Why I’d pay to stop my TV getting BBC channels: Yorkshire Post Letters

I UNDERSTAND that the BBC is to recruit 800 jobsworths to enforce the imposition of TV licences on the over 75s.

To break it down, there are approximately 5.4 million over-75s in the UK, most of whom will not need a licence as about 1.5 million households will have a resident claiming Pension Credit and therefore entitled to a free one.

Some will be in a household with another over-75 so it is thought that about 3.7 million ‘elderlies’ are now liable to be forced to pay, many of whom will struggle. Considering that BBC television content has been so radically reduced, with live cricket, golf and rugby now on other channels, you are pretty much limited to repeats.

Unfortunately, you can only find out the pay of BBC staffers to the nearest £50,000. Gary Lineker’s £1.75m pay alone would pay for 11,000 licences! Chris Evans of Radio 2 before he left his £2.25m post would subsidise another 14,000! There are many more examples.

I ask any electronic ‘whizz kid’ to make me a chip to put into my smart TV which will prevent any BBC channel from being shown on it, and provide me with a certificate to show a jobsworth when he comes around to see my licence in a year or so. They’d make themselves a fortune.

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

Almost certainly you are here because you value the quality and the integrity of the journalism produced by The Yorkshire Post’s journalists - almost all of which live alongside you in Yorkshire, spending the wages they earn with Yorkshire businesses - who last year took this title to the industry watchdog’s Most Trusted Newspaper in Britain accolade.

And that is why I must make an urgent request of you: as advertising revenue declines, your support becomes evermore crucial to the maintenance of the journalistic standards expected of The Yorkshire Post. If you can, safely, please buy a paper or take up a subscription. We want to continue to make you proud of Yorkshire’s National Newspaper but we are going to need your help.

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Sincerely. Thank you.

James Mitchinson

Editor