TV Licensing

As back home people here in the UK pay a license fee for watching "free to air" TV (which ironically means it ain't free). This fee funds the BBC which isn't such a bad thing - it's more of a BBC tax. But I absolutely love the BBC and won't hear a word against it. It is my favourite British thing.

But there is a difference between the NZ and the UK licensing depts. I don't ever recall getting a letter about TV licensing in NZ, and have to confess that I never paid it back home - there is no equivalent of the advertisement free, high quality programming anyway. Here I don't watch TV so it's not an issue. But our house which is shared between 6 of us regularly gets these threatening letters from TV Licensing (TVL). Here's how they kick off:

Now for the last 12 years or so no one here has watched TV at this address. But more than this I have several times contacted TVL to explain the situation. The best I got was a two year hiatus of these hectoring and threatening letters, after a long phone call (they more or less ignore emails or the form that they send you to fill in even if the situation has changed. The main thing about these letters is that they threaten repeatedly to visit your house - but the thing is that they never do. They say "your details will be passed to our enforcement team". If you contact them to say that you don't watch TV they say fine but, "we will also plan a visit to confirm the situation" [they won't].

And... "What if you don't respond by 27th October?" Under these circumstances they say "we will pass your details to our enforcement team. TV Licensing officers may then visit your address." This is followed by all the gruesome details of prosecution and possible fines. One wonders how many prosecutions they bring each year?

You'd think this would be small potatoes and not worth the effort (though of course this kind of computer generated harassment is pretty cheap). But actually the fees were £3.45 billion in 2009–10. This is not chicken feed by any means, especially when the BBC costs quite a bit to run and the government spends £150 billion more than it earns each year. One can understand the "we will never surrender" attitude of TVL given how much lucre is at stake.

There are certain circumstances in which the famous British reputation for politeness is undeserved. And TVL's take no prisoners approach is certain one of them. I note that the Wikipedia article on UK TVL suggests that enforcement officers receive a commission for obtaining licence fees from people.