How to Cancel a TV licence

Step 1: Cancel you Direct Debit.

Step 2: Err… that’s it! Your TV licence is cancelled.

• There is no need to fill a form (and anyway they won’t acknowledge it)

• There is no evidence to supply (how to do prove a negative? Hey: “here’s a photo of me watching Netflix today, and here’s a photo of me watching the itvhub yesterday’. Or ‘please find attached my aerial cable’).

• You don’t even have to tell TV licensing that you don’t need their services anymore.

The only reason to get in touch with TV licensing is if you need a refund.

If you do need a refund:

• Don’t phone them – nobody ever answers the phone

• Don’t email them – they also ignore emails

• The only way that actually work is to pester them on twitter. They only work if their reputation is at stake. So don’t let things slip, persevere!

And by the way, do cancel you DD asap. Otherwise they will reconduct your existing TV licence for another year.

If you want to contact TV licensing to make them stop sending you letters, it’s a waste of time most of the time.

BBC’S annual report 2020

There were 1.61 million “no longer need a licence” self-declaration last year, compared to 1.38 million in 2018-19. The number of said declaration has been surging over time “at an increasing rate”.

The number of TV licence has decreased for the first time since the 80s.

2019/20	2018/19	2017/18	2016/17
25.5m	25,752,560	25,836,495	25,826,118

• This decrease happened despite a 0.74% Household growth (HHG) for 2019/2020

• The BBC attributes this reduction to:

a) a lower than expected increase in the number of new households created and

b) a fall in the estimated percentage of households which require a TV licence because they watch licensable content (known as the “TV penetration rate”) as people, particularly younger ones, switch to nonlicensable viewing, such as SVODs and social media.

c) the fall of licence fee sales to under-75s. (66k drop)

d) a 23k drop of concessionary licences (144k compared 167k a year ago)

The BBC doesn’t acknowledge the free TV licence backlash and their political bias, which as constantly cited online by their detractors, as reason for the reduction of licence in force!

Profits

• this year’s results show a group operating deficit of £122 million, compared to an operating deficit of £52 million last year.

• There has been a 5% decline in overall licence fee income (£3,520 million compared to £3,690 million last year.) According to the BBC, this is due to underlying drivers of licence fee income including household growth, evasion and economic growth and the phased reduction in Government funding for over-75s’ licence.

• Income from licence sales was £58 million (1.8%) lower than the original forecasted amount for 2019-20 of £3,325 million.

• However (and this is really important), BBC’S total income has actually increased (4,943bn this year VS 4,889 last year) This is because BBC’S Commercial income and grant income has increased as the result of growth in BBC Studios and the acquisition of the UKTV group in June 2019.

In short, the BBC gets less money because the British public is switching off and because the ‘government is letting them down’ with the free TV licence, but their total income is actually bigger than last year because of international sales and the diversification/increase of their portfolio. I’m sick to the teeth to hear the BBC saying that they are poor. It’s simply not true.

• The value of refunds (for cancelling a TV licence) has gone down (£31m this year compared to £35m last year)

I find this incredible since so many people are switching off nowadays. I can only explain it with their new crafty tactics: TV Licensing never answers the phone (people are simply cut off after having gone through a 4-min menu) and it doesn’t acknowledge cancellation requests by emails (instead it automatically reconducts licences). There is also TV licensing’s unreasonable demands:  it requires proof that a licence which is no longer required – how do you prove a negative? and the fact that the cancellation form has to be printed (not everyone has a printer) and can only be sent by snail mail. It’s a full-on war of attrition.

Wasting money

The BBC decided to cancel the Campaign Management System Modernisation programme at a cost of £7m nine months after it had first signed contracts.

Both systems (Campaign Management System and its system for Data Management Services) dated from 2007 and were out of support.

The cancellation is said to be due to problems and delays.

Of the £11 million expenditure already incurred, the BBC repurposed £4 million with the remaining £7 million expensed in the 2019-20 BBC Group accounts. The BBC anticipates it will incur additional expenditure of between £3 million and £5 million on ensuring that existing systems will continue until the end of 2023.

