Watching Olympics at work? How to avoid a £1k telly-tax fine
Hint: You'll need a laptop
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Watching the Olympics at work may annoy the boss, but not as much as the £1,000 fine the company could get if doesn't have a TV licence.
Watching live telly in the UK requires such a licence regardless of whether that video arrives over the internet or is broadcast. The TV tax collectors have provided a useful cut-out-and-pin-on-the-wall guide for all those pointy-haired bosses who'd prefer to avoid shelling out after the fact.
There is an exemption for battery-powered devices at work if they are owned and used by someone who holds a TV licence at their home address, so keep your laptop unplugged and you're in the clear - legally at least, we can't comment on how your boss will react.
The pin-up [PDF, you know you want to ogle it] provides tick boxes from which employees can be informed of their legal and procedural rights to watch the games at work. We're particularly taken by the ability to tick boxes saying that the company has a TV licence, but that employees are banned from watching TV anyway - sport-nixing BOFHs would no doubt approve.
Keeping a laptop going for an extended period could be a challenge, and we suggest avoiding doing any real work that might unnecessarily drain the battery. The rules state that a device must be entirely battery powered, so inductive charging is out, but one can use as many additional batteries as necessary.
Alternatively one could just watch the games on non-live iPlayer or another suitable catch-up service. Current licensing legislation doesn't cover such services - just real-time feeds - but then who wants to watch the BMX finals or the Greco-Roman Wrestling (or whatever it is these days) long after everyone else knows how it all ends? ®
COMMENTS
Alternatively alternatively
"Alternatively one could just watch the games on non-live iPlayer or another suitable catch-up service. "
Or you could just ignore the whole, sorry, corporate whore-fest altogether - this is the strategy I intend to pursue.
Flames, because Sebastian Coe and his cronies deserve to burn in hell.
Employed by the public services?
If you live in London why not work from home during the Olympics, of course your Union will negotiate a huge bonus for you, extra money for doing your job during the Olympics.
Then of course you might want to go on strike to demand a bit more in your pockets, make sure you strike just at the time the country needs you. It doesn't matter what the rest of the world think of us does it.
For the rest of us who live in the North you could offer us a few overpriced tickets to go and watch the football or some other sport we have not heard of, because lets face it, we'd had little chance of getting a ticket in that lottery.
Still,if any decent tickets are left unsold you can give them to your corporate sponsors who can sell them to us at inflated prices. I see that Government Ministers, their cronies and management are not short of seats.
Then once it is all over and the debts have to be paid for you can raise our taxes in the North to pay for the jolly you have had.
I love the Olympics but can't you see how disenfranchised I feel about it all.
Re: Large UPS
'cos it's the law, dammit!
You wouldn't steal a handbag? A car?
Watching live sport on the intertubes while plugged in to the mains is stealing, errr electrons out of the wire ... or something. I dunno.
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