Boris Johnson should restore free TV licences for over-75s if austerity is really over: Yorkshire Post Letters

Sad to see your usually sensible columnist Jayne Dowle become the latest to target the BBC on over-75s licence fees (The Yorkshire Post, August 10).

Until a few years ago – when then-Chancellor George Osborne bounced the BBC into taking on over-75s licences as part of austerity – it was a benefit free of means testing and paid for by the Government.

But austerity is now meant to be over. Even before the onset of Covid-19 and the ballooning of public spending, Boris Johnson stated “austerity was just not the right way forward for the UK”.

So, consign one of its consequences to history, Mr Johnson. Make free licences for the over-75s the universal, easily accessible benefit it once was.

A good reason for him to do so is it would be popular with likely Tory voters. A bad reason not to is it would be unpopular with his billionaire and foreign supporters who own much of our biased, largely right-wing national press – to which the BBC provides a trusted, balanced and internationally-respected British alternative.

From: Steve Wilson, Bradford.

Jayne Dowle’s piece served only to further my contempt for the BBC with its proposed treatment of the elderly.

This is an organisation that has become an irrelevance to most people; it is arrogant and self-serving.

We live in an age of consumer choice and yet the licence fee persists to feed over-rated celebrities and presenters peddling the same bland messages. It is time that consumers were given a choice. Credit to your writer for highlighting this.

Editor’s note: first and foremost - and rarely have I written down these words with more sincerity - I hope this finds you well.

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Sincerely. Thank you.

James Mitchinson

Editor