I Have Been Officially Warned

This is even better than the University's internet connection scheme that requires you to send out an email in order to get web access. All hail bureaucracy.

I came home for lunch today to find a stack of brown envelopes on the mail table, one for each of the 12 flatmates, and one for the common room (little do they know there IS no Legal Occupant there...)

Small note on TV in the UK: there are no such things as free channels. If you want to watch tv, you plug your tv into the wall and start watching. The catch is that you are supposed to have a tv license, which costs on the order of $300. Accordingly, nobody in the flat owns televisions.

How does the gov't regulate this? Well, one strategy would be to assume that everyone without an active license is violating the law...

The text of our letters (italics are mine):

~*~

OFFICIAL WARNING

To the Legal Occupier,

We have previously informed you that it is an offence to use any device to watch or record TM programmes at your address without a valid TV license (this must have come before I got here)

However, it's been noted that your address remains unlicensed, so you should expect a visit from an Enforcement Officer shortly.

Until then, everything you need to know is contained in the enclosed leaflet.

To avoid further action buy a TV license now by (etc, etc.)

If you are not using TV receiving equipment at your address you should advise us in writing at (etc, etc) We will then arrange a visit and update our records accordingly.

~*~

And a further goodie from the attached leaflet: "Officers are briefed to ascertain whether you are watching TV without a license. They will call at their own discretion and will return as many times as is deemed necessary to complete the investigation."

yikes!

Thoughts

1) The government is going to search my room for illegal TVs. Interesting. One of our flatmates (English) is checking with her father (lawyer) to see if they can actually do this.

2) The flat upstairs from us hasn't gotten these notices. We're wondering if the people who last lived here had some kind of violation - when one girl called in to try and explain the situation to the license people, she had a really difficult time communicating that a) we're students who didn't live here five months ago and b) all 12 of us live in the flat and if an inspector comes out can they please take care of all of us at once. They also told her it didn't matter we had reported our absence of TVs, and they were coming anyway.

I'm sort of amused at the inefficiency of the licensing system, and sort of uneasy about getting investigated for my nonexistent entertainment systems.