Kako se pocutiti kot kriminalec v Sloveniji (III)
It was a happy, nice day… my holidays just started, didn’t wake up till 9, had gone to bed at 4. Had a decent breakfast, got a pair of calls from my Glorious Monarchy that made my day. A week had gone without lightning storms and today I wouldn’t have to risk losing my life at the wheels of some idiot (an act called “usoda” in Slovene).
All seemed good, all seemed quiet. But… here you should never get asleep… because they never do.
How to feel like a criminal in Slovenia
Part III: How to pay for NOT watching TV
Life in Slovenia gets better by the day. You pay a miser 40% of yor income as taxes, pay “tax for working”, “basic health insurance” which is worth nothing, and “additional health insurance” which is not worth much either but gives you a fair (not complete) chance that they won’t let you die at the doors of the hospital. That, unless you left the card at home.
Even you have to pay for paying a bill, sometimes even more than the bill ammount itself. Join that with a rampant inflacija in the price of plastic-tasting Polish copies of your long-known products, and the €uro con, and you have no reason not to be happy 
Before we could blame Croats, now we can put EU as the cause of all our lack of glory.
“With euro prices won’t rise… we swear!”… My ass not!
- Halo?
- Do you see RTV at home?
- Hi, Mr. “Do you see RTV at home?”. Can I help you?
- You see RTV?
- Nope
- RTV Radio ?
- No…
- You gotta pay. Come down.
You just have to adore these casual conversations.
- Hi. What do you want?
- Let’s go upstairs.
Once up, the guy took out a brochure with the sillhouete of a naked guy playing a kind of flute… with his other “flute” hanging freely in the air. Probably shouldn’t have made the sex joke.
- What now… down again ?
- You gotta pay.
- Mind telling me why ?
- Cause you watch RTV. 11€ per month.
- ¿?
RTV is supposed to be the public TV of Slovenia. -With advertisements-. And a good excuse to add a new tax… to maintain a TV… with advertisements. Not that it’s the only place in EU or the world where it’s done, but… here they like to add a personal twist to everything.
Turns out not many people really pays this tax, mostly they get the bill and proudly send it to the purifying fire. So, the guy related that, after tagging real estate and its inhabitants like cattle -which ended in great benefits for people… like rent prices increasing by 200€/mo.- now they were gonna tag everyone watching TV in newly built buildings.
- Aam. Nice… there’s a little prob, though.
- Ow.
- I don’t watch RTV… actually I don’t watch any slov. channel.
- EVERRRRYONE watches RTV. Statistics say EVERRYONE here watches it x hours per week.
- Then someone’s watching my hours. This building has no aerial antenna, cause it ain’t da latest fashion, cable is borderly impossible to hire (13 months of waiting, plus 300 bucks), and the isolation is so thick that you cannot even use a room antenna. (As referred to in previous chapters). I just have satellite to watch Spanish / German TV. And gotta be thankful I can watch that.
- Liar. This building is technically prepared to watch RTV.
- By “technically” you mean…
- There are cable plugs in the house.
- But I don’t have any cable service hired, as I said.
- That’s not my problem. You have the chance to hire it.
(Ok… then you owe me 500 € for buying my oven. Not that you did, but u have the chance to.)
- (Gave him a risen-eyebrow look)
- And law says if you have electricity at home you must pay, cause you might plug your TV and watch RTV.
- Want a whiskey ? Need one.
- Why you complain. 99% of people just pay.
- (Pity, I just know the remaining 1%.)
- And this is done everywhere. In UK, Italy, in Spain…
- Spain you say.
- Yep.
- Funny, guess where I am from.
- Where ?
- (Sigh) In Spain we don’t do such thing.
- Liar.
- It’s included in normal taxes… lower than these here, btw.
- Liar. You have to have an additional tax. If not, how to run a TV station?
- Advertisements, perhaps? How do private TVs run?
- …
- Anyway, you can try TV if you want. I even lend you a cable so you can plug it into your magic plugs.
- No, just pay. 11€ for TV, including 3€ for radio. And you have to pay for computers too.
- WTF?
- Yes, people watches TV on computers too. You have computers. Many. Computers.
- If you have a special tuner card…
- Yes but you have to prove you don’t have it or you have to pay.
- Ok… have a look.
- No it has to be a inspector that will come if you don’t pay.
- Which I’m not doing.
The “gospod” grunts, takes a paper…
- What do I write.
- I’m not paying not only because I don’t watch RTV, but ’cause this building has no way of doing so, other than hiring cable, which I didn’t. So there’s no way to see RTV here.
He just writes “Doesn’t want to pay ’cause he has satellite”
- Sign.
- Sure…
Little Maji writes instead the real thing, which causes our friend to angrily take out another copy of the brochure and throw it at us.
On it you can read, that the only way not to pay is:
- Being 100% disabled. (Completely blind, deaf, vegetative and without university). If you’re 99% you’ll only escape if you get a glorious presidential pardon and a certificate of certification that you are certified to be deaf and need special assistance. Otherwise it won’t be considered.
- Social problems which cause that u only get money from social help. Need a certificate of certification as well, and only valid while you’re poor as a rat. Even if you can barely eat and don’t have money for a TV, you can pay RTV.
- Owners of TVs in areas where it’s impossible to get signal, have to pay radio anyway. In case RTV offers you to pay 50% of installation and renting a satellite card, you gotta pay.
It also ends with a nice speech… freely translated.
The role of RTV is so much more important than the TVs of those dirty foreign countries who hate us so much because they’re big and have big guns. Our basic function is to create programmes that develop our basic social values, like respecting human rights (the “presumed innocent until proven guilty” one ?), national culture (“kje so jo fukali v Baru?“, Big Brother and such things? or something else?), minority rights and respecting political plurality. The main task of public RTV is to ensure that we provide the means to achieve satisfaction for all people (who pay). And that’s what differs from commercial TV channels. (That you pay for watching the same you can see on private channels)”
After such a patriotic speech, I couldn’t but ask for forgiveness and beg to pay. But he was long gone, leaving a “U R sooooo sued” note, which our landlord seemed to take with humor. But he’ll be back.
As I said, nice way of starting holidays. So we went to Maja’s hometown… and discovered Radio SI (Slovenia International) now speaks just Slovene -small exceptions aside-. So much about spreading our culture abroad.
En fin, good weekend.