Collection Fee Costs

2019/20	2018/19	2017/18	2016/17
£119.5m	£102.6m	£101m	£82.2m

• Collection fee, which had been stable for the past two years, have risen dramatically, especially compared to costs in 2016.

Evasion

• Evasion rate was estimated at 7.25% this year compared to 6.57% last year. The main reason cited is changes in viewing habits as people increasingly view less licensable content.
  I resent that, because if people are not watching licensable content, they are what we call correctly unlicensed, they are not evaders. Evasion means ” an act or instance of violating the tax laws by failing or refusing to pay all or part of one’s taxes.”

• In 2018, there were 129,446 prosecutions, resulting in 121,203 convictions, with an average fine of £146.

• The BBC states that the number of people jailed for non-payment of TV licence related court fines totalled five in 2018 and they add in the footnote that “these are the latest available figures”

This is incorrect on both accounts:

– 65 were jailed in 2018 (It’s funny how they always conveniently forget to add Northern Ireland stats when it’s not to their advantage.)

– stats for 2019 are out already: ≤ 25 were jailed for TVL fine default (one or two in England and Wales and 23 in N. Ireland. The statistics Unit, Analytical Services, Ministry of Justice don’t want to say exactly if it was one or two peopled jailed in England and Wales because of privacy concerns)

Covid-19

• The BBC said the COVID-19 outbreak had an impact on viewing behaviour, production activity, sales fall in UK and global advertising markets and on TV licence fee collection as campaign mailings that referred to field visits or arrears chasing and field visits were suspended and call centre and back office functions were closed in March. The BBC is talking about a “severely reduced ability to communicate with customers and customers’ willingness to buy or renew a licence over the counter.

This is a bit rich as the outbreak happened in March, the last month of the financial year. They are basically using next year’s excuse already. They are also ignoring the fact that people were glued to their TV the whole time as there was nothing else to do.

• The BBC say the decision to delay over-75s licence fee implementation to August 2020 resulted in a £70 million loss of income.

London centrism

A key part of BBC’s business strategy is to reduce property estate and create modern and efficient working environments for their staff. Since 2017 we have closed a number of satellite London properties and focused on making core London properties more efficient.

This seems to be contradictory!

Reach

• Consultations with the audience highlighted the fact that:

a) Younger audiences feel that the BBC is a bit ‘out of date’ and maybe for an older audience. (Netflix is often seen to be the market leader by younger audience members.)

b) Many want more light-hearted content from the BBC, not just copy others, and take more risks and be bolder .

c) There is a desire for more representation of their part of the country and a resentment for what they call ‘all about London’ news.

d) Nearly all participants said they are watching less live now and many claims to now go to on-demand before browsing the Electronic Programme Guide (EPG).

• The most recently published estimate of TV Households from BARB shows a fall in the estimated Television Penetration Rate (TVP) rate by 0.80ppts.

• BBC claims 91% of the UK population use their services each week.

But what they don’t say too loudly is that the Average Weekly Reached is based on a microscopic sample of people (500 respondents), the length of time qualifying as “reach” is insignificant (5 consecutive minutes of radio, 15 minutes of television or a single click online) and Wild extrapolations are made from those data.

It’s also worth noting that they were boasting a 99% reach just five years ago in their Annual Report and Accounts 2014/15! What happened since??

Salaries

Tim Davie’s role as CEO, BBC Studios will earn him £642k. Tony Hall was paid £471k last year.

Making the Headlines This Month

I’ve had a pleasure of collaborating with some journalists this month. Here are all the links and the highlights.

Outrage as BBC set to fork out £140m of cash on chasing TV licence fees in 2020

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1330610/bbc-tv-licence-fee-news-cost-of-letters-over75s-tv-licence-latest

This story made the Daily Express front page on the 4th September.

“If they have already injected an extra £38milion, there is not a lot to show for it. Their website is regularly down, the letter for the over 75 is not ready and no one seems to ever pick up the phone. The whole thing is so shambolic, it would almost be comical if it wasn’t for the fact that TV licences are a criminal matter.”

