Dear Regional Enforcement Manager,
How very nice to hear from you again – and so soon! I loved the red envelope, very chic, and also receiving proper letters delivered by Royal Mail rather than impersonal emails or texts. Your signatures really do add a warm human touch and show that you aren’t just another anonymous pen-pusher. Would you like me to give TV Licensing a glowing review on Trustpilot UK? Just say the word and I’ll gladly do it.
By the way, ‘Scotty’, if I may call you that, I haven’t changed my name or gone away, so I’m hoping that you’re not sulking by now calling me ‘The Legal Occupier’. Until quite recently you used to call me by my own name and it really hurts! Perhaps you could check with Hull City Council, who pays council tax at this address? Or hadn’t you thought of that? Maybe HCC is using that tired old data protection excuse to stymie your important investigations? I wouldn’t be at all surprised — local government is full of far-left commies in my opinion.
I do sincerely hope that no one is taking the view that a lovely man like you is engaging in postal intimidation, or even harassment with threats, against BBC-phobic adults. The way you forcefully express yourself might suggest to some shrinking violets that you are a rather demanding and ‘not to be messed with’ sort of man. Personally I rather like that in a man, and so I have my fingers crossed that you really are straight from the manosphere! Frankly there are too many soy boys around these days.
I am so looking forward to the promised visit (will it be you and not one of your minions? I do hope so!) and to avoid a wasted trip, might it be sensible to book a definite date with me? Do TV Licensing routinely obtain a search warrant first, or do they expect a quick flash of an identity card to be sufficient to enter my bijou residence? Let’s wait and see – I’m not making any promises… how about you?
Heaven forbid, I really don’t want to tell you how to do your job, but will you also be bringing equipment to check that I don’t have a TV aerial or satellite dish? Google Earth will confirm that you will need a really long ladder – or better still a motorised cherry-picker, to confirm the obvious lack of any such erections chez nous. Perhaps instead, you fantasise that I’m viewing and recording live TV via the internet? You are quite free to ask Kingston Communications and Tesco Mobile for records of my internet use, and I do hope they don’t try to hide behind data protection. I bet they will though, uncooperative capitalist beasts!
I’m looking forward immensely to finally meeting you and hopefully convincing the inspector that I don’t ever watch or record live TV, and most certainly not the sort of woke, biased propaganda that the BBC and others now churn out. Perhaps you can ensure that I’m the last appointment of the day, as I have an enormous collection of DVDs and some impressive equipment that I just love to show off to friends. I now feel we have established a real personal connection through your postal persistence.
Once you’ve finally satisfied your insatiable curiosity about what your paymasters obsessively imagine illegally goes on within every TV-unlicensed property, I do hope we can keep in touch. Sorry to be so bold, but they, and you, now appear to be just asking for it.
Do keep up the good work, but please, please don’t turn out to be one of those ‘prick-tease’ types who keep writing but never take the plunge and actually meet. I’m still waiting with anticipation…
Affectionately yours,
‘Legal Occupier’
PS: I looked you up on Facebook – are you the shirtless tattooed one holding a big fish, or the bearded man-bun one with the rainbow vax recipient emblem?
Martin Rispin has had a career in many different sectors, most lately in the fields of English Tourism and Heritage based Urban Regeneration. He now lives, retired, in Kingston upon Hull.
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(Photograph: Sarah Marshall from London, United Kingdom, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)
Joking aside, what is it about the BBC/TV Licensing that gives it the idea that it (alone) has the authority to compel non-users to declare this every three years? Plus still reserves the right to disbelieve those who comply?
Why don’t:
DVLC bother non-car owners?
Local Authorities bother households about the many things they license?
Professional Bodies bother non-practitioners?
Software Companies bother non-users?
The Police bother non-firearms holders?
The Environment Agency bother non-Anglers?
DEFRA bother non-cat/dog owners about microchipping?
Could it be that the BBC knows that as it is the British State Propaganda Organ it can attempt to intimidate those who don’t see through this?