I’ve just been phoned by TV Licensing. They’ve been trying to phone me for a while (I know because I googled the incoming number) but I usually answer to silence so I hang up. This time I listened to the silence for about 20 seconds before someone came on the line.

Anyway, my attitude to TV Licensing is this: I do not do business with them, therefore they are strangers. I don’t give out information to strangers on the telephone. The conversation went like this (paraphrased from memory):

TVL: This is just a courtesy call about your TV license at [old address]
Me: Okay.
TVL: I notice that your direct debit was cancelled in July last year.
Me: Okay.
TVL: Why was that?
Me: I don’t live there any more. [I slipped up here. I meant to say, “I no longer require a TV license for that address”.]
TVL: When did you move out?
Me: I really don’t remember exactly. [I should have said, “none of your business”, but was trying to be polite.]
TVL: Okay, what’s your new address?
Me: I don’t see why you need to know that.
TVL: Okay, fair enough. But we need to know whether you are licensed at your new address.
Me: I am licensed at my new address. [I should have said, “that’s not my problem.”]
TVL: Okay. Well, you may be due a refund on your old license because you were paying monthly, and therefore 6 months in advance.
Me: But you don’t think I owe you money?
TVL: No you don’t owe us money.
Me: Well, I’m not interested in any refund.
TVL: Okay, it’s your money, but I just wanted to let you know.

That was about it. To give them credit, they didn’t pressure me for information or threaten me. I suppose it’s legitimate for them to call me as I did previously do business with them (so it’s not quite a *cold* call). But they did seem surprised that I was so defensive. Most people probably just hand over any information asked to strangers who call from official sounding organisations.

See my previous encounters with TV Licensing.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Authorised Theft, TV Licensing at 10:40 AM EDT

1 Comment »

In most enterprises, when demand for one’s products increases, it’s good news. Press releases trumpet the fact, share prices go up, more employees are hired, extra office space is rented, profits soar and everyone is happy.

Excersise for the reader: Why is this not the case for houses, schools and hospitals?

Update: Perry de Havilland and Shane Frith have the same thought.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Introspection at 6:52 AM EDT

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Anecdote from an Austrian in a pub last night (no time to fact check so take it for what it’s worth): at one time Germany were offering a 25 cent refund on returned plastic water bottles to encourage recycling. Meanwhile, in Austria, Aldi and Lidl were selling bottled water for 17 cents. Visiting family in Germany, my Austrian friend loaded his car with water.

How “green” government subsidies distort economics: it becomes profitable to spend energy making plastic bottles, fill them with water, drive them a hundred miles, pour the water down the drain and sell the plastic, whereupon more energy is used to melt it down and make new bottles.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Enviro-Mentalism at 9:34 AM EDT

3 Comments »

Ed Felten at Freedom to Tinker discusses one of the (many) consequences of Moore’s Law: infinite music storage.

I think a lot of people are in for a shock in the next ten to twenty years: people tend to think linearly so exponential improvements in technology are hard to understand.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Links, Singularity at 4:21 PM EDT

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Guy Herbert has written an interesting article on Samizdata about the BBC’s reporting of a report about identity fraud. For all its criticisms of the BBC, it applies to most news reporting, and is an excellent warning not to take what you read at face value.

Also good on Samizdata: a discussion about Bjorn Lomborg (and AGW is really the same thing as above: as one commenter has it: “We’re a long way from the situation where such an orthodoxy has developed that dissenting voices in the academies are silenced. It only seems that way because we see so many of the True Believers on TV.”) and Brian Micklethwait’s thoughts on taxes.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Authorised Theft, Civil Liberties, Enviro-Mentalism, Links at 1:43 PM EDT

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I don’t understand the Globalisation Institute’s stance:

The Brussels-based think tank Globalisation Institute has recently called for a Europe-wide ban on the sale of PCs with preinstalled operating systems.

[…]

The European Commission has signalled its desire to see genuine competition in the operating system market. Facilitating a fully-liberalised, unbundled market will be good for consumers and good for the economy too.

What’s liberal about banning certain types of contract? It’s not as if people don’t know they’re paying for bundled software. If they really don’t want it, they’ll shop elsewhere. The market will decide.

How would the GI’s ban treat Apple computers? The operating system is certainly bundled with those.

The existence of Apple, Linux and homebuilt PCs indicates that there is genuine competition already, thank-you very much. A large market share does not a monopoly make.

Posted by Rob Fisher as Civil Liberties at 8:25 PM EDT

1 Comment »

I saw the latest Tarantino movie last night, Death Proof. It’s a fun film. If you like Tarantino, you’ll like it, if you don’t you won’t. It looks fantastic. It’s slow, so I settled down and sat back to enjoy it, only for it to suddenly shock me with its brutality. It’s full of the usual Tarantino dialogue.

This is my favourite bit:

Lee: You carry a gun?
Kim: Uh-Huh.
Lee: Do you have a license to carry it?
Kim: Yeah, when I became a secret service agent, they gave me a license.
Lee: Oh, I didn’t know you were… Ok. I didn’t say it. Stop looking at me. I didn’t say it. God! Did you know Kim carried a gun?
Abernathy: Yes. Yeah. Do I approve? No. Do I know? Yes.
Kim: I don’t know what futuristic utopia you live in, but in the world I live in, a bitch need a gun.
Abernathy: You can’t get around the fact that people who carry guns, tend to get shot more than people who don’t.
Kim: And you can’t get around the fact that if I go down to the laundry room in my building at midnight enough times, I might get my ass raped!
Lee: Don’t do your laundry at midnight.
Kim: Fuck that! I wanna do my laundry whenever the fuck I want to do my laundry.
Abernathy: There are other things you can carry other then a gun. Pepper spray.
Kim: Uh, muthafucka tryin to rape me, I don’t want to give him a skin rash. I wanna shot that nigga down!
Abernathy: How about a knife at least.
Kim: Yeah, you know what happens to muthafuckas who carry knives. They get shot! Look, if I ever become a famous actress, I won’t carry a gun. I’ll hire me a dude dirt nigga and he’ll carry the gun, and when shit goes down, I’ll sit back and laugh, but until that day, it’s wild west muthafucka!

(It’s part of a double bill called Grindhouse in the USA but was released on its own as Death Proof in the UK.)

Posted by Rob Fisher as Reviews, Self Defense at 12:44 PM EDT

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