The Nice People Thread, No.16: A Universe of Niceness.

PasturesNew

michaels wrote: »

... and the rest of us normal, sensible people.

I'd say "wealthier". 2 people, 3m x 2m tent ... £18/night on a bank holiday. You find me a local hotel that'll put me up at £9/night and I'll change my arrangements

With a smaller tent, one person, one car would've been £8/night. In fact, it's probably cheaper to do that than pay a day's parking in the area for one car!

It was also quite "slack", due to being early season, so we were able to pitch up <9am upon arrival as there was a space we could immediately go to and get started ...

Pyxis

PasturesNew wrote: »

I'd say "wealthier". 2 people, 3m x 2m tent ... £18/night on a bank holiday. You find me a local hotel that'll put me up at £9/night and I'll change my arrangements

With a smaller tent, one person, one car would've been £8/night. In fact, it's probably cheaper to do that than pay a day's parking in the area for one car!

Then, factor in the cost of all the equipment, plus the Chiropractic treatments needed for all the cricks and ricks from sleeping in a tent, and I'd say you've got the price of a cheap B&B there!

PasturesNew

Let's put it in perspective... I won't be rushing to do it again and will never be an "equipment owner" ... but, if the weather man is saying "scorching weekend" and the phone rings and somebody else has all the gear and asks "wanna?", then I'm not totally against the idea

Wouldn't do it in the cold, wet, wind though. Nor somewhere overpriced. Nor somewhere "in the middle of nowhere". Nor somewhere "grim and a bit pointless".

SingleSue

Pyxis wrote: »

You see, I can 'sympathise' in a way with the Licence people. (Please don't beat me! )
(Oh, I'm all right, this isn't DT, it's the NP thread! Phew!)

The reason being that I would imagine the percentage of people defaulting on paying for a licence far outstrips the percentage which doesn't have a television.
The latter must be a very, very small number indeed, maybe similar to the number of people who don't have an inside loo! (Unoccupied properties excepted).

The big problem these days is that it's all complicated by the rules regarding what you can watch on catch-up type things or on computers.

Personally, I think that the BBC is worth every single penny of the licence fee. And more probably. The quality of progs on BBC4 is outstanding imo.

I don't have anything Sky or cable. I can't keep up with stuff I want to watch on terrestrial channels, let alone adding more to the mix....... the cost is far too great, I think.

The only stuff I have missed is Game of Thrones, after the first series which was on terrestrial, and possibly some of the old serials on Gold. Those certainly don't justify the expense of signing up to Sky or a cable channel.

Which reminds me; I'm going to have to buy the boxed set of Thrones.

As regards the 'threatening' letters, well, to innocent people, they may seem a bit heavy-handed, though not that much, but to someone who is skiving, they may provoke a response.
But then, I've usually responded and told them the position. Now that you can do it online, it's quick enough to do. It was more of a pain in the past when you had to post the form off.

The only letter I got which was a bit heavy was when I hadn't been to the flat for a while, so hadn't had the first letter; it was a bit more alarming than the first one, but tbh, all you have to do is respond to it!

After all, people like me, who pay for their licence, are subsiding people who watch TV and don't pay for a licence, so I can't really have sympathy for those people!


Edit.....as regards the frequency of the letters, well, to be fair, the TV situation in a property can change overnight, so it's understandable that they need to keep asking.
If the property is unoccupied, you give them a length of time for it being unoccupied, and then you don't hear from them again until the end of the stated period.

Oh I'm with you on the people lying to get out of it but my brother had tried everything to convince them but they were threatening court without even stepping foot inside the flat...so when they next arrived at his door, he insisted they came in, led them around the place, opened up all doors to cupboards, made them check under the bed etc.

He did have a laptop but no telephone line and no internet with no receiving capability on it (it was an ancient laptop and er, a bit broken), so would play DVDs on it and this was in the days when mobile broadband wasn't so available or cheap (plus his phone was a similar age to the laptop, so not capable of receiving it and normal mobile signal was horrendous too - he had to leave his flat and go across the road onto the beach to make a call!).

The difficulty they had in believing was that he was a complete dinosaur when it came to technology :rotfl:

One of their letters put Josh in a panic. He was in first year at uni and in halls, no TV and not even watching on Iplayer (even though you could at the time without a licence) and they all got rather threatening letters as a first contact. Having Aspergers meant that he thought he was doing something wrong because of the tone of the letter and he was about to pay out for a TV licence even though he actually didn't need one and thinking he was going to prison.

