When I was little
I wondered how the van could tell whether you had a TV licence in your house. How could they find paper?
( milkybarnick is calming down Boris on, Thu 17 Jun 2010, 21:55, 1 reply)

it wasn't the paper...
the tv license used to use radioactive ink which, when combined with the high voltage emitted from the old CRT Tv's would beam a radio-type signal out to the street, from where the tv detector van could find it. It all got complicated when people started to use microwave ovens - the signals reaching the tv detector vans would actually cook the sandwiches belonging to the detector people, which made them unhappy. As the population got wealthier and had more tv's and microwaves in the house, so the risk of serious harm for the detector people increased, which is why they increasingly used people from society that won't be missed if they were sent to a very affluent area where a house may have more than one kitchen, for example. Of course, the days of CRT's have gone, and so have the dangers, but we British are a traditional bunch, and the villages no longer pay idiots, so the use of numpties prevails.
(downhill without brakes . It was the worst day of my life, Thu 17 Jun 2010, 22:59, closed)