Campaigner Caroline Levesque-Bartlett pointed out that it cost £102million to collect 21.1million TV licences last year, and asked why over a third is needed in additional funding to collect an extra 3.1million licences, the number of pensioners who now have to start paying the annual charge.

 “That extra sum £38million is not negligible, it represents nearly 40 per cent of last year’s total collection budget. It’s the equivalent of 241,269 TV licences. It’s also a questionable expense as the whole system relies on people willingly buying a TV licence.”

——————————————————————————————————————-

‘Clunky’ TV licence website steering pensioners into overpaying

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/clunky-tv-licence-website-steering-pensioners-into-overpaying-0wds98xtr

Since 2014, more than a million Britons have been prosecuted for licence fee evasion or dealt with out of court in Scotland. The data was obtained by Caroline Lévesque-Bartlett, an anti-licence fee campaigner, using freedom of informations laws.

This article was also reproduced in the Daily Express:

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1320712/BBC-TV-licence-latest-over-75s-campaign

——————————————————————————————————————

BBC shamed: Furious campaigners lash out over ‘scaremongering’ in TV licence fee fine row

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1322871/bbc-tv-licence-fee-prosecution-maximum-fine-tv-licence-cost-latest

Caroline Levesque-Bartlett, who is an anti-TV licence campaigner, told Express.co.uk it was unacceptable for the BBC to threaten such large fines, when they are rarely ever given.

She said: “TV licensing shouldn’t be allowed to scare people with the maximum fine of £1,000 as it’s nearly never awarded.”

In 2019, the average fine for TV licence offences was £172 in England and Wales, according to official statistics released by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ).

TV licensing officers fined 113,002 people within this period, with just two in the highest bracket, of between £750 and £1,000.

The Elephant in the Room – How the BBC is losing reach in the UK

Tony Hall said on Monday* that the BBC has plans in place to reach a global audience of “1 billion people by the end of the decade”. It’s quite ironic when you see how many people are proud to say that they cancelled their TV licence recently.

Here are just a few:

 

UK total number of cancelled licences in force in 2018/19 **

Apr-18	75,021
May-18	67,716
Jun-18	67,604
Jul-18	78,753
Aug-18	73,367
Sep-18	73,645
Oct-18	82,023
Nov-18	75,381
Dec-18	77,477
Jan-19	75,392
Feb-19	73,991
Mar-19	73,970
Total:	894,340

That’s probably why Tony Hall has asked for a little “extra investment from government” to reach their goal.

 

* 24th August 2020 Tony Hall’s full speech

** Licences facts and figures

TV licensing harassing grieving families

I spent a few hours trolling TV licensing’s page on twitter last week. I found out that TV licensing had been harassing at least 4 grieving families. I took screen grabs of each tweet:

A TV Licensing spokesperson said: “When TV Licensing is made aware that a licence holder has passed away we update our systems so that future correspondence about the licence will be addressed to the person still living at the address, or if the property is unoccupied letters will be stopped for approximately 12 months. TVL prepares mailings in advance, which is why sometimes unfortunately people can receive a further letter after we have been notified of a bereavement.”

In most of the cases that I found, the TV licence holder had passed more than 6 months ago, so TV licensing’s excuse don’t hold water.

I recently contacted Emily Ferguson, at the Daily Express Online, with this information and she wrote the following article “BBC backlash: Taxpayer money WASTED on TV licence fee letters for grieving families” (click here)

 

UPDATE: Another case!

And another one again:

TV licence Stats 2019

Stats from 2019 show that the licensing model is unravelling:

• The number of TV licence has decreased for the first time since the 80s
• The number of prosecutions & out-of-court disposals has decreased and it’s a its lowest point since I started to compile TVL stats. By the way, over a million people have been dragged to court (or dealt with out of court in Scotland) in the last 6 year.
• The rate of conviction has gone down
• The number of prison sentence for TV licence fine default has gone dramatically down and is at a 10-year record low.

