TV Licensing's Latest Trick

She’s at it again. Poor Jane Jeffers, TV Licensing’s ‘Enforcement Manager’ based in Preston. Despite writing to me every 2-3 weeks, she has still not persuaded me to purchase a TV licence. Jane can’t seem to comprehend that some people can live their lives without a television. I cancelled my right to watch 15 months ago, so Jane is trying the latest trick up her sleeve. ‘An IN01N9A2 code has been issued against your address’, she tells me. Well, dearest Jane, you can issue as many codes against me as you wish- you’ll not persuade me to subsidise the BBC ever again.

My hope is that this new government, buoyed by its majority and irritated by the corporation’s alleged bias during the election, will clip the peacock’s wings and tail. Quite why the machinery of the state should be employed in regulating TV audiences is beyond me. I searched the code issued against me; the internet doesn’t know it, so I suspect it’s been made up. An online forum concerned with TV licensing suggests that dear old Jane is herself a phantom personality, a Wizard of Oz man-behind-the-curtain type character. So many people will move to Netflix and Amazon, which don’t need licences, that this whole rotten borough is likely to collapse in the next few years anyway. Yet it behoves each one of us to review and consider what information and opinions we allow into our homes. Words, views and ideologies, the obnoxities of which aren’t tolerated in house guests or family members, may gladly be received and welcomed through laptops, tablets and TV sets.