The Art of Letter Writing # 18 or Flogging a Dead Horse

Written by Eoinín McAlpine













Dear Cretinous Apes of TV Licensing,


I write in response to your recent duet of attempts at correspondence to this address.

Ref: 358972ALLYOURMONEYISBELONGTOUS2473901

First of all, let me say that I adore the good cop/bad cop approach you seem to have taken to this next round of sparring. A simple lack of communication between departments, or a far more subtle shout out to any number of cop dramas on the box?

Based on your previous form, I’d lean to the former, as I get the impression that subtlety is a quality that is as likely to be found in your headquarters as it would be in a production meeting for The Jerry Springer Show.

Anyway, there I was, enjoying the glut of spare time one is afforded when one doesn’t own a television. I got to thinking that checking the post might be a good laugh, and boy, I was not disappointed.

The first letter I opened up was from Paul Stanfield, Customer Service Manager at TV Licensing. Paul shall hereafter be referred to as Good Cop, for he had the good sense not to startle me with aggressive colours and misappropriated capital letters.

Good Cop opened by thanking me (in bold, but I let it slide) for telling you that I don’t need a TV Licence. He then pulled off a rather smooth segue into the startling claim that over a third of people who tell you that they don’t need a TV Licence do, in fact, need one. The horror.

Then, a rather curious statement. “By visiting these addresses, we hope to identify licence evaders and ensure that those who, like you, legitimately need no contact from TV Licensing are not troubled unnecessarily in the future.”

To me, this seems to be an admission that you have already troubled me unnecessarily and believe me to be someone who legitimately needs no contact from TV Licensing, but that you still intend to trouble me unnecessarily in the future. Let’s not get bogged down in semantics though.

Exit Good Cop. Enter John Robinson of the Solent Enforcement Team, who shall hereafter be referred to as Bad Cop, or Mr Capital Letters 2009.

Solent Enforcement Team? I thought for a moment that there had been a typo. I’m not sure if there is also an Insolent Enforcement Team within your organisation, but if there is, might I suggest transferring Bad Cop to it immediately. His vitriolic tirade of thinly veiled threats would be right at home there.

After a trip to the dictionary, however, I discovered that the Solent is in fact the channel between the Isle of Wight and mainland England. Oh, great, I thought. That’s the last thing I need. A crack team of amphibious TV Licensing commandos swimming their way to my door in the dead of the night, pausing only to fine various crustaceans stupid enough to think that TV Licences are only required for land dwelling creatures.

What a letter. 36pt font, capitalised, resplendent in red ink as fiery as the rage in Bad Cop’s guts. Perfection could only have been attained if he had signed in the blood of the last poor misguided sod that dared to cross the Solent Enforcement Team.

Then came the threats, helpfully punctuated by way of dot points. Officers may call at your home at any time during the day, night, or weekend. They are authorised to use sophisticated detector equipment on unlicensed households. Every day they catch around 1000 evaders – YOU COULD BE NEXT.

It was heartening to discover that licensing fees are not being diverted to ridiculous things such as the upkeep of the BBC, but are instead funding roaming death squads of highly trained commandos and an almost constant stream of menacing letters that if nothing else are sure to keep ink cartridge manufacturers in business during the recession.

So let me take this opportunity to once again cordially invite you to our humble abode, still unbelievably devoid of a television. I won’t propose a time, as I get the impression the element of surprise is something that members of your species would find rather arousing.

Should the front door be too pedestrian an entry option, might I suggest rappelling down a rope from the TV Licensing helicopter and launching yourselves headfirst through the living room window, thus increasing the chance of catching us watching our non-existent television.

I should also mention we run a pretty tight ship here, so if your storm troopers could remove their boots or flippers before breaching the perimeter it would be much appreciated.

Please, make it soon. It’s not that I don’t enjoy constructing responses to your idiotic attempts at bullying me into paying for something I don’t require, as I’ve found our dialogue to be most entertaining. I simply long to see the physical manifestation of all these chest puffing abuses of the Caps Lock key.

