Incredible story, Stage Manager! It seems that George Orwell's 1984 has well and truly arrived in the UK. I live in Canada, and have never owned a TV, but I'm almost the only person I know who doesn't have one. I fairly much stopped watching it by 1985, but was over at a friend's place watching DVD's of "The Sopranos" on the weekend, cos he wanted me to see it. Darned good show. Since we watched it on DVD I was spared seeing any damned commercials. That's the only way I will watch, if there are no commercials.

I am serious about the 1984 thing. You story is frightening. The fact is, TV is the greatest enforcer of conformity and unthinking consumerism that there is in modern society. It is the brainwasher, the true opiate of the masses. It is the thief that steals people's time and trivializes their relationships. It destroys family life. It encourages every form of unthinking and automatic behaviour. It is a mere servant to enormous marketing schemes.

Once you get a bureaucracy that actually threatens you for not having it, then things are approaching the final crisis as regards the survival of genuine human freedom and sanity.

The reason the Sy$tem is so upset that you don't have a TV is: you are out of the propaganda loop and you are potentially dangerous to the Sy$tem's survival, because believe me...if you don't have a TV you are a true radical. You're a free thinker. You're someone that the Sy$tem does not want around. And the other reason they're upset is that they want your money. Money is God in this Sy$tem. Don't forget that. They who do not willingly worship at the $ altar in the prescribed manner are subject to excommunication or worse.

- LH