Those of you with long memories will know I have been having a long fight with those charming people at TV Licensing. Well, I thought it had finished when I gave in and sent them a request for a tv licence, even though I have no access to television and find the majority of it so mentally deadening I wouldn't watch it even if I did have. Who the hell but the terminally brainless would want to watch the shit the BBC serves up for our edification these days? (And then they wonder why the streets are full of gum-chewing, mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging, monosyllabic, grunting morons.) But anyway. It turns out they didn't GET my request for a licence. I found this out when they turned up at my door yesterday expecting to be admitted to investigate my property like some mildly politer version of Robert Mugabe's pre-election militia. Luckily (for me or them I don't know), I was at work. But they left me another one of their delightful, bullying letters. Here's my reply.
Edward Abbey, where are you when we fucking need you?
COMPLAINT
Today I came home from work to find a discourteous letter from your organisation informing me I had been "visited" with regard to my not having a tv licence.
Some time ago, despite the fact that I do not watch television (cannot, actually, since I am unable to get a signal in my flat), I wrote to you with my bank details requesting you to set up a tv licence for me. I was doing this under duress after months of deliberately intimidating letters from yourselves had left me too anxious to continue trying to wrangle with you. Not one of my queries about the specific legalities of tv licensing was ever satisfactorily answered anyway.
Can you tell me, if your organisation has any means of investigating itself and does not just specialise in bullying its customers, what happened to my letter--which included my bank details, remember.
Can you note, once again (this is at least the third time I have informed you) that I do not live at --------- in Earls Barton, but ------- in Earls Barton (addresses supplied).
Can you also tell me whether it is now illegal to own a tv set without paying the licence fee. Your literature does not make this at all clear. But that has been my situation all along, as I have only used my set to watch dvds. You have been told this ad nauseam and yet still you continue to bully and threaten me.
I will attempt to set up a direct debit this afternoon, since I have no wish to speak to any of your operatives over the telephone. By the way, since your intrusion into my privacy seems to have no legal limit, I should probably inform you I will be doing this from an internet cafe to protect myself from further accusations of lawbreaking. But as I said in my (misplaced-by-you) letter, I will be doing so under profound duress.
I am absolutely disgusted with the way I have been treated by your organisation and hope that once you have helped yourself to my money I will never have to deal with you again.
Bruce Hodder.
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