TV Licence Prosecutions & out-of-court disposals, 2019
Countries	England	Wales	Scotland	N. Ireland	TOTAL in the UK
Women	83,227	6,861	63 Prosec + 4,101 OoCD	2,795	97,047
Men	29,305	2,344	36 prosec + 1,665 OoCD	906	34,256
unknown	827	37	–	8	872
Companies	2	0	–	–	2
Total	113,361	9,242	5,865	3,709	132,177
Percentage of women	73.4%	74.2%	70.9%	75.3%	73.4%

• The proportion of women prosecuted for TVL offences is on the rise everywhere except in Scotland.
• This year, 1,632 people aged 18 – 20 years old were prosecuted.  The 1,283 women accounted for nearly 80%!! of the young adults prosecuted for TVL
•  In the last 3 years, TV licensing has prosecuted 1,247 people aged 70 or over. (419 in 2017, 393 in 2018 and 435 in 2019). Women accounted for 56% of prosecuted pensioners this year. It’s shocking to see that the gender disparity is even present among vulnerable people such as the OPA.

TV Licence Convictions (including out of court disposal) 2019
Countries	England	Wales	Scotland	N. Ireland	TOTAL in the UK
Women	78,271	6,530	3 Convictions 4,101 OoCD	1,943	90,848
Men	26,876	2,204	3 Convictions 1,665 OoCD	620	31,368
unknown	619	30	–	4	653
Companies	1	–	–	–	1
Total	105,767	8,764	6 convictions 5,766 OoCD	2,567	122,870
Percentage of women	74%	74.5%	71.1%	75.6%	73.9%

TV Licence Unnecessary Prosecutions, 2019
Countries	England	Wales	Scotland	N. Ireland	TOTAL
Prosecutions	113,361	9,242	99	3,709	126,411
unsuccessful	7,594	478	93	1,142	9,307
Percentage	6.7%	5.1%	94%	30.8%	7.3%

*excluding out of court disposal

• The level of cases resulting in a “not guilty” verdict is insane in Scotland. Out-of-Court-Disposals are counted separately as they are not challenged and do no proceed the same way.

TV Licence fine, 2019
Countries	England and	Wales	Scotland	N. Ireland
Average Fine	£172		£81	£87

 

The average TV licence fine as gone down pretty much everywhere.

By the way, TV licensing shouldn’t be allowed to scare people with the maximum fine of £1,000 as it’s nearly never awarded. In 2019, only TWO fines over £750 and up to £1000 were applied in England and Wales.

TV Licence fine, 2019 (England and Wales)
Fine – Up to and including £25	569
Fine – Over £25 and up to £50	14,195
Fine – Over £50 and up to £100	30,308
Fine – Over £100 and up to £150	9,849
Fine – Over £150 and up to £200	1,429
Fine – Over £200 and up to £250	38,901
Fine – Over £250 and up to £300	3,491
Fine – Over £300 and up to £500	13,606
Fine – Over £500 and up to £750	652
Fine – Over £750 and up to £1000	2

Prison for TV licence fine default, 2019
Countries	England  & Wales	Scotland	Northern Ireland	TOTAL
Total of prisoners	≤ 2	0	23	≤ 25
women	n/a	–	10
men	n/a	–	13
duration of stay	*	–	3.4 days

* “Owing to the low numbers, it is not possible to compute a meaningful average sentence length in this instance.” says the Statistics Unit, Analytical Services, Ministry of Justice

5 -Year Comparison Table

‘Your Action is Required’ threatogram

TV licence has been using the ‘YOUR ATTENTION IS REQUIRED’ threatograms for a couple of months now, so it’s time to have a look at what a pile of drivel it is. I count THREE ACTUAL LIES, one dodgy statement and one empty promise.

1. Your action is not required.

You are not required to collaborate with TV licensing if you are correctly unlicensed.

