Today, September 1st, should be the day I renew my TV licence. For those of you not familiar with this British curiosity; a TV licence is required by the government for every home making use of equipment which receives or records broadcast television pictures. It is a bit like a tax, which ploughs money straight into the British Broadcasting Corporation (the beloved BBC). In reality it is quite outdated, but at over £135 per annum, not cheap.So me and mine have taken the (somewhat difficult) step of dispensing with our TV. Hooray! Catholics unplug your TV! And all that jazz... well, no - not quite. We are keeping our TV. But we're just not watching it.
Confused? I understand. But just consider, if we actually got rid of the TV set itself, what would all our furniture point towards? So the TV (and most importantly the DVD player) stays. But the aerial goes. And as long as we are not using this magnetic field generator to watch broadcast TV (or record it), then we are safely outside the scope of the dreaded TV licensing man. I'm sure they will bother us, but they can be rest assured our black box will only be used for watching movies which we have chosen to watch ourselves.
So why this sudden change of heart? Especially since the household (including Maddy) loves to watch TV? Well, we have found that its an awful addiction to mindlessly switch on the TV when an idle moment comes along. It really can be a waste of time. Besides, the BBC is just awful. If they produce anything exceptional, then I may be persuaded to buy it on DVD. Otherwise, we are bored with their reject and tired of funding it.Maybe one day we will get rid of the TV altogether, leaving a large space in the corner of our living room, and instead use a pull down screen and projector ("That Artoo unit and I have been through a lot together!!") but until that time, appearences will remain deceptive. And we, as a family, will actually be well and truly UNPLUGGED!
According to the TV Licensing people, you should be OK, but it might be a good idea to cut the plug off the set to disable it visibly. These people can be obsessive.
ReplyDeleteBTW, we rearranged our living room so that the TV is tucked away in the corner, and the fireplace is the focal point of the room. (I was outvoted when I suggested getting rid of it.)
If I cut the plug off then I may as well get rid of the whole tele. Because they don't tend to work without plugs, do they?
ReplyDeleteNo - I've just got rid of our digibox, scaled up the aerial lead, taped over the end, and bob's your uncle. I've checked by ringing the TV licensing people and they maintain that this is all that's necessary. But from what I've heard, they can be obsessive, so we are preparing to have a war on our hands!
Congratulations, Matt on your new freedom. You will find that you actually get to know more about current affairs without the news agenda of the mainstream media. It will be a great blessing for your family to be free of the MSM.
ReplyDeleteI would recommend getting a projector when you are able to. They are much cheaper than they used to be and you only need a law-grade one for the average sitting room. It gives an even greater sense of deliberate choice when you decide to view a DVD in this way.
We gave up tele last October because of the deplorable standards. We don't miss it one bit and our home doesn't feel under siege anymore. A lot more peace in our home.
ReplyDeleteWe can still play DVDs on the computer and also watch EWTN online.
The license inspector was suprisingly understanding when we told him we had given up tv because it had begun to conflict with our Christian and Catholic faith. He didn't even ask to enter our home and check.No problem there at all.
You have made a good decision. Life without tv is quite liberating. And when you can get a babysitter there is always the cinema.
Great blog by the way!
Jane Shurber
As a former British colony, one of the quirks Malaysia had inherited was the TV license. Although comparatively, we got off cheap at about £3 per annum at the current rate of exchange.
ReplyDeleteThe license was finally repealed a few years back as more and more people, myself included, subscribed to satellite TV which includes most of the terrestrial channels in its broadcast. Most kids think I'm pulling their leg when I tell them there was such a thing as a TV tax in my day =)
Ah well..what a shame!To me balance is the key...not too much TV but no harm in careully selected programmes..our favourite is Ray Mears Bushcraft..& the kids love waterworld..
ReplyDeleteThis is all very well at one level but absurd at many others. Why bury your head in the sand? Take the late Pope John Paul II's funeral and the election of the present Holy Father, for instance. Both events were beamed round the world on tele-vision, reached an audience of millions, even billions, and became one of the sharpest and most effective tools of evangelism ever known. The same applies to many other national and international events and countless other good things. You are, presumably, a rational being who can discipline yourself to turn it off or not watch when necessary. In a tele-vision influenced world how will you be able to stand up for truth when your colleagues discuss something they have seen, and you have not? Christ immersed himself in the base reality of the world in order to redeem and save it. If there had been television in his day you can be sure that the Pharisees would have been the first to refuse to pay their licenses. For much of the rest of their time they would be glued to the screen writing blogs. Get real.
