No television.

2

Comments

  • MuttleyMuttley ✭✭✭

    When I was a squaddie, some years ago, we had standing instructions in the guardroom for the duty shift in the event of a TV licence van turning up. We had to keep them waiting for as long as we needed to ring and tip off the Naafi, the Ossifers' Mess and the Sergeants' Mess, and then let them through.

    It never happened when I was the duty NCO though.

    The barrack blocks and married quarters flats were full of people watching telly without a licence.

  • PhilPubPhilPub ✭✭✭

    Thought I'd better warn you all that a TV licence internet forum thread discussion detector van has just pulled up outside my office.  I'll try to keep them busy...

  • WiBWiB ✭✭✭
    Peter Collins wrote (see)

    If you drive up and down the country, past farmers' fields, you never see anyone working. Do farmers exist?

    I have even seen them working on a weekend!!!

  • MuttleyMuttley ✭✭✭

    Cpl Phil, to the mess, at the double ... move it, move it, move it ...

    Edit: sorry, forgot to add - you 'orrible little man ...

  • the dude abides wrote (see)

    i see farmers..

    which is surprising because farmers aren't claiming to be sitting on a tractor outside my flatto find out if i am eating supermarket potatoes.

     

    the dude abides wrote (see)

    i see farmers..

    which is surprising because farmers aren't claiming to be sitting on a tractor outside my flatto find out if i am eating supermarket potatoes.

    I think my point was more about whether certain things exist if you don't ever see them, including tv detector vans, than about their morality or otherwise...

  • MuttleyMuttley ✭✭✭

    Ah, but if you can see a detector van and then turn round so you can no longer see it, does it still exist?

  • If a detector van falls in the forest...

  • i know, but thanks for clarifying.

    and to clarify, i do not think they exist. that's not because i haven't seen them, but because the idea is ludicrous. they must think we are kids to believe such twaddle.

  • I can't deny that. Can I?

  • Peter Collins wrote (see)

    Actually, the licence fee is worth it in its entirety for The Thick of It.

    I agree, yet I watch it on iPlayer. I've had no TV for two years now and watch what I want, when I want on catch up. Mostly about 10 regular series and the odd documentary on 4oD. I'd never go back to having a telly, although like others when I first stopped my licence I had months of faff with them thinking I was avoiding payment. They stopped bothering me eventually!

  • Not had a TV for maybe 10 years. No regrets - I was watching maybe an hour a week just before ditching it. We have lots of books, and we watch DVDs on the laptop occasionally.

  • Don't watch much on BBC but the licence is worth it just for Phineas and Ferb

     

  • Grendel3 wrote (see)

    Don't watch much on BBC but the licence is worth it just for Phineas and Ferb

     

    I hear that theme tune/song all day long in my house it drives me madimage

    It is written by "Bowling for Soup"

  • If you never watched telly you would never have heard Jim Royle on the Christmas Royle Family say " Parlour Games? Haven't you got a telly? Get A life!"



    For the last few years we have pretty much banned television on Christmas Day in our house.
  • Im happy to pay the license fee, but not for much longer if the BBC is giving away on I player the programmes fee payers have paid for.
  • I've never seen a Farmer Detector Van either ....

  • License detector vans certainly DID exist. They used to frequent the council estate I grew up on. We didn't have a telly. We didn't have iplayer either. My knowledge of the Beatles back catalogue, The Carpenters and a shitload of Tamla Motown records my parents owned is legendary as a result! image

  • Sheils-Sheils- ✭✭✭

    I haven't had a TV for 2 and a half years and don't miss it one bit- don't watch anything on iplayer either. People's reaction when I tell them is either sheer horror- 'no tv??? so what do you do'?. Like there's nothing else to do other than watch TV , or 'well I only watch the news and documentaries' 

    the BBC seem to have stopped writing to me now. 

  • Was there a big van going round with licence detector van? Did the detector van prosecute anyone? Did the man who drove the van go down the pub? Pardon me for being a bit cynical about your evidence LiverBirt x
  • liverbird - that was an ice cream van.

  • I had the detector van come round my house, once. But the complex electronic instruments they used was... a printed list. Let them in, showed them I didn't have a television, made some pointless disparaging comment about not needing one due to not being a slack jawed pleb, and they left and stopped sending me letters.



    The Jehova's Witnesses stopped coming round at the same time. Probably unconnected tnough.
  • Dude, the Ice cream van didn't do a whole lot of business round our way! image

    The rag and bone man? Quite a bit more.....
  • ocht image

    our ice cream van used to sell pakora in the winter! brilliant image

  • The people from TV licensing DID knock the door. And they came into our lounge. I remember it very clearly.

    I thought we were in trouble because men in suits were wandering about. I was about six.

    They found an old black and white Marconiphone telly in our lounge and started getting shirty with my mum. She explained it didn't work (it didn't and it hadn't for years) and she had to prove it too.

    The only reason we hadn't got rid of it was she didn't want people to know we were too poor to have one. She used to pretend that she monitored what we watched. What we actually did was go next door and watch rentaghost in their house. image
  • When there were only 3 channels (early 80s) I seem to remember that Saturday night television was worth watching. I was born in 1976 and remember when I was about 4 years old watching programmes on the black and white television that we rented from Radio Rentals. Does anyone still rent their television? image

  • They're so cheap now I don't think anyone bothers do they? image

    Ironically, having grown up WITHOUT a telly, there are EIGHT of them in this house, including one in the bathroom and we have a great many devices capable of playing TV programmes.

    I remember Channel 4 starting. We DID have a telly by November 2nd 1982 and I rushed home from school to see countdown start!

     

  • RedjeepRedjeep ✭✭✭

    I work away from home Mon - Fri with no access to a TV. Can't say I miss it at all. There's very few programs I ever watch as I can't stand most reality TV. I'd say that I could live without it permanently if needed and just watch the occasional thing on catch-up or box set.

  • No telly here.

    I know farmers exist, though, cos I sometimes listen to The Archers while doing the washing up.

    I can't stand houses (or pubs for that matter) where the telly HAS to be on ALL the time. I used to have a telly, and realised that I never ever watched it. Not even DVDs, I have a few box sets that I just cannot find the time to watch. People tell me "the wire" is good.... and "house" ... but bloody hell, where do people find the TIME?

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