2. TV licensing wrote: “Despite having written to this address previously, our database shows that your address is still not covered by a TV licence. That means it’s against the law for anyone to watch or record live TV programmes on any channels […]”

They really twisted the logic in this one. The fact that a household is not covered has NOTHING to do with the fact that it’s the law to have one if you watch/record live TV. The latter is not a CONSEQUENCE of the former. The fact that I don’t have a licence can only mean two things: I either don’t need a licence or I watch TV illegally. But this is not what they were saying. ‘It’s illegal to watch TV without a licence’ is just a general statement. If they had said ‘you are watching TV illegally’ they would have opened themselves to lawsuits and they know it.

The use of  the words”that means” is there to create fear and confusion as the sentence makes no sense.

 

3. Yes, there are only 2 options if you want to avoid an investigation (buy a licence or move your TV licence). But why would you buy something you don’t need to avoid an investigation that is ultimately doomed?

A third option is to let them waste their time and money investigating correctly unlicensed properties.

Also, it’s not because they say ‘an investigation has been opened’ that an investigation has actually been opened. You may receive a lot of letters saying that without ever seeing an ‘officer’. I have received many and only once did I see a TVL rep. Nothing came out of his visit either.

 

4. The conviction rate for TV licence evasion is not 99%. NOT EVEN CLOSE.
FOI results reveal that, in 2017:

6.5% of cases in England

16% of prosecutions in Scotland

4% of cases in Wales

27% of cases in Northern Ireland

…were thrown out. In 2016, the national average was 12.5%, meaning that the conviction rate was actually 87.5%

Stats for 2018 should be available soon, stay tuned.

For more on this, may I refer you to this article https://endbbclicencefee.wordpress.com/2019/06/13/foi-2018-tv-licence-statistics/

 

5. TV Licensing wrote: ‘Our records will be updated’. Now that’s a slidesplitter! But don’t take it from me, here are just some of the complains TV Licensing received in the last 5 days!

So as you can see their database is shambolic and they literally take for ever to make any changes to it.

 

How can TV licensing get away with printing such a pile of tripe months after months?? Because you let them to.

Complaint openly about the language of their letters.

Denounce inaccuracies.

Don’t make their job easier.

TV Licence Review – YOUR INPUT IS NEEDED NOW

The government’s consultation on the future of the TV licence will close on 1 April 2020. ​There are two options for those who want to participate: You can complete a survey (the link towards the end of this text) or email a response to tvlicencedecriminalisation@culture.gov.uk . The survey is actually quite short, so I encourage you to use this option. Let me walk you through it.

THE SURVEY

First, you’ll need to press a couple of arrows to get to the questions and you will need to tick ‘YES” to ‘I have read and understood the disclosure of responses statement’. They will then ask you if ‘you are 16 years old or over’ and if you are ‘responding as an individual or on behalf of an organisation’.

The first real question is: Should TV licence evasion (the use or installation of a television receiver without a TV licence) no longer be a criminal offence? You will need to tick one of the 3 answers:

• It should no longer be a criminal offence
• It should remain a criminal offence
• Don’t Know

They will then ask you why and provide you with a box for comments. I encourage you to write something, but it’s not essential. You can just press the arrow to get to the next question.

The second question is: If you have a view, what alternative enforcement scheme models do you consider to be most appropriate? Why?

There are many ways to fund the BBC: subscription, advertisement, general taxation, donations, household levy, etc. If you have an opinion, tell them which one is best. If you are not sure, I’ve made a logic flow chart (at the end of this document) to help you decide. I personally don’t care, as long as it’s not a flat tax with criminal sanctions anymore.

The third question is: What steps could the Government take to mitigate any impacts that may result from decriminalisation of TV licence evasion?

Again, you will be given a box for comments. You can leave it blank if you want.

The fourth question might be the one where your answer is most needed.
The question is: Please provide any evidence you consider appropriate, especially where there is an impact on those with protected characteristics or the most vulnerable. In other words, they want to know how the current TV licence impact people. Do you feel harassed by the relentless letters they send? Did you get a visit from a TV licence officer? Have you been prosecuted? Convicted? Jailed for TV licence fine default? Do you know anyone who has? If you don’t have a personal experience to share, you can remind them of the number of people harassed, prosecuted and jail each year, the proportion of women and mention that it even included children as young as 10 or 11 at one point.