I had to contact them and they said they had to make the tone serious even if there was no wrong doing to catch the ones who weren't paying but couldn't quite get it into their heads that some in our society would be so scared by the tone of it that they would buy one when it was not needed (a nice profit maker) or feel so scared that it could trigger them into doing something silly (which was how Josh felt, he thought he was going to prison by the tone of the letter and knowing he couldn't cope in prison, was going to end it all).

They didn't care.

chris_m

SingleSue wrote: »

Oh I'm with you on the people lying to get out of it but my brother had tried everything to convince them but they were threatening court without even stepping foot inside the flat.

Like I've said before, bullying tactics.

They'd have been laughed right out of the court if they'd tried that with no evidence nor any attempt to obtain any.

vivatifosi

Many libraries now have TV licences. We can block people watching live TV on library PCs but people found work arounds, the licencing authorities know that and consequently wrote to libraries sending a licence demand. It just isn't worth fighting, but it is rather galling. This has happened in the last couple of years, just when we could have done without the added expense.

Pyxis

SingleSue wrote: »

Oh I'm with you on the people lying to get out of it but my brother had tried everything to convince them but they were threatening court without even stepping foot inside the flat...so when they next arrived at his door, he insisted they came in, led them around the place, opened up all doors to cupboards, made them check under the bed etc.

He did have a laptop but no telephone line and no internet with no receiving capability on it (it was an ancient laptop and er, a bit broken), so would play DVDs on it and this was in the days when mobile broadband wasn't so available or cheap (plus his phone was a similar age to the laptop, so not capable of receiving it and normal mobile signal was horrendous too - he had to leave his flat and go across the road onto the beach to make a call!).

The difficulty they had in believing was that he was a complete dinosaur when it came to technology :rotfl:

One of their letters put Josh in a panic. He was in first year at uni and in halls, no TV and not even watching on Iplayer (even though you could at the time without a licence) and they all got rather threatening letters as a first contact. Having Aspergers meant that he thought he was doing something wrong because of the tone of the letter and he was about to pay out for a TV licence even though he actually didn't need one and thinking he was going to prison.

I had to contact them and they said they had to make the tone serious even if there was no wrong doing to catch the ones who weren't paying but couldn't quite get it into their heads that some in our society would be so scared by the tone of it that they would buy one when it was not needed (a nice profit maker) or feel so scared that it could trigger them into doing something silly (which was how Josh felt, he thought he was going to prison by the tone of the letter and knowing he couldn't cope in prison, was going to end it all).

They didn't care.

Yes, I can see how that would have been a terrible problem.

It reminds me of a time when I had to drive into SE London, and my route took me round the Elephant (and Castle) roundabout.

There were congestion charge notices all over the place, but I couldn't work out whether I had crossed the boundary into the charging area or not. (Can't remember the details, but it wasn't clear, as it was right on the boundary).

Anyway, when I got home, I rang them and asked if their computer records indicated that I was liable........ after all, if I was liable, they would want to enforce payment, so my reg. no. must be on the system.

The chap I spoke to said he couldn't do that, even after I had xplained that I was right on the boundary and genuinely didn't know if I had to pay. He insisted he couldn't.

And if you paid by mistake, they couldn't refund you.

So, even though I felt that I hadn't crossed the boundary, after dithering about what to do, I decided that for peace of mind I'd pay it, as the fine for not paying one was a lot more. Can't remember what the actual charge was at the time..... a fiver?

So I paid it.

A while later, I got a iPad, and on google earth went slowly round the roundabout looking at the signs etc........anyway, long story short, as it turned out, I hadn't crossed the boundary.
So I needn't have paid.

Oh well, I suppose my exhaust fumes probably did float across the boundary, even if the car itself hadn't.
And it wasn't anything like the cost of a TV licence.

Mind you, can I assume that if you wrongly paid for a licence, you can get your money back?

PasturesNew

SingleSue wrote: »

....Aspergers meant that he thought he was doing something wrong because of the tone of the letter ... going to prison.

I'm the same. I've lived a life always feeling/fearing that I'm "doing something wrong" and will be punished. I am petrified of mail, especially brown envelopes or anything official looking. I am perpetually petrified that I've done something wrong that I had no idea about and the envelope will contain frightening court documents.

