You are, however, still completely in the wrong and breaking the law. You might be interested to know that breaking the law is defined by the fact that you are breaking the law, not by the fact that you have been caught breaking the law. You, and not somebody else, is responsible for your obeying the law so the difficulty of the enforcement people reaching you makes no difference to your lack of morality in this respect whatsoever.
Perhaps so. But consider this.
The offence of evading the TV licence is a criminal offence. This means that:
a) it occupies an enormous portion of magistrates' time.
b) you must be proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt.
TV detection vans are a complete myth. They just don't exist; the technology isn't out there in an affordable way, and frankly I'm surprised anyone believes in them. They're as fanciful as the technology Thunderbird 1 used to deploy to catch people taking photos of it.
The only acceptable proof of the offence is either a frank admission, or for a TV licence agent to enter your home and observe that there is a television in the house.
A TV licence agent doesn't have the power to enter your home, because he doesn't have a warrant. Magistrates do not give TV licence agents search warrants, because a TV licence agent can't usually show the magistrate that there is good cause for suspicion ("the house doesn't have a licence" doesn't cut it). Additionally, it's bad PR, politically sensitive stuff to go raiding people's houses because of a TV licence, and it just doesn't happen. Possibly a couple of times a year, maybe even none. Recent FOI requests have shown, at least in Scotland, that in 2014, zero warrants were applied for.
So to avoid detection:
1) don't admit to it
2) don't let the agent into your home.
It is as simple as that. They have no more powers than the milkman.
This of course is why the law should change and it should be a civil matter. The burden of proof is only on the balance of probabilities there.
I expect the law will change within a few years.
).
