TV licence is WRONG
I’m chilling out to the mellow sounds of David Gilmour this evening, trying to relax after the fury of receiving two letters from “TV licensing”. One was addressed to me, another to someone I’d never heard of. I binned the one that wasn’t for me, then opened the other. It goes along the lines of:
Dear Mr …..
We have been advised that you bought television receiving equipment in December 2007 from Dixons Stores Group. However, we have no record of a TV licence in your name for the above address.
Using TV equipment to watch or record TV programme services without a valid licence is against the law…
blah blah blah…etc get a licence or else… blah blah blah
Sure, I haven’t got a TV licence. Big deal. But the thing that made me really mad and sent me into a swearing rage was the fact that Dixons have been giving out my personal details without permission. I did buy a TV set from them in December, but at no point during the sales transaction was it made clear that my details would be illegally distributed in this manner. I would class this to be a clear breach of the Data Protection Act.
After some research on the web it turns out that I am not the only victim. Although it is apparently true that TV retailers have to disclose to the government who they sold products to by law, or are faced with fines. It seems that Dixons are at fault by not clearly informing customers that their details would be disclosed in this manner during the sales process. If I had known this was the case, I would have gone to a different retailer, paid in cash and given my name as “Mr Get Lost”…
And the TV licensing authority can stick their TV license as there’s no way I’m paying £135.50 for the utter drivel that it will be spent on. This is quite simply yet another tax that targets the already overtaxed British consumer and with which we have no say in what it is spent upon. If given a choice I would be in favour of paying a “contribution” to a TV authority, if I could have a say in the way in which it was spent, e.g. making the sort of programmes I am interested in, and not the trashy light entertainment that adorns screens whenever I switch a TV on. For these reasons I choose not to watch any TV, and if I wanted to, I would simply choose to download specific programmes that I am interested in from the Internet.
There are actually lots of countries that don’t require or have never used TV licences, including USA, Canada and New Zealand. Hmmm, just noting that one down on the list of reasons to leave…
The concept of TV is, in its simplest form, freedom of speech. In my opinion, having to pay for a license conflicts with our human rights. I can’t help the fact that the various digital and analog transmissions are freely flowing through my house, and I do not wish to be bullied by a government “big brother” agency.
I urge everyone to sign this Downing Street petition to abolish the TV license…
Oh, and the Dixons Group (which includes Currys) will certainly not be getting any business from me, ever again. Shop on the Internet. It’s cheaper.
