Woman gets TV Licence criminal conviction after her house burned down

They weren’t fucking about with their Warning letters.

Makes you more angry as you read it..

Didnt have a TV Licence because husband usually paid it, when realised, setup direct debit and paid for it.
House burns down, cancels direct debit since.. House is burned down…
Convicted because she watched eastenders before house burned down..

Shows proof that when she realised he wasnt paying she immediately setup the direct payments, she accepted and apologized that during the ONE day she watched eastenders there was no licence in place,

And the BBC wonders why they have became a joke lmao..

More campaign journalism from the Standard here (they really hate the SJP).

Anyway… so she skipped paying for the licence. She then admitted she had broken the law to an inspector. They agreed not to prosecute her if she kept paying. She stopped the payment plan (when the house burned down and TVLA told her she didn’t have to pay any more). They prosecuted her (for the original offence).

> In her letter to the court, the woman accepted there was no licence in place on June 3, and says she “fully cooperated, confirmed that a TV was present, and took immediate steps to resolve the matter and set up a direct debit”.

So… she pleaded guilty.

What was the court supposed to do; refuse her guilty plea? All the rest is mitigation; but mitigation goes to sentencing, not to guilt. You admit guilt, that’s that.

> Magistrate Simon Tyler Murphy, sitting in Brighton, handed the woman a three-month conditional discharge, and ordered that she pays the £120 cost of the prosecution, as well as a £26 “victim surcharge”.

That’s about as low a punishment as she could get.

Should the TVLA have brought the prosecution? Probably not – they told her to cancel her direct debit payments, she did so, and then they prosecuted her for doing it.

But she pleaded guilty.

I don’t know what the solution here is. Obviously the TVLA screwed up. Obviously we can talk about whether TV licensing should be a thing any more, whether it should be a crime, whether it should be covered by direct taxes or whatever.

But maybe the big problem here is the woman not understanding that she was admitting a crime to the inspector, and then not realising she was pleading guilty to a crime when writing to the court. Maybe there is an issue here with how poorly the general public understands our legal system.

That said, I note the article is entirely third person; the Standard doesn’t seem to have got any quotes or contact from the woman. There doesn’t seem to be anything in the article other than information from the court records. Is the Standard just trawling SJP cases to find ones they can write outrage-bait articles about?

Sadly shows being honest usually fucks you over when it comes to unscrupulous/predatory businesses.

Could have just said they stopped watching it and they can’t prove shit (unless using online services where there is an element of tracking that can be done with email addresses used for accounts etc which can be linked to a TV license or lack of)

She was prosecuted for watching TV unknowingly without a licence.

Normally crimes require the person to be aware that they are doing the prohibited thing.

This offence is strict liability, not requiring awareness. These laws are nearly always unfair.

This reminds me of usi when we all received letters telling us how we could register to say that as uni students we didn’t need a license and be good. I laughed and said register to not be registered haha nah and binned the letter.

Guess what happened to my friend that registered to not be registered they got chased and hounded non stop by TV licence argent.

Me and the friends who binned the letters never heard from them.

When I bought my first house it had been repossessed from the previous owner, the place wasn’t fit to move into so I hadn’t. Literally everyone else was fine with this- gas/electric wiped the credit off the meter, council were fine with classing it as empty house because we were making it habitable and would tell them when it was.

Tv licensing were sending threats left right and centre. No amount of “it’s a building site not fit for living in” was good enough. “We’ll send someone round”, apparently “can you send someone that’s good at plastering, we could use the help” isn’t what they wanted to hear

Absolutely never speak to these scumbags when they knock on your door.

Never let them in your home.

Don’t even acknowledge your name.

Ask who they are with and shut the door in their face.

Fuck the TV licence and the BBC for imposing it.

It’s absolutely discracful that this country continues to allow this form of abuse. The board of the bbc are clearly mentally ill if they think this is acceptable behavior. But considering they turn a blind eye to other forms of abuse it’s not surprising.