Stephen Pollard (under the title “Is the BBC out of control?”) and the Centre Right Blog at Conservative Home (under the title “Big Brother Corporation“) embed video of the recent, and undoubtedly threatening, ad warning unlicensed TV viewers of the completeness of the TV licensing authority’s database of UK addresses. In SP’s comments, Nicholas writes:
Yep, it’s sinister and repulsive. The actress doing the voiceover should feel absolutely ashamed of herself for participating in this video nasty. The fact that there are people in positions of decision making authority who increasingly think that this kind of threat advertising is acceptable is even more sinister. They have flexed their authoritarian muscles and feeling no resistance will flex them more.
At least at the end there is just a knock on the door and not the full-on smash-the-door-down SWAT team assault which seems to be the norm these days.
I’ve not owned a television for about ten years, during which I’ve lived at at least four different locations. I know what that “knock on the door” leads to. At the risk of frightening the citizens of Airstrip One still further, I shall relate the consequences of not having a TV licence while living under ZaNuLab’s jackboot:
PERSON WITH CLIPBOARD AT DOOR: [Knock knockity-knock]
POOTERGEEK: [opening door, thereby displacing inch-deep drift of unopened warning letters from the TV Licensing Authority addressed hopefully to “The Occupier”] Hello.
PERSON WITH CLIPBOARD AT DOOR: Hello, Ms Kreutzenberger. Do you live in Flat B?
POOTERGEEK: I do, but I’m not Ms Kreutzenberger. She died two years ago in a horrible gardening accident. How can I help you?
PERSON WITH CLIPBOARD AT DOOR: According to our records, there is no television licence at this address.
POOTERGEEK: Yes, that’s because there’s no television at this address.
PERSON WITH CLIPBOARD AT DOOR: Would it be possible for us to have a look around inside?
POOTERGEEK: Yeah, if you don’t mind the mess.
PERSON WITH CLIPBOARD AT DOOR: [not entering] Oh, that’s alright.
POOTERGEEK: Huh?
PERSON WITH CLIPBOARD AT DOOR: People who have a television don’t usually invite us in.
POOTERGEEK: Oh.
[PAUSE]
POOTERGEEK: Does this mean you’re going to stop sending me letters threatening to imprison me if I don’t buy a TV licence?
PERSON WITH CLIPBOARD AT DOOR: Well, if you write to this address explaining your situation, yes.
POOTERGEEK: Why should I have to write to you to stop getting junk mail?
PERSON WITH CLIPBOARD AT DOOR: Well, er, that’s how it works.
POOTERGEEK: Hmm.
PERSON WITH CLIPBOARD AT DOOR: Thank you.
POOTERGEEK: Er, yeah. Thanks.
[POOTERGEEK closes door and retrieves partially inflated woman from wardrobe.]
Hello PG
Perhaps the most extreme perversion of government authority I have encountered cropped up in Cape Town recently. An armless woman (who was named in the newspaper report) applied for an identity document as is required in South Africa.
The Department of Home Affairs refused to process her application, insisting to her face that she provide fingerprints.
In vain did she demonstrate her inability to do so.
Happy ending: When the story of this beyond-Kafka episode hit the press, action was promptly taken from the top, with the director general handing the woman her ID personally, apologising and starting an investigation.
I just don’t let them in.
I wrote to them at my last address after getting three letters from them on consecutive days, suggesting that they go to find employment in the FSB, making clear (at the end of every paragraph in a 3-page green-ink letter-to-the-daily-express-style rant) that I didn’t have a “TV or other TV receiving equipment”, my real name was absolutely none of their business, and they would not be admitted to be property except under circumstances agreed with me in advance, and that their correspondence constituted a form of harassment.
I got a long and (mostly) apologetic, personally signed letter, fairly promptly, and their harrassment stopped.
Until I moved again, obviously. Now I seem to get some idle and offensive threatening mail from them about every 2 to 4 weeks. Each one of which goes straight in the recycling.
Many years ago I met two TV Detector Van men at a party.
They were very apologetic for being TV Detector Van men, but their personalities didn’t really make up for it.