you don't think much of the present tv content then……..?

and they expoect us to pay £157 for the pleasure of watching it.

As it happens I, and several people I know, choose to have no television – even when I lived with my parents, who did have one after many years, I watched it discriminately and gradually watched it less and less. When I finally managed my own home, I did not bother at all.

I am now on State and company pensions, with most the latter absorbed in tax. So I have to be bit careful with my money, and now think twice before buying shiny new tools.

Nevertheless, if I ever take the plunge and buy a goggle-box, I will NOT be joining the "all-for-nowt" who begrudge the £3/week "subscription", as it amounts to, for the BBC's two (now 4?) TV and 5 main Radio broadcast channels.

I accept I am not paying for the choice of 5 radio channels, of which I listen to Rs 3 and 4 regularly and 2 occasionally, but that is by history; and I don't expect my groceries or broadband service to be free. If it was not for the very low-cost TV Licence we would all pay more than £3 / day for each of single-theme channels offering a very low range of commercially-"safe", simple, same-again programmes and old films. (Estimated from advertising material BT thinks will attract me.)

Across the whole lot, such channels would be purely commercial, beholden to "advertising-executive" types, probably in the hands of China or Murdoch. They would offer little if anything new, original or unusual musically outside of American and British pop music and familiar-only "classical" on records; would dissolve the orchestras and public performances, cut right back on drama, confine sports even more tightly to the big-name-big-money entertainments, end religious, special-interest and current-affairs analysis programmes, ignore the EBU (which the BBC set up in 1950)*…. In short, reduce it all to the level of football pundits, gloomy soap-operas, American cartoons, the odd costume-drama if you are lucky, and commercial pseudo-local pop stations. Cultural vandalism that would impress the Taliban!

So those of you who I admit are contributing a very small part of your three-quid-a-week TV subs to the wealth of variety on radio I enjoy for free… Stop complaining and count your blessings; and if you still can't find anything to attract you over a week for less cost than a pint of alcoholic diuretic, get rid of the wretched thing. You chose to buy it!

'

*The EBU… Wikipedia says in its abstract, the European Broadcasting Union, which is not related to and extends well beyond the EU, is "best known for the Eurovision Song Contest" – but does show that contest is just one, small part of its work.

My other half pays around £80 a month for the luxury of sky tv. She loves football & cricket. I managed to sneak in my F1 4K to boot. That's about all i watch, along with any motorcycle racing.

Luckily she still works as a private nurse so earns a crumb or 2 . My contribution is paying for our luxury of travelling to the Canaries 2 or 3 times a year to cut the lawns on our little bungalow.

Steve.