UK TV License Resistance

In the UK, Capita Business Systems investigates and prosecutes householders who do not have TV licenses. It acts outside of Police And Criminal Evidence Act 1984 so is a vigilante organisation. See its illegal methods!

 

The European Convention on Human Rights is written into English law by way of The Human Rights Act 1998 (the HRA), which came into force in October 2000, 48 years after the UK signed the treaty creating the convention and the obligation to enforce it in the UK. Thats how much the UK really values that Convention.

 

The Convention is a treaty between states in Europe, whereby they undertake to respect certain rights regarding those people living within their borders. The treaty is broken into articles to enumerate the rights that a person has in regard to the state. These were formulated in the aftermath of Nazism and World War Two, and they are considered 'fundamental'. Nevertheless they are still not 'absolute' and can be overridden. But such an override must be necessary in a democratic society, must be for a greater public interest from which all including the individual stand to benefit, must be on a legal footing, and must not be more than is necessary to obtain the relevant greater purpose. Since the introduction of the HRA the English judges use this as a get-out clause, but in some cases they cannot manufacture a suitable clause so they just turn a blind eye to the existence of a breach whenever that suits them.

 

Capita Business Services Ltd, when acting to enforce the TV Licence, is a 'public authority' and so a part of the state. As such it must not breach your human rights during investigation and prosecution. The law courts in England below the level of the Supreme Courts also have to obey and uphold your human rights. The HRA gives immunity from human rights law to the Supreme Courts, I don't think that that is compatible with the Convention, but there you have it. Magistrates and Crown courts are bound by the HRA, the exempt courts are the High Court, the Court of Appeal and the House of Lords. But you will be getting your trials in the former. Where the investigators have thoroughly breached your human rights the trial courts are suppossed to give you a remedy when the prosecution gets under way. That remedy is usually to throw out the prosecution as an 'abuse of process'. Your fundamental rights will be breached by Capita during an investigation, you will use that if they ever prosecute, however ultimately your rights will be ignored by the trial courts. Nevertheless, raise the issue in order to undermine the evidence, the moral authority of the prosecutor and of the courts themselves. But also so as to bump up the expense of the prosecution, ha ha!

 

So what are the particular human rights to look for? Two stand out. The first is Article 6 the right to a fair trial. The second is Article 8 right to respect for private and family life. Article 8 is always breached by the investigator because he is coming gunning for you in your own home, and he will not do so in accordance with law. Remember what we said above about any interference having to be in accordance with law, so the state has to lay down law for the investigator's interference with you in your home and then the investigator has to stick within that law. The relevant law is the Police And Criminal Evidence Act 1984, which lays down that ALL investigators have to obey its provisions, and it covers searches and interviews. Nothing Capita does to you in your home is in accordance with any law. The threatening letters? Those are unsettling you in your home, there is no legal basis to those, indeed there is no obligation on you to prove positively that you are not committing a crime. Saying they'll knock on your door for a chat? Illegal, they have to have reasonable suspiscion, the reason they are visiting your house is because they have no evidence and hence no reasonable suspiscion. They will interview you, in accordance with a questionaire, but it is illegal by PACE code of conduct for interviews. They will search your house while doing the interview, but that is illegal by PACE code of conduct for searches. Then there is Article 13 right to an effective remedy, which in this case ought to be throwing out the prosecution as an 'abuse of process' - thats why the courts will ignore PACE and its breach by Capita. Obedience to PACE pushes up the cost of the investigative process and reduces the chances of getting any evidence, and if accepted for one prosecution all prosecutions would have to be stopped because the breach is systemic. But at trial you will raise and argue these three Articles in connection with PACE, and you will examine the investigator when he is on the stand about his non-compliance.

 

So in some detail, how do they breach PACE? What things do you look for? Bearing in mind that the best thing for you to do is send Capita to coventry and slam the door immediately in the face of an investigator and run for a witness, if you fell in with their scam already I will here show you how to make them look like the fraudsters they actually are. You see, they know all that I am about to tell you but they figure you don't.

 

 

In the UK, for criminal prosecutions related to using a TV without a license, Capita Business Systems and the courts collude in criminal forgery of court documents to keep costs of proceedings down.

