Welcome to Britain. Now Shape Up!

It took us a few days to find the mail that had arrived ahead of us, letters that other residents in our building had set aside to await us. Two of the letters contained threats.

One of these letters was from our local council. Here in the U. K., your council tax is more or less equivalent to property taxes in the U. S., with a major difference being that the property owner pays the tax in the U. S. (and charges rents sufficient to cover this expense), whereas here, the residents themselves are responsible for the tax. And the council was letting us know that as we hadn’t registered with them within 21 days of signing our lease, we were eligible for a fifty-pound fine.

The second threatening letter was from the television licensing authority. In Britain, you must pay for the privilege of watching television even if the only stations you view are those that are transmitted over the airwaves. This letter began, in red letters: “YOU ARE ADVISED TO CALL THE PROSECUTION PREVENTION LINE ON THE NUMBER ABOVE.”

It continued: “You still have not bought a TV Licence for this address. If you are using TV receiving equipment to watch or record TV programme services, you are committing a criminal offence. Your details have now been passed to the Enforcement Officer responsible for NW10, who is authorised to visit your property and take a prosecution statement from you, should evidence be found that you are watching TV without a valid licence.”

We’re instructed to call the Prosecution Prevention Line immediately to forestall action being taken against us, or to call a different number to inform the authority that we are not using TV receiving equipment at our address.

“Note: If you have already been visited by an Enforcement Officer prior to receiving this notice, you may no longer be able to avoid prosecution by purchasing a TV Licence.”

Holly called the authority to inform them that we did not have and would not be getting a television. She reports that she first had to get through phone-tree hell. Then the phone rang and rang. No one ever answered it.

We told Lynette about this, and she said that she’d been trying for years to tell the TV authority in Portsmouth that she doesn’t have a television there. They also do not answer their phone. Once when she did get through, the person at the other end promised that she was making a note that Lynette did not have a TV. However, the letters threatening prosecution continued as before. Lynette’s advice is to ignore the threats. Apparently, compliance with the licence requirement is spotty even among those who do own television sets, and enforcement doesn’t seem to go beyond the threatening red ink.

Meanwhile, we’ve been trying to reach our Council, but we get varying stories about where they are located and how we should go about contacting them, and their letter to us, in spite of its threats, is less than informative.

We have appointments to receive our National Insurance numbers in order to access health services. The case workers will see us in October, more than a month from now. I’ve been assured by a nice man at the Inland Revenue office that if I am hit by a bus before I have a National Insurance number, I’m entitled to treatment as a U.K. resident whether I have a number or not.

And when I say “nice man at Inland Revenue,” I mean it. I am unsure of my tax status, since I’m a legal resident but have no U.K.-sourced income. When I called Inland Revenue, the man answering the call was courteous and went out of his way to offer paths to answering my questions. I’ll have to call a Status Inspector to get a Liability Decision about what I do or don’t owe the government of Britain, but short of being able to answer that question, this guy was thinking of other problems and concerns I might have and giving me web sites to investigate. He seemed almost reluctant to hang up. “Is there anything else I can help you with?” That kind of eagerness to help is, er, atypical among officers of the Internal Revenue Service.

Odds and Ends

Without broadband installed at home yet, I'm still relying on public Internet. This week, instead of a dedicated, hard-wired Internet business, I'm camping out at Carre Nero on Kilburn High Road. I've been here for an hour today, and so far the languages I've heard have been Czech (two men), Polish (the baristas), Brazilian Portuguese (three energetic, voluble men) and English in a variety of accents.

And speaking of accents, one of the pleasures of Britain is that sometimes the combinations of accent and ethnicity take me by surprise. I'm well accustomed to south Asians who speak with English accents. But one of our waiters at an Indian restaurant two nights ago had a wonderful Scottish accent. Well, of course there are Indian immigrants in Scotland. I just hadn't encountered the combination before, and it made me smile.