P*** R******
Policy Manager
Policy Group
TV Licensing TM
www.tvlicensing.co.uk
Bristol
BS98 1TL
1st April 2007
Your ref: LPC/78F
1 Why did you address me as Mr.
Dillon?
2 Some provisional remarks.
3 TV Licensing TM misunderstands
my request.
4 Has TV Licensing TM
provided the BBC with my identity and if so why and on what
authority?
5 I seek disclosure.
Dear P*** R******,
1 Why did you address me as Mr.
Dillon? I ask because it might well be pertinent on one account and
if not on that account then at least revealing on another.
1.1 It might be that the
gentleman in question is a previous resident at this address and well
known to TV Licensing TM as an
indefatigable recidivist license evader, thus accounting for the
flood of letters I have had to endure from TV Licensing TM
these past eighteen months. In this case I would be happy to accept
TV Licensing TMs handsome apologies and,
with some assurances about matters of public interest that have
arisen, compensation at the very reasonable and just scale I have
intimated.
And this would indeed be very
agreeable to me because the vexation and time involved in dealing
with all this is very costly to me and a grave impediment to my work.
Once again I have been obliged to spend hours away from my present
very significant investigations to reflect on these matters.
1.2 On the other hand it may
merely yet again indicate what is so plainly the case with TV
Licensing TM videlicet that
when it comes to ordinary human discourse in the complex and
demanding real world away from the simple and undemanding virtual one
of computer databases, VDU screens and mass mailing lists, TV
Licensing TM is in total disarray and
completely out of control.
One might remark that having thieved
my identity, for so I provisionally expect to argue in my suit, TV
Licensing TM can't even get it together
at the most fundamental level of common courtesy to use it to address
me correctly.
My name (and title), P*** R******, is
Mr. William Boyd. I am a mathematician and a citizen of the United
Kingdom.
2 It might be thus helpful on
this latter account were I briefly to review the history of this. As
I have explained in a previous letter to your colleagues in Customer
Relations I am far from completing my reflections but there can be no
harm in reviewing the circumstances of the case.
2.1 I cannot afford television
(or indeed the internet). This is a matter which causes me
considerable distress. I keenly feel its loss and I lament it daily.
2.2 In the past eighteen months
since moving to this address I have received at least half a dozen
leters (the ones I have clear recollection of) and probably as many
as a dozen or more from TV Licensing TM admonishing me with increasing stridency to purchase a TV license or
face investigation. I returned all these letters with a remark inked
or pencilled on the back cover to the effect that no television was
held at this address. On the last but three of these I scrawled a
remark to the effect that rather it would be me that prosecuted TV
Licensing TM if I continued to receive
these letters and on the letter following I intimated that I was
minded to write the ombudsman about these letters.
2.3 Around the beginning of
February I received a letter from TV Licensing TM
which made it quite plain that I would be the subject of criminal
investigation if I did not either immediately purchase a TV license
or, if you please, identify myself to TV Licensing TM
explaining why I had failed to purchase a TV license.
2.4 I accordingly identified
myself to TV Licensing TM. At the same
time I registered in the strongest possible terms I am capable of (I
am a person of moderate and sensible temperament) the sense of
outrage and violation occasioned me by these letters and the
obligation to identify myself. I naturally requested compensation for
the injury done to me.
The scale I suggested was very
moderate: merely that TV Licensing TM should
provide me with sufficient funds to purchase a television apparatus
and TV licenses for the next fifteen years, at which point I might
apply for a concessionary license having reached the age of 75.
2.5 I received a letter from TV
Licensing TM explaining that I need not
have responded to any of their letters and that equally TV Licensing TM had the right to enquire into the
licensing details held at adresses. In a long reply I remarked,
amongst other matters, that I had indeed surmised there surely could
be no obligation incumbent on me to reply but that this latest letter
had threatened me with criminal investigation. I also requested
disclosure of all records now held of me by TV Licensing TM.
2.6 I subsequently received
another letter from TV Licensing TM
informing me that I was to be visited by TV Licensing TM.
This letter was extremely difficult to understand because while on
the one hand it conceded that I legitimately needed no contact with
TV Licensing TM it nevertheless said
that TV Licensing TM needed to visit me
to verify the situation.
I replied once again to TV Licensing TM
with my comments and observations, principally to the effect that
this appeal to routine procedure was in fact plainly a transparent
device to further a criminal investigation into me, and I once again
asked TV Licensing TM to explain to me
why they were criminalising me in this fashion.
From this point on I have kept copies
of all letters (the above is from memory). I also made it clear that
the economical 500 pounds sterling an hour rate I had suggested for my time,
as a nice gesture of sodality with the Director-General of the BBC,
could no longer be sustained in view of the demands made upon me and
I am accordingly (and provisionally) charging my time at a more
realistic 5000 pounds sterling an hour.
2.7 What is so completely and
fantastically astonishing is that having in the nicest possible way
intimated to TV Licensing TM that I was
so jolly upset and so very extremely pissed off, I then received (fully a
month later) a communication of which the first few lines I quote as
follows
THIS
ADDRESS IS UNLICENSED
YOUR
DETAILS ARE BEING PASSED
TO
OUR ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS
Despite being sent
previous reminders, you still have not purchased a new TV license.
etc. etc.
2.8 and while I was expensively
contemplating my observations about the above, in such moments of
leisure as I feel I can afford at this time, I received TV
Licensing TM's reply to my letter
enquiring why I was being criminalised.
I am entirely spell-bound (enchanted)
to discover that if I am to gain a period of respite from these
nightmarish letters I will have to permit one of TV Licensing TM s officers into my home with the implication presumably (for why
else should she need to enter my home) that she should check whether
I possessed a TV or (or so I gather) the internet or, to put it
plainly, to search my premises.
2.9 In my 60,000 pound sterling reply I
intimated that I should file suit against TV Licensing TM
at the end of the summer and that if I were again to receive a letter
from TV Licensing TM of the sort quoted
above I should pursue punitive damages at the rate of 135,500
pounds sterling daily, being the benefit that presumably accrues to the BBC from the
1000 or so license evaders TV Licensing TM
claim to identify every day.
3 TV Licensing TM
misunderstands my request for my records. I want TV Licensing TM's records and not the BBC's.
4 However the natural
implication that my identity might have been forwarded to the BBC is
noteworthy. For this of course would be a very serious admission.
Roughly speaking I suppose one might compare it to the distinction
between on the one hand using crack cocaine and on the other hand in
dealing in it.
4.1 I flat-out insist on
knowing whether TV Licensing TM
has forwarded my identity to the BBC
4.1.1 and if they have I
then flat-out insist on knowing why and on what authority.
4.2 In the circumstances I have
thought it advisable to send the form [inserted: Data Protection Act submission - they wanted a tenner out of me for it] you have sent me on to the BBC
to check.
4.2.1 TV Licensing TM may pay the 10 pound sterling fee.
4.2.2 TV Licensing TM
may vouch for my identity [inserted: the form required a witness signature].
4.2.2.1 They stole it, they
vouch it.
5 In the matter of my records TV
Licensing TM will of course eventually
have to make a very full disclosure indeed. I should much appreciate
it if they could fully assist in the task from the start. This will
save a lot of time and expense and impact much less on my work.
I shall charge 90,000 pounds sterling for this
letter.
I am copying this letter to the BBC
Licensing Management Team and to the Director-General of the BBC for
her information.
Yours sincerely,
William Boyd
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