ReplyDeleteIn a tele-vision influenced world how will you be able to stand up for truth when your colleagues discuss something they have seen, and you have not? Christ immersed himself in the base reality of the world in order to redeem and save it.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous - is the only way you can acquire information about whats happening in the real world, through the TV? If it is, then it says more about you than it does about Matt or the other families that decide not to have TVs and pay anti-Catholic insitutions like the BBC through TV licensing.
At least Matt's family will not be exposed to the crap that is frequently spouted through the MSM in regards to lifestyle, fashion and political views. It'll probably pay off as well in Maddy (my god-daughter) spending her efforts in better things. Our Lord didn't need to make himself aware of the "base reality of the world" because he was God - omnipotent - all knowing. He'd certainly wonder about the absurd theory that one needs a TV to know about the "reality of the world". I also suspect He'd be the first, along with St. Pio (who said that TVs were becoming the "tabernacle of Satan") to applaud Matt's decison to get rid of the black box with the right intentions!
Plus the fact that the TV is THE DEVIL!
ReplyDeleteWonderful stuff. I am pleased to see that the work of Mother Angelica and EWTN is described as the work of the Devil. She would not think so, nor do her viewers, nor do I. If you want to insulate yourself in a pious, stuffy cocoon that's your choice, but it was not the choice of Christ. He totally identified himself with the privation of the world in order to be able to take on the reality of human existance as our brother as well as judge and redeemer. Bad company was his chosen preference, he exposed himself voluntarily to Satan in the wilderness to show all how to resist temptation, he challenged the legalistic religion of his day to show the compassion of the Father, he stopped the brutal stoning of a sinful woman by turning the sin against her accusers and then told her, as he tells us,to sin no more. If you don't believe me, read the Gospels. Andrew and Matt would probably have preferred him to hang about the Temple for most of his life talking to the priests and eventually becoming one. Instead he chose to save mankind by dying on the cross, condemned as much by the successors of those priests as the civil powers. If you don't confront evil you won't be able to resist it.
ReplyDeleteWhy has Pope Benedict XVI so far gone down so well with the world and secured the respect of billions who otherwise would not have heard or seen him? Mainly beause of his magnificent address at Pope John Paul I's funeral and his later homilies before the conclave that elected him and at his installation. How was this achieved? By the tool of Satan himself, the television. It's better to discipline yourself by refusing to watch rather than take the easy option of showing how virtuous you are by making a show of not taking out a license. 'O God, I am not as other men are...' Yuk. Give me the way of Christ any time, and let Padre Pio fit the small minds that are drawn to him. I would rather have raw life than a whiff of violets.
Finally, those strident opponents of television, Fr Finegan and Joanna Bogle, had a lovely time recently interviewing each other in St Joseph's Hall at the London Oratory for a forthcoming programme on EWTN. Such fun! Pity that you and they won't be able to see it. Others would say, humbug.
Well done Doyles, we've been without telly for 12 years (as long as we've been married) and we don't miss it a bit, (although, for big sporting events dear hubby does have the occasional pang, but ususally manages to catch things down the pub if it's essential, like the World Cup!!)and we're well aware of the real world. We home-school our son too, and he's as normal and balanced as you'd want a child to be!! We never had problems with the tv licencing blokes, they were very sympathetic when they came into our home to check our tv was not tuned in, once I'd admitted to possessing one without the licence. They took one look at all the religious pictures - Sacred Heart, Crucifix etc., and said "I suppose you just use the tv to watch religious videos and things", I didn't have the heart to tell him we do watch "normal" stuff too!!!
