As many of you know, it is the policy of this blog, when publishing letters, to give whatever name (if any) is stated in the text of the email. The writer of the letter below has chosen to give his name. That being so, it is not our place to shield him from the full rigour of the law.
My wife and I recently bought a mail-order VCR off Amazon. When it arrived we rigged it up – TV cable into the back of VCR, bien sûr, and it looks just dandy underneath the TV and DVD player. Hush, hush, whisper who dares, my wife and I do not have a TV licence. We haven’t had a TV licence for getting on four years. The TV licence authorities wrote to us at the address Amazon had kindly given them (we’re assuming there was something in the small-print which indicated our implicit consent in them doing so) stating that there was no record of our having a TV licence at that address, asking us at which address we were using the TV receiving equipment recently purchased, and reminding us to get a TV licence. They also asked for our correct address, so that they could come and visit. We wrote back and gave them our correct address, and inviting them to drop by whenever was convenient.
My wife and I live in Bombay. We await the detector van with baited breath. I’m still not 100% convinced that I haven’t broken the law, though.
Regards
Alton Benes