not mean this as an insult but that is probably because the idea is so daft, i.e. comparing a force backed TV ownership tax use to fund state owned TV channels to the alternatives, which is to say a subscription based system or an advertisement based system (or both). They are utterly different.
I am old enough to remember when you had to have a license to listen to the radio. Now that would seem absurd today.