A while ago, the news channels ran a feature about the salaries that were being paid by the BBC. At the time, they were highlighting the disparity between what men were being paid, versus what women were receiving. I was more interested in the disparity between what “entertainers” were being paid, compared to the incomes of the rest of us mere mortals.
You can read my thoughts about the subject here.
Lo and behold and the topic is being revisited. This time though, the issue is in connection to the over-75’s being made to pay for their TV licenses. Understandably, there is an outcry as public feeling is very strong. After all, didn’t a very wise man once say, a society can be judged by how it looks after its children and the elderly.
General opinion is such that most people are advising the over-75’s to refuse to pay for their licenses. After all, the courts are unlikely to lock-up thousands and thousands of pensioners. A noble sentiment, but a tad scarier in practice. Especially if you are the one that is facing possible imprisonment. In actuality, there is a much simpler solution. Please bear with me.
We live in an age where the way we used to watch television has changed radically. No longer do we have to plan ahead, schedule watching our favourite programs and then wait days for them to come on. Only to miss half of the program, because we have forgotten that it is actually on! No, everything now is on demand. We pay to stream programs live onto our screens. And not just TV screens either. We watch TV on laptops, our tablets and our smartphones. No longer are we constrained to hunker down in the room that contains our telly in order to watch our preferred programs. Now we can pretty much watch them anywhere that we receive a WiFi signal.
So the answer then I hear you cry! We should all write to the BBC and give them notice of the cessation of our payment of the license fee. We should instruct them that we no longer wish to receive their signal as we have other means by which to watch TV. This way, it won’t just be the over-75’s that are refusing to pay the license fee, but all of us, and with a legitimate reason. We are not just refusing to pay, we have also given notice that we no longer wish to receive their service.
It would ring the death knell for the BBC. Overnight they would be crippled and their incoming revenue would be turned off like a tap. In turn, this would force them to re-think the whole way they are funded. But this would mean advertising on the BBC! Never! Sacrilege! Not necessarily, there are other ways. Fairer ways that would mean that those that can afford it would pay and not those that deserve to be looked after in the autumn of their life.
But that, as they say, is another story. One to which I may have inferred to earlier on!