TV Licensing Used to SPAM Your Postbox, Now It Does the Same to E-mail
First they ask for your E-mail address (as if your TV set needs a login); then they start nagging you via E-mail
The supposedly "modern" or "digital era" was meant to make things simple. In practice, however, many ordinary people now face issues like, "my washing machine cannot connect to Wi-Fi" or "my door is not compatible with this version of Android" or "I cannot park here, as the parking meters don't support my operating system..."
Welcome to the fake promise of life getting simpler. People work longer hours and life doesn't get better if folks get more gadgets.
Speaking of gadgets, two days ago I went to the shop (PC World) to enquire about external hard drives. The workers there have no clue at all about these things. They're more like Microsoft reps and they're unhelpful due to a lack of knowledge.
Anyway, that's a digression.
This has just been sent to me:
"Your No Licence Needed claim expires soon, please contact us."
OK, so they're basically treating the mere statement that you LACK something like a contract or product that "expires". Can't wait for E-mails that say "your no-plane statement expires" or "the no-yacht disclosure comes to an end soon". This is beyond ridiculous. Why don't they just make it a CRIME to NOT watch (or own a) TV?
There are thousands of things you do not have. Need you declare, one by one, that you do NOT have them, even under a series of escalating threats (some of their letters actually did scare me 20 years ago despite me not having a TV) for merely not bothering to respond?
They're doing a lot of damage to people.
This is not just a nuisance but a nationwide productivity sink (set aside emotional toll) that I wrote about many years ago. If in my lifetime I'll have to do webforms or paper forms and receive like 50 letters from TV Licensing, it'll result in massive bills for TV Licensing (that's where the money goes, not good TV programmes but letters) and for me it'll result in perhaps dozens of hours of my life... wasted.
There must be a better way.
I've long ranted that channels asserting they rely on TV Licensing for funding also take ("on the side") bribes from hostile and foreign oligarchs like Bill Gates. They're corrupt. Why force viewers to fund the propaganda they're subjected to at the behest of some corrupt Americans and high-profile perverts? No lessons learned since we all funded Jimmy Savile? (Against our will)
I would hardly be the first person in Britain to be cynical about this entire thing. As I put it 6 years ago: "Funny how TV licensing keeps bother people without a TV set. Guilty until cleared..." It creates more problems than it solves. █
