When oh when will someone in authority wake up and end this TV licence farce? (From Bucks Free Press)

When oh when will someone in authority wake up and end this TV licence farce?

10:30am Friday 6th August 2010 in

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I WRITE this same column every single year, but make no excuses for doing so – because there is little else that makes me as angry as having to shell out for a tax to watch my television.

The TV licence fee, now at £145.50 per year, is a modern-day absurdity. It is there to fund the BBC, a very noble well-loved institution, but now one of a multitude of offerings in a crowded market-place.

When the licence fee was conceived, there was no satellite or cable TV. It perhaps made sense in those far-off days, but not now when there are so many other players out there, most of them making a decent buck via advertising.

I now pay more than £30 per month to have satellite. My choice, of course, but if I declined I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the modern technology and the various channels.

Others pay more to watch Premiership football, so defenders of the licence fee will cry that the BBC levy is a small drop in the ocean and surely is worth it to keep afloat the principle of public service broadcasting.

I fundamentally disagree because there is a greater principle at stake – freedom. I object to having to pay what is basically a tax on a piece of electronic equipment.

For years, I didn’t own a telly and was subjected to relentless letters and door knocks from the licensing people who clearly couldn’t believe someone like me could exist in this day and age.

Finally I conformed and bought a TV, but I make sure I leave my licence payment to the very last day. It’s a pathetically small protest on my part – I am simply not brave enough to join those who refuse on principle to pay and end up in court.

But I see this annual demand as an infringement of my basic civil liberties. Why should I have to legally declare whether or not I own a television?

Many of you will just scoff at this column and call me petty. But one day when the licence fee is finally scrapped, people will look back in horror and wonder at the fact we all so meekly adhered to this nonsense.

In researching this column, I went on to the TV Licensing website and stumbled across a section entitled: “What to do if the licence holder dies.”

It continued: “Please contact us as soon as possible if a TV Licence holder has died. You need to provide the name, address and TV Licence number (where possible) of the deceased person…”

So let’s get this straight. Uncle Albert pops his clogs, so you ring the undertaker, ring round his nearest and dearest – and then you call TV Licensing to break the sad news.

The advice is actually quite sensible in the context of a licence, enforceable in law by court action, so I don’t blame them for that part. It’s the fact the licence exists in the first place that creates such laughable scenarios.

Anyway, I went online and paid my £145.50 on the due date of July 31. I am certain that my act of feeble civil disobedience (declining the direct debit offer and leaving the payment to the last day) will go unnoticed.

But after I paid, I picked up my post and found another bill – this time for Thames Water to the tune of more than £130 for half a year.

TV sets, water… whatever next? When will someone come up with a tax on oxygen consumption?

Life is getting harder for all of us. VAT will be rising to 20 per cent soon and we all understand why. We understand we have to tighten our belts and that we have to make sacrifices to get the economy on an even footing.

We understand services are being cut, and that there is precious little money to go around.

So why oh why do the powers-that-be allow these kind of levies to exist on basic necessities? Year after relentless year, the TV licence fee increases. We have no power to stop this and no say in the process – unless we give up our tellys.

But even if we do that, my experience of previous years is they will still come after us with questions, and we’ll still have to justify ourselves to them. What a waste of time, money and effort.

When oh when will someone in authority wake up and end this farce?

But until that happens, don’t forget to get someone to ring TV Licensing when you die.