ReplyDeleteBut it is so devilish - we have to be careful what our son sees when he's at other people's houses, as he is visually more sensitive (not a bad thing, I'd say) than a lot of children his age, and you too have a responsibility for what your little girl grows up being exposed to (as I'm sure you're well aware). Some people may find it easy to control their children's tv viewing, and others may not. The thing is there, and at the slightest flick of a switch, pornography, indecent imagery, and immoral tales can get into one's home, it only takes a few moments to destroy a child's innocence. I will always remember an incident with my teenage brothers, when my parents had gone out one night, they tuned into something showing a most indecent and degrading imagery of women, which I felt degraded by and disgusted with, and every time I tried to turn it off, they turned it back on, until I got so mad that I went and pulled the fuses out of the wall!!!
There are plenty of other things for people to do, we don't all have to be sucked in to this mode of filling our spare time, and once the thing's gone you don't have that awful feeling of having "missed" something - you are in control of your own time, not living under the timetable of the dreadful tv producers!!!
If any of my readers would like to enjoy the EWTN output, please visit here. It is not necessary to fund the BBC with our constant stream of money if we don't want to.
ReplyDeleteAnd maybe if you object to my 'cocooned existence' (if only you'd walk in my shoes for a day) so much, "anonymous", you should stop reading my blog.
My decision to not watch the broadcast television really makes me no less a Catholic. And believe it or not, Catholics all around the world loved the Pope long before he was turned into a celebrity by the television - in fact, the Pope has even been known to give sermons before TV was even invented.
Its hard to believe, I know - but my parents grew up without a TV at all! Now that we're in the age of the internet, we are able to access so much more than the television can offer us. The internet, too, can be a force for good or evil. That is the real debate here. What I would simply say is we don't need to be passive consumers anymore, plugged into the tele and mindlessly being bombarded by subtle messages and propoganda. This is what is happening in the lives of millions of families. There is so much more to life.
Saying that, I completely respect people's decision to keep their tele, even pay larger monthly subscriptions for satellite, because it can be used constructively and discriminately. But how many kids can really do that?
Next time the Pope dies and we have lots of Catholic coverage from the BBC (which was incidentally very well commentated on by our own Archbishop Vincent Nichols) maybe I will dust off the box, buy a TV license, and watch the few hours worth of footage. Or, of course, I could just use the internet; And not a penny will go to the anti-catholic, anti-life, anti-family BBC.
By the way, anonymous, you don't need a tv licence to watch EWTN, as far as I know, so you can have a TV set in your home, you can watch religious programs etc,on EWTN, you can also watch dvd's and videos of your own choosing, when you want, but you don't need to pay for a tv licence or be tuned in to the other channels, so that way you can watch those strident opponents of television on your television, without having "television" as it's commonly understood, in your home!! And I'm sure that Jesus loves those sinners without tv just as much as he loves the ones with it!
ReplyDeleteI had to smile at some of you responses to giving up t.v. It is exactly the same response we have had. Some people are intrigued, some admire the decision, and some people who don't know me I can see silently write me off as some kind of 'religious but harmless nut'. However there are a small minority who actually seem to take our decision personally and feel affronted (as if by rejecting tele I am somehow rejecting them). They feel obliged to begin listing all the reasons why they think t.v. is a good thing and why our decision to get rid of it is silly. I don't criticise their decision to watch t.v. but they feel the need to criticise our decision to 'live' without one. I suspect there is some insecurity hidden there somewhere. Not unlike those who don't drink alcohol are told by some that "a drop never hurt anybody" and of course you must have come across those who when they find out you go to church seem to get angry and say "you don't need to go to church to be a Christian", etc, etc.
ReplyDeleteThere are some who will always take it personally when you decide to do something that goes against the mainstream. But I am sure as Christians you are both well aware of that fact already.
We have been without tele for a year - its great! How can anyone pronounce judgement unless like us, they try living without it for a while,
Jane Shurber
Staffordshire
Lizzie you make my point re your son..being more sensitive..i find that with the no TV kids..they can't keep their eyes off ours..whereas presumably ours don't take so much notice...still 'live & let live!'
ReplyDeleteOver here in our pious stuffy cocoon, whilst honouring the fact that no doubt Jesus would have had cable, we have never had a single problem since we did what you did, Matt. We last had a TV licence in 2000 - and haven't had any visits or even any letters.
ReplyDeleteWe've got TV licensing in Singapore too! :)
ReplyDelete