The survey can be accessed here:

https://dcms.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_4SYtlb6X5UhQCO1

(if the link is not working try this one https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/consultation-on-decriminalising-tv-licence-evasion/consultation-on-decriminalising-tv-licence-evasion )

If you want some reading material before you send your comments, I invite you to read my TV licence Cheat Sheet https://endbbclicencefee.wordpress.com/2020/02/13/a-tv-licence-cheat-sheet/

or have a look at the 5-year table https://endbbclicencefee.wordpress.com/2020/02/18/over-800k-charged-with-tv-licence-offences-during-the-last-5-years/

or read about kids prosecution specifically https://endbbclicencefee.wordpress.com/2020/02/12/kids-have-been-prosecuted-for-tv-licence-offences/

38 degrees has threatened to close my petition ‘End the BBC Licence Fee’

BREAKING: 38 DEGREES SIDES WITH MULTI MILLION POUND COMPANY WHO PROSECUTES HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS EACH YEAR

I’ve received a phone call from Robin Priestley, Campaigns Director at 38 Degrees informing me yesterday (11/03/2020 at 13:55) that they can’t keep my petition (which they have been fine with for the last 5 years) because it gets in the way of a campaign ‘Save Our BBC’ that they created 24 days ago. Here is the written confirmation I received last night, and my reply in bold, to each argument they submitted.

Dear Caroline,

Thank you for talking with me earlier, as I mentioned on the phone I’d been trying to talk with you but couldn’t get through on your phone. I’m afraid we’re no longer going to be able to host your petition, and we’d like to work with you to move it to another website.

The reason for this is that it’s now actively working against a campaign that we’re running – and the mission of 38 Degrees to protect our democracy, including scrutiny which is delivered through a public service broadcaster.

38 Degrees is currently running a campaign to save the BBC. The government’s plans to curtail BBC funding would mean the majority of BBC radio stations and TV channels are scrapped, along with the license fee. It’s a thinly veiled attempt to dodge scrutiny and accountability.

Our BBC is a world leading public service. The way that it is funded means that it’s independent of government and corporate pressure. 38 Degrees believes that independent, well funded, publicly owned services are vital to uphold and defend democracy.

At a time when fake news can spread like wildfire on social media and when so much is at stake, this is a dangerous attack on democracy.

Initially we were happy to host your petition as it seemed more focussed on tweaks to the funding model and suggestions for other approaches to consider. However the context has now changed, with the government briefing their intention to “whack” the BBC and “prune its reach” into peoples homes, using funding changes as the vehicle to do so.

I’m afraid as we’ve said above, we can not continue to offer our services to you, as in the current context, in light of government attacks, your campaign could be seen as directly in conflict with our own which seeks to protect an independent public broadcaster and fund it fully.

(I’ve skipped the part where they told me to start a new petition on a different website such as change.org)

My reply:

My petition is not, as you put it “now actively working against a campaign that we’re running”. It’s the other way around. My petition predates the ‘Save our BBC’ petition and the older ‘Protect Our BBC’ petition. You should be supporting me because this a David against Goliath battle. And yet, your people have been contacting my supporters via email asking them to support these other petitions. How is that acceptable? And at least back in 2015, money had been thrown at it as well: 38 degrees banners and T-shirts had been printed, volunteers had been assigned to collect signatures in public places, etc. I let it slip both times because I both believe in freedom of speech and in the spirit of ‘may the best one win’, even though I’m just a billy no mates with a dodgy grasp of English and no endless source of donations for my cause.

