Retracted free TV licences for the over-75s is another can of socio-political worms. For a start off, since the mid 2000s the TV licence has been categorised as a tax on owning and using a television receiver because it’s compulsory, regardless of whether the TV is used for watching solely commercial stations via antennae, cable and satellite or inclusively of BBC channels. It is iniquitous (because of the obscure ways in which this ‘TV Tax’ is collected, enforced and divided up amongst the various BBC departments, subsidiary companies, sub-contractors and other ‘unaccountability’). The fee is jealously guarded by the BBC – no other corporation has the level of autonomy the BBC exercises over money raised from direct public taxation, and it goes to extraordinary lengths to protect its funding, including excessive use of fines and even imprisonment for licence non-compliance. The BBC defends its monopoly of ‘national broadcaster’ and subsequent fiscal arrangements by declaring itself unique and impartial. Both of these claims are becoming difficult to sustain in the public’s opinion.
OK, so the free licence is abolished and those over-75s who’ve enjoyed freedom from this burdensome taxation now find a demand for payment shoved through their letterboxes. How many are going to pay, do you think? Some won’t even know what such a demand means, while others are going to ignore it in the hope it’ll ‘go away’ or that the TV licensing people can whistle for the money. I expect a certain number will get away with non-payment. But others may face legal action…. unpleasant!
My own opinion? I no longer believe the TV licence fee is ‘value-for-money’. There’s very little difference in the quality of general programming between the BBC and its commercial competitors, and I see that the BBC has itself become far more commercial than it once was. Folks often say ‘the BBC is a national treasure’. It
might have been, once upon a time, but now it cannot in all honesty occupy that moral high ground. Abolish the licence altogether...?
NB: Eric-the-Idle said (sarcastically) Britain now has so many ‘national treasures’ it’s become "
National Treasure Island"