You’ve got my number, and you obviously know where I live. So put down your keyboard, and if it’ll make you feel better, kick our door down and we can all have a nice cuppa and talk this silly business over.

Your pal,


Eoinín

The Art of Letter Writing # 17

Written by Eoinín McAlpine










Dear TV Licensing,


I write in response to your recent letter regarding the alleged absence of a TV Licence at this address.

Ref: 32074551GIVEUSTHEF&£!INGMONEYLEBOWSKI548919

I am not going to sugar coat this. I feel that anyone who has made a name for themselves in the TV Licensing game has probably seen more than I would ever want to see. The very fact that Licensing gets a capital L in your line of work says to me you mean serious business.

Serious business and rampant capitalisation aside, I have two pieces of information that may just shock the Pants off you. Yes, I do capitalise Pants, because I believe Pants to be as serious as Licences and Licensing. I digress. Tighten your belt and prepare thyself for my revelations.

First and foremost, I must inform you with mischievous glee that I do not possess a TV Licence, nor do I plan to purchase one in the future.

I consider them to be an unnecessary and overpriced expense, and quite frankly, an insult to other household electrical equipment that isn’t deemed important enough to command a licence, let alone an exorbitant fee.

Let’s be honest, the television isn’t much more than a colourful noise box when put next to the humble toaster. Does the toaster demand a licence and a fee? Of course not. It is the tool of the everyman, a simple, reliable device that will keep on belting out slice after slice of delicious toast long after your precious television has burned out halfway through another “hilarious” repeated episode of Friends.

The toaster hasn’t had to sex itself up every five minutes either, with whorish gimmicks like plasma, flat screen, digital, LCD et al. I’m not just some toaster fanatic, I think most household appliances have it over the television. Fridges keep food fresh. Lamps illuminate rooms. The television keeps Rosie O’Donnell employed.

As a champion for television, you may think my comparisons and claims are somewhat fatuous and remain unconvinced. If that is the case, then fasten your Pants and quiver in anticipation of my second bit of world-destroying news.

I do not own a television.

Not one. Oh, sure, there have been times when I’ve wondered if I’m kidding myself that I can live without 24-hour news channels giving live updates around the clock on absolutely nothing with their exciting graphics, informative scrolling text, and avant garde seating positions for the presenters delivering the aforementioned absolutely nothing. I can only imagine how far they’ve evolved - they’re probably on unicycles with lit sparklers shoved in their nostrils by this stage.

I did buy a computer monitor capable of receiving TV signals last year. My intention was to play DVDs through my laptop into the monitor, thus gaining a marginally improved picture and clearer sound. However, in a damning example of the declining standards of audiovisual equipment, it died almost instantly. Cliff, a store manager at Currys, was more than happy to refund me the full amount. Lovely bloke, Cliff.

And I suppose that’s where this trouble with you began. Perhaps Currys ratted me out to you, or perhaps your TV Licence slush fund is so overburdened with ill-gotten cash that you can afford space age technology that can pinpoint exactly when and where a television deal is going down. I’d lean towards the latter explanation, because I don’t believe for a second that Cliff would screw a brother like that.

So you sent me a letter, filled with arm-waving incredulous outrage that I could have committed the brazen act of purchasing a television without the accompanying licence. It would seem your spy satellites cannot detect when a television is returned to a vendor. No matter, I thought, I can spare a phone call to set this lot right.

The gal that was the unfortunate recipient of my wild claims of non-television ownership said that was fine, after stammering uncontrollably for a few moments. Perhaps she didn’t know what she was saying because this kind of thing doesn’t happen very often round these parts, or perhaps she was distracted by the fact that her Pants had been blown off by the shock of my announcement.

Evidently, it would seem that it is not fine. One only need cast an eye over your most recent correspondence with its threats of my details being passed on to your Enforcement Division (ooh, more capital letters!) to deduce that things are anything but fine.

I could just call you and tell you what’s what, but I don’t think I should have to waste another phone call, nor risk de-Panting another phone operator. Furthermore, without being able to watch World’s Wildest Circumcisions any longer, my life lacks a certain something.

