Here is a copy of the letter I sent to Andrew Bridgen MP who is campaigning for a change to TV licensing laws. Dear Mr Bridgen, I am a journalist, and I was personally most interested in your TV licensing concerns. You very rightly highlight the burden on the poor and the clogging of the legal system, but there is another issue I believe that warrants more attention too - harassment - especially of those people who, like myself, do not own a TV. The problem with TV licensing is that first there is an improper assumption of guilt, then a planned campaign of bullying by means of visits and fear inducing letters to get you to comply with a demand for contact. Then, if you do contact in the manner required and even if you do not need a TV license, it all starts over again. It really is outrageous, possibly illegal, arguably unconstitutional. Here is a quote from their own notice placed through my door yesterday after someone - probably acting for a private company on behalf of TV licensing - repeatedly knocked on it in an aggressive manner (...private info deleted... I rarely answer the door to unexpected strangers, I only discovered this was a representative of TV licensing once they had left and put a communication through my letter box): If you dont need a TV License, please visit TVlicensing.co.uk/noTV or call 0300 790 6091 to let us know. We may visit you again to confirm this [my italics]. So, even if you contact them, you do not put an end to visits etc. For non TV owners like me the harassment is endless and irksome. I have spoken to them, phoned them... it still continues... year after year, you cannot escape, the threats and intimidation continue. Some old people must, moreover, be genuinely upset by the style of the operation (I am sure you have seen the sort of letters TV licensing put out - they can be extremely unpleasant and are easily misunderstood). They also demand now that you make a formal declaration to them every 2 years or less, this is clearly unreasonable. Quoting from the website mentioned above: Once our records have been updated, you wont receive any more letters or emails from us for almost two years. Well then get in touch to check whether your circumstances have changed. So, no matter what you do you are trapped in this Kafka-esque nonsense forever. I wish you much luck in your attempts to change the law and do not hesitate to contact me. Yours sincerely, Michael Yardley ps. for your amusement here is an article I wrote for the Spectator on the issue some years ago. In pre-velvet revolution Czechoslovakia they used to license typewriters, in the UK we still license televisions. It raises money for an outrageously biased and smug State broadcaster. This whole system is wrong in principle and hostile to liberty. It also has some odd consequences, not least, on the retail electrical trade. The other day I was in Tesco’s. I made an impulse purchase of a combined TV and VHS player. They were being knocked out for under £100. I took a box from the pile ‘em high and sell ‘em cheap display and made my way to the check out and paid with plastic. Having made the purchase, a demand was made for my name and address. “You’ve got to give it”, the cashier noted. “I don’t want to seem rude”, I replied, “but I do not have to do anything”. “You’ve got to give us your details, we have to inform the TV licensing authorities.” “I still do not want to give the information out, I’ve already bought the television.” “write anything you want down on the form” “I don’t want to write down something false.” “Do you have a Tesco card? “No” “You don’t have to give us your name and address if you have a Tesco card, love.” “That’s because you already have the details electronically recorded” “I suppose it is…I’ll have to call the manager” “Please do”. Some minutes later, a manager arrived with security - an unshaven and rather thuggish looking young man with a personal radio. This irked me, and before saying anything else on my right to withhold my personal details, I pointed out: “Why have you brought this gentleman, I’m not a shop lifter, nor and am I causing any trouble, I am just exercising my right not to give you my name and address.” The manager, a mono-agenda woman of about 40, ignored my protests about security and continued on the same tack as the cashier (but in a more imperious tone). “You have to give us your name address it’s the law.” “Well, I had a grandfather who spent a year in a Gestapo prison, so I could refuse to give my name and address when I choose to.” The stalemate continued. It was clear that the store staff - typical creatures of modern Britain - really did not understand where I was coming from on the freedom issue. The lady on the adjacent check-out aisle had briefly raised my hopes when she asked: “what d’you think of these ID cards then?” “I think that they are a bad idea and will not stop illegal immigrants or terrorism”. She dashed my hopes by responding: “Oh, I like them!” Again it was suggested that I should write down “anything” on the form. I borrowed a pen. Basil Brush Esq., The Kennels, Northhampton. “You can’t write that”. “Well, I have. You said write anything, can I have my television”. They changed tack. “You’ve got to give us your name and address or you can’t have the television”. “But, I’ve paid for it”. “You can’t have it”. Perhaps, I should have walked out of the shop with TV in hand at this point, risked prosecution for something in Kafka Britain. I went for the less dramatic option. “Well, I’ll have my money back.” The amazing first response from the shop staff was that this was impossible. They backed down when I pressed the point. I was directed to “customer services”. A credit was made to my card. What a palaver. I went home without a television. What was waiting for me on the mat? A letter from the TV licensing authorities threatening me with the “shame” of prosecution for not having a TV license for a television I did not possess! I might add at this point that this was about the third or fourth of these blessed letters that I had been sent. They become increasingly nasty. The assumption is that every right-minded person must have a television. So, if no license is recorded at your address, you must be in breach of the law. Guilty until proven innocent. If you are not in possession of a television, you are required to write to the authorities to tell them so. Why should you? (I have, I might interject, wasted time in the past doing this. The letters keep coming and you have to start all over again every time you move). All of which brings me to TV ‘detector vans’. Do you remember that ad campaign “Watch out there is a TV detector van about”? The idea was that the TV licensing authorities were patrolling the country with radio direction finding equipment, similar to that used by the Nazis to track down pesky members of the French Resistance and SOE operating their secret transmitters. The detector van was a myth - there were no more than a handful ever built - the real way that people were ‘detected’ was by means of a database of information collected by TV retailers and discretely passed on to government agencies. They had been shopping their customers for years. Now, you may say that people should buy their television licences. That’s a point of view, but the argument against TV licenses is deeper. It is not just about the nature of the BBC and the way broadcasting is funded in the UK. It is about the centralised authority that has been created to collect the money. Orwellian is an over used expression, but it applies in this case. Big brother is watching and he wants your money to fund his broadcasting system. You can’t opt out. You will be compliant. Throw the box in the bin and give them the Agincourt salute. There’s nothing worth watching anyway.
Posted on: Wed, 27 Aug 2014 12:04:41 +0000
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