• dellish@lemmy.world
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      45 minutes ago

      Or learn the old “eat the TV before the inspector arrives”.

      I guess I’m showing my age, but hopefully enough old folks get it.

    • Freefall@lemmy.world
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      9 hours ago

      Hopefully OP can live with trading “needing a TV license for a TV no one uses anymore” and “actual healthcare” for a “failing democracy turned Christian nationalist oligarchy”!

        • casmael@lemm.ee
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          8 hours ago

          Oi sonny Jim this isn’t a loisense request this is a loisense request request it’s a different department Oi hope you’ve got all yer paperwerk in order jimbo

    • AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space
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      9 hours ago

      Only if you have a TV. Theoretically, you need one to stream the BBC/ITV and such on a computer/phone, but the onus is not on you to prove that you didn’t. You’ll get letters asking to confirm that you don’t need a licence, and then threats of an inspection to make sure you don’t have a TV that’s on and being used to watch TV, though I’m not sure if they follow through with the latter. (In the analogue days, they had detector vans that either could detect TV tuners tuned to channels or were a bluff to get people to pay up, though they seem to have given up on that.)

      • Agent641@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        The detector vans were real, and they weren’t a bluff, but the tech they used wasn’t some high tech signal detector. The secret is that they just pointed a parabolic microphone (possibly a laser microphone at a later time) at your window and listened for the audio. The operator would flip through TV channels in his van and try to match the audio from your house to the audio from a currently broadcasting TV station. That was sufficient to determine if someone was watching broadcast tv or not.

      • MY_ANUS_IS_BLEEDING@lemm.ee
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        9 hours ago

        They don’t follow up on the threats - or at least not regularly. (9 years and counting here - even if I somehow get caught and fined the max amount I’ve still saved money)

      • Freefall@lemmy.world
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        9 hours ago

        Stabbing? American here, never heard of it…, it’s like shooting but no range, lower body count, and not something a physically inferior person can do to anyone equally effectively, right?