Letters

[Wuppertal]

And as any internet ready computer (are there any that are not?) can show TV programs you have to have licence for one of those too which is why many university students get done. They have a laptop but no TV and think they don't need a licence. Also a licence is attached to a person at a specified address, not the property, so when I move out I am taking my licence with me and the menfolk will have to get their own.

What an absolute moneygrabbing fraud. The place is going mad.

I don't know if there's any truth in it, but the security men on the big halls of residence site at my university when I lived there in my first year, told us that we had the right to deny access to anyone claiming to be a TV licence person trying to get in to our buildings, even if they had ID. They also told us to tell them if we saw any of them, and that they would evict them from the campus. No-one ever came anyway, and I had a licence so I wasn't bothered by it, but I always wondered if we could really legally stop them from coming...

[MarkB]

I don't think the TV License people have any more right to enter your home against your will than any ordinary citizen. They could apply for a search warrant but they'd have to go to a magistrate for that.

Currently one way to watch TV without a license is through the BBC iPlayer (or the ITV equivalent) on a computer. As the programmes are only available after they have been transmitted the licensing law doesn't apply.

[Mid A 15]

This site is quite informative about TV Licences and the mind games sometimes employed to collect them....

http://www.bbctvlicence.com/

Each to their own but my daughter completed 4 years at Uni without a TV licence the question is did she have a TV?

[Angela Woodford]

Here is a letter which I've found in the Sunday Telegraph.

I know, I know, it has "adult content" and if you are easily offended please look away now!

I have laughed immoderately. It's just so perfectly constructed. It was written in 1943 by the British Ambassador to Moscow to Lord Pembroke at the Foreign Office, London. Here goes -

My Dear Reggie,

In these dark days man tends to look for little shafts of light from heaven. My days are probably darker than yours, and I need, my God I do, all the light I can get. But I am a decent fellow, and I do not want to be mean about what little brightness is shed upon me from time to time.

So I propose to share with you a tiny flash that has illuminated my sombre life, and tell you that God has given me a new Turkish colleague whose card tells me he is called Mustapha Kunt. We all feel like that, Reggie, now and then, especially when spring is upon us, but few of us would care to put it on our cards. It takes a Turk to do that.

Sir Archibald Clerk Kerr