So send the boys from Law & Order: TV Licence Enforcement Division out our way. Tell them to kick the door down and raid our tellyless flat. We’ll be here, reading books, listening to music, having the chat, sipping tea and writing frivolous letters to ridiculous organisations that feel they can misappropriate capital letters and demand extortionate fees for a device that can’t even make toast.

Yours sincerely,


Eoinin McAlpine

World's Deadliest: Leaf Tigers

Written by Eoinín McAlpine














The tiger - fearsome apex predator, king of cats, hawker of frosted breakfast flakes. They are blessed with bulk, power, speed, and are also more attractive than most other cats. Thankfully for Westerners, tigers pose very little threat to them as they are generally in secure enclosures in various animal prisons, or if you will – zoos.

Or are they?

Whilst few governments will acknowledge the fact, unexplained fatal maulings have been on the rise in most major cities since record keeping began in 1953. This trend has baffled authorities, and has generally been attributed to giant carnivorous rabbits or a defenceless subculture, e.g. cannibalistic Goths.

Although such scapegoats (or rabbits) cannot be ruled out entirely, some experts are of the opinion that a far more dangerous species is behind the attacks – the urbanised leaf tiger.

Largely undocumented, the urbanised leaf tiger is considered by most tiger enthusiasts to be the most formidable and deadly of the species. It is highly adaptable, and possesses a level of cunning that would shame a seagull.

Tigers are a highly adaptable species, but a bulk migration and subsequent creation of an entirely new sub-species of this magnitude has never before been seen. Sightings, although rare, have now been reported on all continents.

Although their Asian brethren are normally always up for a hunt, the leaf tiger is unique in that it will hunt only during autumn and early winter. Considerably smaller than other tigers, it will conceal itself in piles of leaves and wait for its prey to approach.

Their diet consists mainly of humans, the majority of which are children. This is not the choice of the leaf tiger, but rather a result of the enjoyment children garner from kicking or diving into piles of crunchy leaves. The minority of adults that still derive pleasure from such activities are also at risk, so too those that persist in raking leaves from their lawns.

Also easy pickings for the ruthless beasts are the oft slow-witted users of leaf blowers. The monotonous and irritating drone, coupled with the noxious fumes emitted from the contraption, announce the presence of the soon to be victim as effectively as a three-legged buffalo accompanied by a brass band.

Leaf tigers shun conventional dens, instead dwelling in a variety of temporary abodes; rubbish skips, construction sites, even trains or buses when not in use. They hunt both during daylight hours and after dark.

They are masters of camouflage, and as a result there are very few photos in circulation of the creatures.

It has not been proven conclusively, though it has been theorised that dogs may hold the key to preventing or at the least limiting the number of attacks. As they are a member of the Felidae family, leaf tigers are the natural enemy of the dog.

Although no match for a leaf tiger, dogs are able to detect an imminent attack and warn their owners of the potential danger posed by a pile of leaves. Domesticated cats, on the other hand, are entirely useless and would take great pleasure in seeing as many humans as possible ripped limb from limb by their burly cousins.















As urban sprawls grow, so too will leaf tiger attacks. With authorities unwilling to acknowledge what is clearly a serious threat, it is once again left up to Joe Sixpack to fend for himself and his family.

It would be both impractical and criminally negligent of this publication to suggest that citizens arm themselves with various high powered weapons and fire blindly into piles of leaves for a few months of the year.

Instead, we are advocating mass panic buying of dogs, preferably nothing smaller than a border collie. Furthermore, those unfortunate souls who currently own cats should immediately seek a trade-in for a dog at your local pound.

The pro-cat lobby is a vocal and powerful group. Should their precious feline power base suddenly decline, they will undoubtedly march on parliament, which will subsequently force the government to address the very real issue of leaf tiger attacks.

We do not want the leaf tiger eradicated. We simply seek a world in which people are free to frolic in leaves without fear of being disembowelled by a vicious beast. And if theme park operators desire to tranquilize, cage, exploit and demean these creatures by teaching them to do stupid tricks for moronic, morbidly obese, bumbag-wearing tourists that also wear those sunglasses with the extra bit on the side, then who are we to argue?