Society

My wife and I recently bought a television and for the first time in nearly 10 years we have a telly-screen in the house. We also bought a £147 licence, which in the UK is a legal requirement. The money goes to funding the BBC, and the licence is needed even if one never watches any of the BBC output. Before our purchase we had occasionally caught up with television programmes in arrears via our laptops, but were very careful never to watch or record anything live, as that would have been illegal. Nevertheless, for all the time we were telly-free, we were harassed by TV Licensing. They sent us a regular stream of letters which were all written on the assumption we were watching television illegally. OFFICIAL WARNING, said one, ‘Our Enforcement Division has identified that there is no recor...