I’M grateful to Allan Steele for his thoughtful letter (March 10) on the cessation of the free TV licence. Like him, I also received the patronising letter from TV Licensing with the blandishment "Don’t worry though, you don’t need to do anything now….”.
I’ve been an honest taxpayer all my life (and still am), and to me, the advent of a free TV licence at 75 was a bonus. But entirely to the machination of government, the BBC is now unable to fund this. So I’m in a position of having had a privilege granted, and now harshly withdrawn.
Just as I’ve been an honest taxpayer, so have I been a law abider. But something inside me is turning, and frankly the feeling grows that I feel disinclined to stump up from June 1 this year.
So what do I do? Sit here at home until the boys in blue turn up, and carry me off in chains?
Your advice please.
Gordon Casely, Crathes.
WE are exhorted to ignore loyalty and change energy and other suppliers regularly to benefit from cheaper tariffs. Consequently in a recent burst of my own diminishing energy I changed my energy supplier, my broadband and telephone supplier, and finally my TV subscription service, all encouraged by projections of significant cost savings.
As part of their withdrawal procedures two out of the three previous suppliers are now debiting me with early exit charges. Whilst I can have no complaint about that as it was stated clearly in their terms and conditions, as the third one made no such charge I began to wonder what was the justification for any early exit charge at all, which by any other name is a fine for leaving? After all, they lost my business simply because they had become uncompetitive, so why should they be rewarded for that? Also I pay for other ongoing services such as various insurances and subscriptions and don’t expect a fine if for good reason I decide to cancel any of them.
Alan Fitzpatrick, Dunlop.
Long live love
NEIL Mackay comments to the effect that "what's changed is the way we look for love, find love and fall in love ("Generation lonely unable to find love in the digital age", The Herald, March 10). I have to say that I do not see the somewhat bizarre procedures of Love is Blind on Netflix, as described by him, catching on with the masses other than as some kind of off-the -wall entertainment.
Those of us of advanced maturity have been looking on, sometimes taken aback and sometimes perplexed, at the changes in lifestyle which have taken place in the last 70 years or so. We have moved on so much from boy meets girl, boy proposes, they get married, often in church, and later have children. Now we have in Scotland the number of marriages falling significantly and about half of births being to unmarried parents – in other words, quite a societal shift.
Mr Mackay also observed that "love has mercifully remained the same" and that I would agree with and call in support the ageless words from 1 Corinthians 13: "Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."
Long may it continue to be so.
Ian W Thomson, Lenzie.
In loo of supplies
IF this toilet roll outrage goes from bad to worse I intend to follow Thelma Edward’s example ( Letters, March 10), buy several other papers and, with the exception of The Herald, put the sorry business all behind me.
R Russell Smith, Kilbirnie.
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