What are they thinking of, those who collect our TV licence money? You may have seen the posters – a huge memory chip which, vastly magnified, looks like a cityscape. Beneath, these words are writ: “Every unlicensed address is in our database. Evasion is not an option” (look on my database, ye viewers, and obey!). Put out by TV Licensing – a consortium of companies contracted to the BBC – it is a disaster. It reminds us that, if we have a television, we must support the corporation on pain of criminalisation (licence fee evasion accounts for more than half the criminal convictions among women.) It does so by giving substance to a “surveillance society” and of 1984 – Big Brother spies on the population through telescreens.

Thus wider yawns the gap between the BBC’s status as a popular provider of information and entertainment, and its demand-with-menaces for a fee that looks increasingly authoritarian when set against free and subscription channels. ITV’s accelerating pull-out from news is another reason for needing the BBC. But we are used to exercising our choice on what we need. Sooner or later, that fact will hit the corporation that it does not put off the evil day by having its enforcer flex its muscle.