Good evening. Another letter arrived from the TV Licensing Company today. I have got quite a collection now. Once again they are asking if I am watching the telly and if so, I need to get a licence. They say I must contact them before the end of October. I have phoned them before, and all you get is an automated recorded message, press 1 for this, and 2 for that, etc. I can't be bothered any more.
I've been out and about today. Go to the Post Office and pay my Severn Trent water bill. £28.04. This is for surface water and highway drainage, for half a year. There will be another bill coming from Anglian Water who supplies the clean water. Again for half a year. It will be slightly more than this one.
Then off I went to the phone shop in the big Tesco. They tell me 3g will soon be turned off, so I need a new phone which will receive 4g. The young man in there was ever so helpful.There were two cheap phones to choose from. I paid £32, which I thought was ok. It's got a few more features than my Nokia, but I shall ever only use it for calls and texts. He transferred all my numbers over to the new phone, and the price included a free £10 top up. So goodbye Nokia, you have served me well over a lot of years.
I thought I might do a bit of shopping while I was there. I never go in Tesco now I don't need the yellow stickers. It was flippin freezing in there. The store is far too big, full of crap you don't need. The non food section is massive. I almost had a panic attack, let me out of here. I quickly grabbed some sliced chicken for the cats and I was gone. Not hanging around.
Next I went to the Retail Park. The Range to get the cat food. Then Home Bargains for some more cat food and a few other things.
I've just put the central heating on for an hour. Feeling a bit chilly. One hedgehog on the garden tonight, so far. It's a young one who prefers wet cat food.
Thanks for popping in. Have a good weekend. Toodle pip. ilona
I get the same letters about the TV licence.
ReplyDeleteI am getting fed up with it. They must be desperate for some money. It used to be every two years, now it's every few months. I'm going to ignore it.
DeleteI enjoyed your video as always it seems like you are chatting in the room with me, very relaxed. We don't have TV license in USA and if I lived in UK I would not like to get a license. I heard Trump cut off funding for BBC, I had no idea the US was providing any funding. Maybe I am wrong? Our US budget is out of whack so I don't think we should fund it. Toodle pip friend.
ReplyDeleteHi Terra. Trump cut funding for PBS. PBS shows some BBC programmes and, like other broadcasters which show BBC programmes around the world, they pay for the right to show those programmes. None of those broadcasters fund the BBC directly. British BBC licence payers do that. You are only obliged to buy a tv licence if you watch BBC programmes on tv or online. If Ilona doesn't watch then she doesn't have to buy a licence, but that doesn't stop the licencing authority harassing her in the hope that she will pay the tv licence just to shut them up. I think that they are onto a loser there!
DeleteThanks Terra for asking the question, and thanks Tracy for replying. The BBC are losing licence payers all the time because people are fed up with only ever hearing one side of a story. You've got to look far and wide to get the full picture. The BBC has always had the monopoly in the past but now there are many alternative stations and broadcasters to tune into. They should be moving over to a subscribers model, but while they can still squeeze a few £'s out of those dedicated viewers, they will.
DeleteTV licencing are an absolute pain. I cancelled my dad's license soon after he died and informed them the property was empty. I received an email saying that they'd send a letter to the address in a few months to confirm that a license wasn't needed. I explained I was selling the house and asked them to write to my address as I didn't want mail sent to an unoccupied house. They informed me they couldn't do that as the post had to be sent to the unlicensed property. What absolute nonsense.
ReplyDeleteProof that we are all numbers on a computer database. Every property will have a record of it's past history. Who lived there, what bills they paid. A bit like a car having a record of past owners, insurance and MOT tests, etc. It's only going to get worse when everyone has a digital ID, that's why we have to say no now, while we still can.
DeleteSounds like you got a good phone deal. Have to admit, phones baffle me. I've had my current one for many years. I was in our big Tesco today for a few bits. Some of the prices were eye-watering! I have some lamb in the freezer from many months ago bought when half price. There was a leg of lamb today on the shelf for .....£49.99!!
ReplyDeleteWe've cut down our meat consumption due to prices and tastes. It's out of normal people's price range!! I also buy chicken for the cat, which is still an OK price.
I checked out a few prices while I was there. Everything was more expensive than Aldi. No matter how they dress it up, with the 'price match' thing, Tesco prices have steadily been rising. I sometimes pop into a small Tesco, but only if I am running out of something, and only if I am passing. I guess that's why they call them convenience stores. Thank goodness I gave up eating meat a long time ago.
DeleteYou are so fortunate with your phone plans and rates. Cell plans are horrible in Canada and to get a decent rate you have to constantly switch providers.
ReplyDeleteWhy did you stop hunting yellow stickers? It's about the only way people can afford meat or any other protein in North America.
I checked out a few phones, and prices while I was there, and was horrified by the cost of them, and baffled by the data packages on offer at extortionate prices. Who would pay anything up to £100 a month to be able to access the internet 24/7. They must be brain dead.
DeleteI lived on yellow stickers for several years, before and after I retired. It helped a lot with making ends meet, and it was fun to hunt out the cheapest food I could find. I retired at 60 with no savings, and only £200 in the bank, and still had a mortgage. I gradually weaned myself off the obsession, then found Aldi. The prices there are much better for my purse. Now 16 years later I am in a good place, all through discipline, and knowing the difference between a need and a want. My plans didn't include being skint forever.
I'm sure the new phone will serve you well ilona.incredibly my small little mobile I still use is twenty five years old! I still make calls and texts on it daily I would be sad when it stops working one day x
ReplyDeleteThey told me that my little Nokia would stop working when the networks change over to 4g. I'm not sure if that is true. I went with it anyway. The Nokia signal was becoming more intermittent depending on the area I was in. The volume was getting poor so conversations were difficult, and it stopped bleeping when a text message came in. I was constantly having to check it. Now I've got to work out all the bits and bobs of the new phone. The man (boy) in the shop set the date and time for me, and moved over all my contact numbers, thank goodness. Sometimes it pays to act the helpless old lady, ha ha.
DeleteHello Ilona,
ReplyDeleteWe can very much sympathise with you over the television licence. We have not had a television for over 40 years but we still get the threatening letters. At one point we did manage to contact someone and I pointed out that it surely was not a crime to not watch television. Since then, we do nothing and are still waiting for a detector van to park outside.
WOW, 40 years, that's some record. They don't give in do they. A lot of people will cave to the pressure, but not this tough cookie. I look forward to a visit from the detector people. I will keep them talking at my front door for as long as they can stand my waffling on. No, you may not come into my house.
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