This Quote of the Day at the Adam Smith Institute blog caught my eye:

We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission …

A few years back when we were still in Warsaw we needed a UK base near our boys’ school for quick visits, so we bought a flat. Imagine our surprise on moving in when waiting for us on the doormat were disagreeable and menacing communications from the TV licensing people.

One of these documents warned in vivid terms about the risk of prosecution for non-payers. It included a diagram of a ‘typical courtroom’ complete with the places allocated to the Judge, the Prosecution, the Defendant and so on.

The intention was obvious. To scare people in a primitive way.

As we did not intend to use a TV for watching live TV programmes at that property, I wrote back asking why the licensing authority had engaged a design team too crass to be used even in Ceausescu’s Romania.

They did not even have the courtesy to reply.

CrazySquirrel too has been battling with these odious people.

What has happened to public life which allows public authorities in the UK even to think that they can behave in this way, let alone actually do it?

Are we now … inverted? If not, how would we tell if we were close to being so?

Update: First they came after me and CrazySquirrel. Now they are persecuting John Redwood.

Memo to next government: abolish all TV licensing collection bodies, and let those people who want to pay the TV poll tax do so at their leisure.