Vocal Voices

Do yu think pensioners should pay for the TV licence as the BBC want us to do?

difficult to do, but I think it should be means tested... my old boss is in his 70's so well into retirement age and he probably has more money than all of us put together; so yes why shouldn't he pay. Compared to our cleaner who doesn't earn much but she has to pay the full whack

In all honesty, I don't think anyone should have to pay - I'd rather put up with a few minutes of ads if that would save me the money. Ads are a good time to go up and go to the loo or get a cuppa or a glass of wine!

I agree with Ria. As long as the ads are limited to say ten minutes an hour or similar, no problem.

I get mine free now in my opinion of the BBC had to answer to there own miss management we could all have it free

cromwell wrote:I agree with Ria. As long as the ads are limited to say ten minutes an hour or similar, no problem.

Yep, I could handle ads if it meant we didn't have to pay the licence fee. I resent having to pay it.

I also think that pensioners should get it for free, it's a lot to pay out and for those who can't get out and about the TV is their only contact with the world. I do take Ria's point about it being means tested though and in this day and age where technology is key and information is easily accessed would it be that difficult to assess whether people qualify or not?

No, I don't think they should. There is an argument for means testing however.

I do think that it should not be a blanket free licence, some pensioners should pay something, but on a means tested sliding scale.

Having said that I would like to see the BBC pay its way either with adverts or as a subscription service. It would certainly have to up its game more than a little bit or 'customers' would drift away. On some nights from 7pm to bedtime the only BBC channel worth contemplating is BBC 4. Thank goodness for Freeview.

In general terms, I've always thought means-testing to be too cumbersome, bureaucratic and easy to fiddle.

I think the licence fee is a bit of an anachronism these days. Scrap it entirely, and let the BBC fight for advertising revenue.

I'm not keen on a subscription service. We don't watch that much TV, TBH, and I don't relish the thought of paying through the nose for something we only use occasionally …..

We pay about 2 euros a month for ours. Comes out with the lecky bill.

Was under a euro when we first moved

The licence fee goes up again in April, to £154.50.

We recently cancelled Sky after subscribing for over 25 years. The only thing we're really missing is football but if there's a match that me and Joe want to watch then we can buy a day pass from Now TV. We cancelled because we found that we were watching Prime and Netflix more and rarely watching anything at all on Sky, and those are a fraction of the price of Sky. I think we pay around £6 for Netflix and £7.99 for Prime and that includes next day (and sometimes same day) Amazon deliveries, book borrowing and music streaming.