TV Licensing

 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.