 

Using a TV without a license is classified as a minor criminal offence. It is triable in the first instance in Magistrates courts. Upon a guilty verdict for a first offence you are liable to prosecution legal costs and to a fine of up to £1,000. If you are extremely poor, as defined in the Introduction, and if it is your first offence, then you will likely be made to pay £200 fine and £200 costs at £4 per week. If you default on the payments then you can be jailed for 7 days per outstanding £200 or part thereof, for instance for £201 outstanding you would be sentenced to 14 days jail. Your instalments pay off the costs element first. As soon as legal proceedings are over Capita will come after you all over again for the next year's license if you still haven't got one. So you just sit there and spin out the legal proceedings. This is because the bastards cannot intimidate a party to legal proceedings, so they will have to stay away from your door. So if you are a committed resister, as I am, you will just keep filing appeal after appeal and dragging out every procedural nuance. It is perfectly legal, and it is moral, and it is self-preservation. With so many things going for it how can you resist! Anyways, for repeat convictions I believe you can be jailed without further ado and banned from having a TV in the home. These people have no pity, they DO take prisoners, so you will just have to drag things out whether you are innocent or guilty. If everyone did the enforcement mechanism would collapse. Although I have been convicted once, I have not had a license for 3 years. My TV broke down, I got rid of it, my lawyer wrote them a letter saying so at £500 cost to the public through Legal Aide which dwarfs the £124 they were after when they thought proceedings had finished. They want into my house, so screw them and torment them, if they won't believe I don't have a TV any more then I will just keep teasing them into the future. Ha ha!

 

Magistrates Court trials are what is known as 'summary'. This means that once you are in front of the Magistrates you can be charged and made to answer there and then all in one fell swoop. In practice, they have to get you before the court in the first place, and the court has to have jurisdiction to try you. Both are achieved by the issuance to you of a court document called a summonse. If you ignore the summonse the trial might still go ahead without you. However, the summonse itself is a legal document and there are laws governing its production and service upon you. I have found that the naughty boys in Capita and Magistrates courts collude to simply forge summonses so as to keep down costs, and that gives you a chance to throw out proceedings before they can get started by challenging the legality of the summonse and hence the jurisdiction of the court to try you. You need first to know what the correct procedure for issueing a summonse is, then we will look at what they are actually doing. You will present these two matters to the court immediately that you get the summonse, by way of writing back to the court your objection, saying you intend at a hearing to challenge the validity of the summonse and hence of the court's jurisdiction. You must always keep a record of what you have sent and of what is sent to you, use a lever arch file or computer system and be ready to reproduce the whole of that record at each hearing in each court.

 

Court proceedings are of two types - judicial and administrative. Some acts of a court can be done by staff who are just court administrators, those are administrative proceedings. Other acts of a court can only be done by a judge, those are judicial proceedings. A summonse can only be produced as a result of judicial proceedings in the relevant Magistrates Court. In such a court, a 'judge' is either a Justice or a Clerk to the Justices. A Justice can be a layman appointed part time, typically 26 half days a year with no pay, or a full time solicitor called a stipendiary magistrate who gets paid a salary and who is often also referred to as a District Judge. A Clerk to the Justices will often be a barrister, and he advises the other justices. So those are the guys who can issue a summonse. 

 

But to issue a summonse the justice must have an 'information' 'laid' before him by the would be prosecutor. This is where the prosecutor in secret puts to the justice a charge and evidence to support it to show you have a case to answer. It is discretionary on the justice whether he then issues the summonse, but he must at least check that there is such a charge known to the law and that the evidence presented points to a breach of that law and that the would be prosecutor is entitled to prosecute that type of breach and that it is a type suitable for summary proceedings by Magistrates. If the justice decides to issue the summonse, administrative staff may draw the actual document up for him, and his signature may be attached to that document by way of a seal rather than by handwriting. Unless this process is followed by prosecutor and justice alike, the summonse will not be valid and the court will not have jurisdiction. A procedural irregularity in the summonse can be rectified by going through the process again, but a valid summonse must be issued within the 6 month time limit. So from the time the investigator knocks on your door to the time you receive a valid summonse must not exceed 6 months.