folio

Even if you’re a law abiding citizen, nearly any interaction with officialdom nowadays leave you feeling like you’re guilty of some crime.

Ring your doctor’s surgery and you will be greeted by a long recorded message telling you not to waste their time, that rudeness will likely get you struck off their list, and aggressive behaviour will be reported to the police and will likely end in arrest. I wouldn’t be rude anyway, but I wish this contract worked both ways.

Interactions with the police are not much better. I was once stopped on my late-night journey back from the hospital with my sick wife. The reason they gave for stopping me was, “you were driving extremely carefully and it looked suspicious.”

On another occasion they hammered on my door and demanded I move a fully-taxed and legally parked vehicle from outside my home. When I explained that I couldn’t move it because it was broken down and needed a special part, they became aggressive, threatening that if I didn’t move it immediately they would take it away and fine me. All this, because our too-narrow road has been made a bus route, necessitating all residents to park partially on the pavements to cause maximum inconvenience to mums and the infirm.

Yesterday a trip to the tip brought this presumption of guilt back to the fore. On my first trip, the back of the car filled with the rotten timber that had held a shed together for a decade, I’d discover there was now a fee for disposing of this kind of load. Fair enough, I paid immediately, and proceeded onto the skips, finally understanding why there has been a marked increase in fly tipping around the town.

My second trip, however — the car this time filled with assorted household waste, cardboard boxes and a broken vacuum cleaner — left me feeling like I had something to hide. Perhaps my face reads “guilty” to those that encounter me, for this inbound trip would require a full interrogation, demanding I list exactly what I was carrying, all delivered in an “I don’t believe you” tone.

Perhaps my voice sounded flustered, but that was only natural given that it was one of the hottest days of the year, which I had spent working in that sweltering heat. Or perhaps it was just my normal disjointed speech, that no tip manager would have the training to accommodate. Still, I remembered to mention the seesaw part of an old garden swing, which seemed to satisfy him as the missing part of my suspect load. Now we just had to prove that I lived in the county. I handed him my driving licence, which he scrutinised with all the authority of the UK Border Force. I was free to go.

Feeling sufficiently guilty of a crime I had not committed, I drove on, reflecting on the configuration of our society in which we’re all supposed to feel perpetually on guard, lest we fall foul of some minor infringement that will result in a fine or some public servant being rude to us.

Possibly the worst offender is the TV licensing regime, in which ordinary householders are threatened and harassed by enforcers demanding the £159 annual fee, followed by the right to inspect their property for evidence of television watching on the premises. In the UK, you have to pay a mandatory fee if you watch live television, regardless of where it is broadcast, and for using the state broadcaster’s iPlayer.

I don’t remember the last time I watched live television, and if I use iPlayer, it is extremely infrequently. I’ve become one of those middle aged men who mostly just watch carpentry channels on YouTube. The kids, meanwhile, only watch Turkish comedies and dramas, also via YouTube.

But despite not technically needing a licence, we pay up simply to avoid the bullying intimidation of the folks at Capita. Yes, we’ve had plenty experience of that from our non-television-watching days.

Ironically, it was during my mother-in-law’s first visit to the UK that we had to obtain a TV licence, in order for her to watch live shows from Turkey via the internet — broadcasting that would cost the UK nothing. We continued to pay with the arrival of children, given the value of Cbeebies in nurturing early learning.

Nowadays, though, we honestly pay it simply to avoid harassment by the authorities. Unfortunately their threats have teeth: nearly 50,000 people were prosecuted for non-payment last year, and over 40,000 convicted, resulting in a criminal record. Mostly this effects people already living in poverty.

It’s sad that these kinds of interactions are the daily experience of many of us: being made to feel guilty despite having done nothing wrong. Most letters from authorities nowadays include some sort of threat for non-compliance. It’s as if we’re meant to feel perpetually on edge. For sure, we will be kept in line.