Sir, - On reading your report of the adjudications by the Advertising Standards Authority on a number of advertisements I am prompted to point out that Teilifis Eireann is currently perpetrating what I would judge to be a clear breach of these same standards. I refer to the advertisement, threat, ignorant bluster, or whatever it might be called in which a male person proclaims in stentorian tones that to be in possession of an unlicensed television is a crime. Crime me foot! Crimes are committed by criminals, but on this basis your short-sighted granny who parks on a single yellow line is a criminal and a menace to the Republic of Ireland and all who sail in her. What inflated bloody nonsense!
But this is not a first offence for Teilifis Eireann which has never been slow to use such tactics in the interests of gouging money from the public to feed its insatiable maw. Some years ago, I recall, there was an advertisement which clearly implied that Gestapo types, specially bred and brutalised by the Post Office, could break down your door in the middle of the night and cart you and your kin off in a truck if you were unable to produce a licence and were not related to a bishop or a TD. - Yours, etc., M. A. Farrell,
Greenview,
Longford,