No Connection

Something which interests us at TV Licensing Watch is the lengths the BBC are prepared to go to in order to deny any connection between the BBC and Capita BBC TV Licensing™.  Perhaps the most prominent recent example of this is the shambolic stitch-up passed off as the BBC Charter renewal process.   So-called “consultations” and “surveys” referred only to the “TV licence” and no mention was made of Capita BBC TV Licensing™ and the nasty, bullying enforcement activities associated with the BBC’s “TV licence”.   In common with others in the anti-BBC TV licence fee movement, TV Licensing Watch, has encountered numerous ill-informed social media warriors who rush to defend the BBC and end up looking complete idiots trying to deny the BBC’s association with its TV Licensing™ trademarked activities.

The BBC is TV Licensing™.  The BBC is the UK TV Licensing™ authority.  The BBC has overall responsibility for all matters TV Licensing™; its administration and enforcement.  The BBC Trust investigates complaints lodged about the administration and enforcement of the BBC TV licence. An investigative duty which, it is obvious, it carries on with ill-concealed reluctance.

The existence of the anti-BBC TV licence fee movement means that the BBC is more than aware that its trademarked brand TV Licensing™ is very widely loathed and despised.  It is why, publicly at least, the BBC goes to absurd lengths in the plausible deniability games that it plays when it comes to BBC TV licence administration and enforcement.

TV Licensing™ website barely mentions its connection with the BBC. Like the BBC’s own domain, TV Licensing™‘s domain ends .co.uk  It is the domain of a private company.  The BBC’s own TV Licensing™ Management Team make great efforts to maintain arms-length plausible deniability even though they are charged with the task of monitoring Capita BBC TV Licensing™‘s administration and enforcement activities.  A task which they summed-up thus:

" . . . I have initially made enquiries of the BBC TV Licensing Management Team, and have confirmed that no one within the BBC holds material relating to the induction and training provided to all categories of TV Licensing visiting parties and visiting officers.
As these individuals are employed by Capita, their induction and training is primarily an internal matter for Capita.
Capita has no obligation to - nor does the BBC ask Capita to – advise it of these matters. . . "

The whole purpose of the BBC’s TV Licensing™ trademark is to ensure a cut-off between those private companies it contracts under the various TV Licensing™ contracts to do the dirty work for the BBC, scaring and bullying people into funding the BBC.  Make no mistake about it, the BBC retains overall responsibility for all aspects of TV licence administration and enforcement.

Under Section 180 of the Broadcasting Act 1990 the BBC took over that responsibility from the Home Office in 1991.

If after having read our blog you encounter anyone from "the BBC has nothing to do with TV Licensing" brigade, please put them right. The BBC is TV Licensing™ and the TV Licensing™ Authority for the UK.  The veneer of "authority" by which the BBC seeks to sanitise its trademarked TV Licensing™ nasty, bullying revenue raising enforcement scams and abuses.

The value of domestic CCTV surveillance and handheld video camera can prove invaluable in gathering evidence of the serial abuses and misdemeanours perpetrated by employees of Capita Business Services under cover of the BBC TV Licensing™ contract. TV Licensing Watch advise anybody who has the misfortune to have face to face dealings with Capita Business Services TV Licensing™ to make an audio-visual record of those dealings in their entirety covertly or overtly with CCTV and handheld video cameras.

For people who have not exercised their right to remain silent, TV Licensing Watch advise anybody who has had the misfortune to have face to face dealings with Capita BBC TV Licensing™ and have received a summons as a consequence to contact a licensed law practitioner if: there is the slightest discrepancy between the actual situation regarding viewing habits and/or what actually happened during the interview compared with what has been written on the TVL178 Record of Interview self incrimination form.