If I don't know what the rules are, if I can't work out the signs anywhere, I steer well clear. I couldn't understand the parking at the local Waitrose, so ended up parking 1/4 mile away where I understood the signs.... for fear of getting it wrong/misunderstanding.

There are increasingly more ways for the innocent person to "do something wrong" these days, it's becoming a nightmare. Speed limits round this way are a nightmare - so many changing speed signs, so much other road clutter/signage, I drive in a perpetual state of fear that I've missed one and will shortly be receiving a speeding ticket for unintentionally speeding after I've had "sign overload" because processing all that driving information can mean that something's overlooked.

Do I mind the pedestrians about to step into the road without looking, or do I read every sign on the road in case one's a speed change tucked behind a hanging basket?

Life is increasingly difficult and I suspect more people are "realising" they "have something wrong" as the information overload in today's society is bringing on those anxieties and fears - unless you know the root cause of it, as a response to some of the behaviours/thinking of an Aspie, then it can be very bewildering and make you more fearful of everything because "you don't know what you don't know - and even if you know something and are looking out for it, you can still "slip up" these days, with the way society is increasingly run by inflexible/unbending systems".

Even if you're in the right, the system doesn't enable you to fight/respond in a simple and straight forward way. e.g. many supermarket free car parks have tiny writing about not returning in the same 24 hour period.... else you get their parking charge letter and £100 "fine".

Pyxis

PasturesNew wrote: »

I'm the same. I've lived a life always feeling/fearing that I'm "doing something wrong" and will be punished. I am petrified of mail, especially brown envelopes or anything official looking. I am perpetually petrified that I've done something wrong that I had no idea about and the envelope will contain frightening court documents.

If I don't know what the rules are, if I can't work out the signs anywhere, I steer well clear. I couldn't understand the parking at the local Waitrose, so ended up parking 1/4 mile away where I understood the signs.... for fear of getting it wrong/misunderstanding.

There are increasingly more ways for the innocent person to "do something wrong" these days, it's becoming a nightmare. Speed limits round this way are a nightmare - so many changing speed signs, so much other road clutter/signage, I drive in a perpetual state of fear that I've missed one and will shortly be receiving a speeding ticket for unintentionally speeding after I've had "sign overload" because processing all that driving information can mean that something's overlooked.

Do I mind the pedestrians about to step into the road without looking, or do I read every sign on the road in case one's a speed change tucked behind a hanging basket?

Life is increasingly difficult and I suspect more people are "realising" they "have something wrong" as the information overload in today's society is bringing on those anxieties and fears - unless you know the root cause of it, as a response to some of the behaviours/thinking of an Aspie, then it can be very bewildering and make you more fearful of everything because "you don't know what you don't know - and even if you know something and are looking out for it, you can still "slip up" these days, with the way society is increasingly run by inflexible/unbending systems".

Even if you're in the right, the system doesn't enable you to fight/respond in a simple and straight forward way. e.g. many supermarket free car parks have tiny writing about not returning in the same 24 hour period.... else you get their parking charge letter and £100 "fine".

I totally get that.

A car park I know has a long stay section and a short stay section, but the fees payable on the machines aren't different in the different sections, so I'm never sure if I can park in the longstay bit with a 2-hr or 1-hr ticket (e.g. if there aren't any spaces in the shortstay bit.

Ther's no info on the boards threatening death if you park in longstay with a ticket for less than 3-hrs., iyswim.



I did once get a ticket years and years ago, driving along a dual carriageway I'd used for years, with a 50 mph speed limit, but I hadn't noticed that a very, very short stretch had changed to 40, (and then back to 50 a little bit further along).
So I set the camera off. 3 points on licence. (It was before the days of the remedial course option).

My fault entirely, natch. Should have seen it.

However, there was no obvious reason for the reduction in the limit, and interestingly, a few months later, it changed back to 50!
What was that all about?

It's been years and the points have long expired!

PasturesNew

1939 Register's about to appear on Ancestry, it won't be searchable, but it will be viewable.

For those not into this stuff, who wonder why I posted that - until now access to the information on the 1939 Register has been solely under license to their competitors FindMyPast, under their expensive subscription package (although you could search for people for free, and glean some of what you wanted, you couldn't view it without that subscription, so could see names/Year of birth but not address, occupation, or any other scribblings on the card).

This is the first time any other site has been able to make it available to their membership/viewers.