231–240 of 337 posts
Not really sure what the point of them is, other than documenting some of the weird stuff people doing customer service find themselves responding to.
> Having kept all my TVL/BBC envelopes ...
Well, that's a thing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The absurdity in the UK is that it's a License fee and that there is this whole absurd enforcement system. In other countries it's a tax if you don't pay it, you are essentially not paying your taxes. I am OK with a universal tax for a universal service even if I don't use that service. What I am not okay with is fraudulent threatening letters, weirdos creeping in the bushes trying to see if I am watching TV and goon…
Had a white van with huge antennas parked out front for a few days when they were refusing to believe that a large share house of young people didn't watch TV. This was in 2015. We didn't own a TV nor watch. The van soon left after a few days but left a full bottle of yellow liquid. Makes a fun story, but yeah they threaten you a bunch and it's quite sad.
It sounds so farcical now, in our age of ubiquitous surveillance capitalism.
A "TV License" is one of those things I alway assumed people were making up to satirize the claims of over-regulation & bureaucracy in the UK. Finding out it was real was a mixture of hilarious and sobering.
> A Licensing officer may call at your property not to collect the letters but to check that you are not watching a TV. Just the thought of this is funny. What kind of uniforms do TV Officers wear? Do they get to carry a weapon? What happens if they find you watching a TV? Amazing.
I worked for an old company that had a lot of old processes and paperwork. Many bits of paperwork had a "do not write below the line" type areas. I always wrote something ... nothing ever happened. I once hand delivered some paperwork (I was running late) to HR rather than using the inter office mail service. I asked them about it, they told me "Oh you must be Mathew..." I was HR famous. They didn't actually mind, th…
Many bits of paperwork had a "do not write below the line" type areas. I always wrote something My favorite is those company get-to-know-you questions written or oral that ask you to yourself in one word. "Does not follow directions."
I wrote seven pages with diagrams, charts, and explanation of the weights and air resistances of various metal alloys that most planes are made of. There were foot notes and an additional two pages of citations.
And on the tenth page was just one line, "I made all of that up. I hope you enjoyed reading this."
I got so much hate mail from the physics department. It was amazing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hilarious that every time, they responded in a way that was technically on-topic, but totally ignoring the actual questions being asked. Like someone found one word in OP's question, then mindlessly recited a random form response associated with that word.
A Small Language Model...
A "TV License" is one of those things I alway assumed people were making up to satirize the claims of over-regulation & bureaucracy in the UK. Finding out it was real was a mixture of hilarious and sobering.
The BBC is prized in the UK, and rightly so. Most national broadcasters have strong public interest provisions but the Beeb has a history and culture of strong independent journalism, incredible childrens and family output and acts as a mainstay anchor to support a creative industry. There is plenty to criticise but the weird ring fenced tax that we pay is incredible value for money (films, tv, web, journalism for th…
It would be easy to say they don't make anything like Kenneth Clarke programs anymore but even late Blair era documentaries seem to be fading away. Nature stuff is still good though but that's just cinematography.
This will probably kill it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only a fool rearranges the objects in a tech sector professional's office. You never know which of them is of vital importance to the continued uptime of the payroll server. This lesson brought to you by a mashup of Chesterton's Fence and The Sorcerer's Apprentice.
You moved WHAT?! That jacket was specifically adjusted and positioned exactly there because it blocks just enough of thr EM interference from the old ass microwave in the small kitchen three floors down! If the jacket isn’t there and Marge in accounts receivable starts making her breakfast burrito early one morning while they’re running payroll the main query times out and doesn’t automatically retry, so the header o…
We build the best Rube Goldberg machines - they take out payroll when the mouse trap falls.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I appreciate state TV content and watch it regularly. But this argument just doesn't hold water. The service is so wonderful that they had to make it a criminal offence not to be a subscriber? And surely an "independent" TV station would have to be one which is not completely controlled by the state.
It's only an offense if you watch live TV [1]. They could have just lumped it in with your taxes, like they do in many other countries with state TV, but this approach in theory lets you opt out, even if they like to check up on you all too regularly. I suppose one downside of the BBC approach is tax is usually proportional to your income, while the TV license fee is not, and in fact you need to pay it even if you ha…