“How you can possibly enforce that?” asked the BBC man, somewhere in between the 96 daily reminders of how you can watch BBC News online. “We can and we will,” was the gist of the not particularly convincing reply. Still, it’s nice to see that, just as small businesses are putting the worst of the recession flames out, TV Licensing wants to open another can of petrol.

But why pick on small businesses? During his convoluted explanation of what you can and can’t do, the enforcer explained that you don’t need to buy a licence to watch BBC programmes on iPlayer after they are broadcast.

Can someone explain the logic of that to me? A small businessman that wants to watch Sky News during his lunch break has to pay £140 for the privilege, even though Sky (or any other commercial broadcaster) doesn’t see a penny of the licence revenue. Meanwhile, someone who wants to cherry pick the best of the BBC’s output and watch the HD streams on iPlayer can do so with impunity.

I can’t see any good reason why iPlayer viewers should be exempt from the TV licence just because they’re not watching it live. The programmes still cost the same to produce; in fact, they cost even more when you consider the bandwidth fees and other costs associated with maintaining the iPlayer.

If TV Licensing is so desperate for money that it needs to apply the thumbscrews on small businesses, perhaps it should tackle the iPlayer freeloaders first.

I renewed my TV licence online last night, and was pleasantly surprised to discover the option to receive my new licence via email. That must surely qualify for a discount, I thought to myself, having saved the TV Licensing people the postage and printing costs, only to have my dreams of a 50p discount crushed when arriving at the payment screen.

And just to prove TV Licensing really haven’t got a handle on this interweb thingy, I got the following message after I’d stumped up my £139.50:

“Once your transaction has been processed and accepted a new TV Licence will be emailed to you within 3 working days”

I’ve ordered TVs online that have arrived faster than that.