If the mission of 38 Degrees is indeed “to protect our democracy”, you should be thinking long and hard about this. Because you are basically supporting a multimillion-pound company who harass prospective and former customers on a monthly basis with an investigation, threats of a search warrant and a 1,000 pound fine, prosecute hundreds of thousands of customers, real or suspected, (140k last year, but some years it’s closer to 200k), knowingly preying mostly on women because they are more likely to trust/get intimidated by the salesmen posing as ‘TV licence officers’. They also abuse the judicial system because guilt is assumed and a special status is given in court to commission-based salesmen and most people can’t challenge their prosecution (either because they don’t understand the system, or because going to a different county to face a magistrate is just too much for them). I’ve also recently uncovered that TV licensing had even been prosecuting kids as young as 10 or 11 years old. How can you let that fly?? And lastly, people so poor they can’t afford to pay the TV licence fine are sent to jail for fine default. That’s over 1,200 people in the last 10 years. THESE PEOPLE MATTER. All this is done in the name of making TV.  All this to gives millions to Gary Lineker and Graham Norton. As much as I like (insert any show title here), the ends never justify the means. And now they want to chase pensioners too! (well they already chase dead people, sending nasty letters to grieving families so it’s just the next natural step I guess).

 I’m afraid you have bought into a ‘fake news’, peddled by the BBC itself since the last TV licence review, which is that ‘if the TV licence fee dies, the BBC will die too’. If the BBC is as loved as they say, they will have no problems with a subscription service (and should make much more money too, judging on how Sky is raking it in. For the records, their budget is 6 billion/year). But take it from the horse’s mouth: if the TV licence fee is scrapped, the BBC has already estimated that they would lose 200 million. The collection of the TV licence fee itself is 102 million (sending over 8 million threatograms and conducting 3 million visits a year is not cheap), so the real hole is 98 million. To put this number into perspective, the BBC get 3.7 billion / year from the TV licence fee and a further 1.2 billion from international sales. Millions are poured into Russian, Korean & broadcasts in Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Thailand. Cuts can be made without comprising the British output.

If 38 Degrees “believes that independent, well-funded, publicly owned services are vital to uphold and defend democracy” then the TV licence fee must be replaced. It’s an archaic system that creates criminal stigma. Whenever I explain it to foreigners, their jaw drops. It’s not a well-respected institution anymore, they realise, it’s a money grabbing self-serving entity who do not care about those they are supposed to serve.

If “the context has now changed” as you put it, nothing has changed in my petition besides small adjustments to reflect new stats. I always mention to people that there are many ways to fund the BBC that do not stigmatise women and the poor. I’m still backing subscriptions, adverts, general taxation and donations (like for NPD radio in the USA) and I’ve even created a flow chart to help people choosing which system is the best in their opinion.

I’m sorry, but I do not want to transition to another website so close to the end of the TV licence review and so close to reaching 400,000 people. I’m not a computer literate person. I wouldn’t know how to sort it out, how to keep the numbers growing after all the hard work I’ve done single-handedly reaching journalists across the entire United Kingdom for the last 5 years and reaching communities such as the Poles and the British Punjabi. There are only 3 weeks left before the end of the consultation, so pulling my petition now feels like you want to silence me at a critical moment when I need to alert my remaining active subscribers to tell them ASAP about the survey they can complete online.

You know, the support for the BBC in the general population is declining. I think you have noticed it too, as your petition ‘Save Our BBC’ is not doing as well as ‘Protect our BBC’ did. So it looks a lot like someone wants to win by fair means or foul by pulling the rug from under my feet and I won’t put up with it. I hope you will reconsider your position in light of the information I’ve given you today. Otherwise, you will leave me with no other option than contacting an attorney and instruct them to get an injunction.

PS. if you want more information on the mockery of a trial that is a TV licence fee prosecution, or the number of children prosecuted, or anything else of the sort, I’m happy to forward you all the FOI results I’ve collected over the years.

 

link to my petition while it’s still active: End the BBC Licence Fee

UPDATE:
38 degrees has taken my page down today 13/03/2020 at 15:00. They say I didn’t accept their offer to move my petition to a different website, but they gave me less than 3 days to find an alternative and they couldn’t make sure I wouldn’t lose the 393,000 signatures I had already. So that offer wasn’t worth shit.

SECOND UPDATE:

Even with more time, I was not able to find a host to my petition who could keep the 393k signatures I had. All state that counters have to start at zero.

 

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Over 800k charged with TV Licence Offences during the last 5 years

Every FOI I’ve done (England, Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland) for 2014-2018, compiled for the first time