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The Spectator’s notes

Charles Moore

Wednesday, 9th April 2008

Charles Moore's reflections on the week

The opinions of the Sun newspaper are not noted for nuance, so it has been interesting to follow its unusually careful choice of words about the Olympic torch on its way to China. On Monday, under the headline ‘Freedom Wins’, the leading article called the fact that the torch managed, though with difficulty, to continue its relay through London ‘a triumph for democracy’. It claimed that the British government was speaking out for human rights in China and Tibet, and ran a line presumably planted by the government about how Mr Brown would meet the Dalai Lama next month. It declared that the torch stands for ‘peace, friendship and unity’. It did not comment on the weird, violent Chinese guardians of the flame — actually the People’s Armed Police — who surrounded it. The next day, after the torch had been put out three or four times (accounts differ) in Paris and was then hurried away in a bus, the Sun said that each country through which the flame passes ‘owes a duty to the Olympic legacy to keep it burning. The French should have guarded it properly or had nothing to do with it at all.’ On its website, the Sun has an Olympic torch flickering on its masthead. What will it say if another country does as it rhetorically suggests, and decides to opt out of the relay? I don’t think it will applaud. What will it say if the relay is forced to stop altogether? Will its own torch gutter? In the old days, the Times was always the establishment paper which put forward the view of the prevailing elites (pro-appeasement in the 1930s, for example). Rupert Murdoch, who has a Chinese wife and many interests in her country, owns both the Sun and the Times, but now prefers the former as the establishment voice. The Sun’s support for the torch has very little to do with the views of its readers, or even with the Olympics, and a great deal to do with Mr Murdoch’s possibly correct political and commercial calculation that China will fairly soon rule the world and so should be appeased. Tibet, to pursue the pre-war analogy, is an even further-away country than Czechoslovakia. The Olympic Games took place in Berlin in 1936 and war began three years later. Will the West be ready to do anything if China invades Taiwan in 2011?

By chance, my latest threatening letter from TV Licensing (see many previous Notes) arrived with the same post as a direct mail shot from Sky TV. The TV Licensing letter attacked me for not responding to ‘our recent warning’ that I was soon to receive an ‘enforcement visit’. I may suffer a court appearance and a fine, it went on, and concluded: ‘You must not ignore this letter.’ I shall ignore it, however, since my reason for not buying a television licence is that I do not have a television. The Sky TV letter was much more cheerful: ‘Your flat’s all set up for Sky TV’, it announced on the envelope, and offered me TV, Broadband and Sky Talk landline calls for £16 a month all in. The first sentence of the letter says, ‘We believe that your building has a communal satellite system, which means you could enjoy all Sky has to offer in your flat without having your own minidish.’ The two letters almost perfectly illustrate the difference between a free-market system and a government-ordered one. Both want my money, for comparable services, but the agency of the BBC has to claim it by law and demand it with menaces, whereas the free-market Sky knows that it can only get it by being nice to me and offering me something I might want. I shall not pay money to either, as it happens, but, unusually (see above), I find myself having a warm feeling about Rupert Murdoch.

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Pat Clarke

April 10th, 2008 10:39am

I've been warring with TV Licensing for years, on & off, and followed your references to it with wry amusement, occasional outrage and complete empathy.

There have been several periods in my life when a bit of belt-tightening has been necessary. When casting around for economies, paying for a television licence tops the list, I really can live happily without the mostly banal offerings. It is not illegal to own a television without a licence provided it isn't installed to receive broadcasts. I am always scrupulously honest in that respect: the television gets packed up and stored in the garden shed; I do not even use it to watch videos or DVDs.

On these occasions, when I receive the usual reminder to renew the licence, it includes a form that you can sign to declare that you have no equipment installed to receive broadcasts. I duly sign and return it. I then get the threatening stuff about inspection visits, which of itself proclaims that my signature to a declaration is worthless: in other words, I am lying. This doesn't sit awfully well with me since I am, in fact, telling the truth - amply witnessed by visiting progeny wailing "Mum, where's your tv gone?". "It's in the shed and, no, you may not resurrect it to watch Big Brother".

So where am I at this stage? With no television connected, I am pursued by TV Licensing and on the receiving end of stick from my family. The latter is ample motivation to confront the former!

Thus, over the course of at least ten years and probably more, I have fought my corner. I have suggested they forward to me their legal justification for entering my home with no evidence of crime committed. They never managed that! I have suggested that as woman living on her own who does not admit strangers to her home, their inspector should be accompanied by a uniformed member of the constabulary whose credentials I can check. The last time, I suggested that they park a detector van outside my home and monitor it for reception.

So far, I have been unmolested by 'inspectors' and simply buy a new licence when I feel like it.

Trying and time-wasting as it is to confront them, you can at least come out on top at the moment. If the day ever comes when they can kick down your door to discover that you're telling the truth, which under this government is hardly a remote possibility, I think I will jump under one of those delayed trains.

Slightly off at a tangent, but I had a long-running dispute with South East Water which was trying to charge me for money I simply didn't owe.. Months of paying for Recorded Delivery because they will ignore anything else. Did you know that? Anything THEY send YOU is assumed to have arrived, even though it frequently doesn't. But anything YOU send THEM is ignored as not received unless you use Recorded Delivery. Eventually, it was resolved in a letter from South East Water telling me "we discovered you were telling the truth". I will not pursue my reaction to that, my blood pressure is only now getting back to normal!

DougS

April 10th, 2008 3:31pm

Chuck: I'm generally with you: You're incredibly insightful and have a wonderful writing style.

I'm gonna' disagree with one thing here: your statement that the letters from Sky and the BBC illustrate the differences between the government and the free market.

They illustrate the difference between offering you something and trying to get paid for something (even if they are mistakenly convinced that you have a TV).

I think you'd agree that if you took Sky and then didn't pay that their letters would become increasingly like those of the BBC; exactly like them, in fact, culminating in a threat to take you to court.

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