The Oldham Enforcement Division

Submitted by Alan Marsden on Sat, 09/02/2019 - 07:32

Well that didn’t take long. Having given up my right to watch television in December, and receiving an £85 refund, I’ve had a letter from Jackie Garswood, the ‘Customer Service Manager’ at TV Licensing. Although it’s addressed to ‘Present Occupier’ (they knew my name well enough to send a cheque last month), she begins pleasantly. The letter is a ‘gentle reminder’: ‘Of course, we want to help you’ she writes. If I do not need a license, I should write to her. Funny, but I did write in December. Perhaps no-one passed the letter onto Jackie. And then comes the heavy stuff:

‘So Unfortunately, if we haven’t heard from you by 13^th February 2019, your address will be passed on to Oldham Enforcement Division for investigation’.

Yikes, this sounds serious. What is this ‘division’? Might I expect men in jackboots and black Gestapo uniforms? Or maybe it’s a private detective agency, coming to rummage through my bins to find incriminating copies of TV Quick.

As I am no longer a customer of TV Licensing, I suspect that I do not really come under Jackie’s jurisdiction. I’d therefore prefer to have my future dealings with the Oldham Enforcement Division. Perhaps their remit is to convince me of why the BBC is worth paying for, or that books are boring and old fashioned, and that I need to move back into the glorious TV age.

I’ll keep you posted.

Image by Pexels from Pixabay