All posts by Armin Grewe

Hi, it's just me.

Has TV Licensing run out of ideas?

I’m getting a bit bored and disappointed with TV Licensing. It’s only been just over a year and just like on television they are already resorting to repeats? Really?

Back in October 2024 TV Licensing asked me “Will you be in on 30th October?“. Now they’ve sent me an essentially identical letter just changing the date to 19th March:

Picture of a repetitive letter from TV Licensing
TV Licensing will not visit on the 19th of March

Come on TV Licensing, you can do better than that. Please come up with some new scary threat of made up nonsense I haven’t seen yet. Be innovative. Be creative. Give me something to look forward to. A really exciting new letter. No repeats please.

Waterside Series 2025 Race B in Aldermaston Wharf

Finally something a bit different from the TV Licensing nonsense of the last couple of months: With spring 2025 finally having arrived the annual Waterside Series canoe races are well under way. For Race B the turning point is in Aldermaston Wharf, literally outside my window. But as there are some trees in the way I went out to take some pictures. Here are my favourites from this year, click on a picture to open the gallery for the full size view:

Where possible I’ve added the race number to the picture, unfortunately I don’t have them for all of them, so I had to leave some as “unknown”. A lovely sunny and warm day for the race, the warmest day of the year so far.

Shock! TV Licensing have issued a code IN01O0 for me!

Well then, the first proper TV Licensing letter for 2025 has finally arrived. And it’s a new one. New for me that is. It’s telling me that an IN01O0 code has been issued for my address. Presumably to scare me as that sounds very official or something. A quick search tells me this isn’t really a new thing though, letters with this code (or variations of the code) seem to have been sent for years.

Picture of a letter from TV Licensing with code IN01O0
My letter about code IN01O0

The rest of the letter turns out to be rather bland and boring, essentially repeating a lot of the stuff I’ve read dozens of times now. Criminal offence, fine, formal notification, interview under caution, prosecution, the usual “scary” stuff. All with a lot of ifs, coulds, maybes and the like, as after all they can’t do any of those scary things if no offence is committed. Which it isn’t, as I don’t watch any live TV.

Now let’s see what the next letter brings.

TV Licensing is opening an investigation … that is already open

For some reason it’s dated 31 December 2024, however, as it only arrived this week I count it as the first (of probably many) TV Licensing letters of 2025. And it’s a bit bland and disappointing:

Picture of a letter from TV Licensing saying an investigation was opened
TV Licensing is opening an investigation … that is already open

I don’t know, is that the best they can do to start the year? Are their creative writers all on holiday? No new scary threat?

All it does is rolling out the same old tropes we’ve already had several times. Only to tell me that they’ve opened an investigation. How does that work? You already opened one, I have plenty of letters telling me that already. How can you send me an “official notice” then telling me you’re doing an investigation, considering you’ve been doing that for the last year?

Are you that inefficient? Shouldn’t you be getting somewhere by now?

Well, let’s see what the next letter will bring, hopefully it will be a bit more exciting.