Michael Henderson suggests

Email registration

Free weekly email update

Great products and special offers for Spectator readers

Click here for great value events

Click here for exclusive articles, offers, tasting notes and discussion

The Spectator's notes

Charles Moore

Wednesday, 31st October 2007

Charles Moore's thoughts on the week

When I first went to India, 25 years ago, I was embarrassed by cycle rickshaws. I felt uneasy being transported by thin people much poorer than myself, especially as I watched the muscles of their calves straining to move the weight of their passengers. The whole thing emphasised inequality. Now cycle rickshaws are popular in central London as an amusing, green and almost nimble way of getting through the traffic. Recently I saw one with four teenage girls on board all screaming with delight and bantering with their driver (I imagine Health and Safety will soon stop it). And now one feels no unease at all. The physical situation is essentially the same — one thin young man exhausts himself pulling along mostly heavier people, but presumably he does not do it out of economic desperation. The embarrassment of difference is removed. Meanwhile, such is India’s economic success that I suspect many of the boys who struggled to pedal me up a hill are now garage proprietors grown fat.

From time to time, this column has reported the threats from TV Licensing that I have received for alleged licence evasion in my London flat. The main point of the stories has been that I do not have a television, but that the licensing authorities brush aside this possibility and assume one is a cheat. Things went quiet for some time, but I recently received the most menacing letter yet. From Paul Stanfield of Customer Services (who are the customers, and how does he serve them?), dated 8 October, it told me that if I did not respond by 23 October I could expect an investigation by the Enforcement Division: ‘The consequences of such an investigation can be serious.’ Unusually, this letter does admit the chance that ‘you do not use TV equipment at this address’, but says you must let them know and ‘We will arrange a visit to confirm the situation.’ Since I do not need the situation confirmed, I have not replied. Nor has the Enforcement Division turned up. As politicians annoyingly say when they wish to appear tough, bring it on.

Previous page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 Next page

More articles from: Charles Moore | this section

Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comment

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Letters

Spectator readers respond to recent articles

Mind your language

Dot Wordsworth

Queen Victoria complained of Gladstone: ‘He speaks to Me as if I was a public meeting.’

A child of our time

From the economic and psychological bedlam of the global downturn has emerged a particularly dangerous false dichotomy: namely, that there is somehow a choice for ministers over the next few years between economic reconstruction and the repair of Britain’s broken society, and that the government (whether Labour or Conservative) must prioritise the former at the expense of the latter.