Morning all,

Just heard on the news that the tv license may be decriminalized . The prosecution of non payers is clogging up the courts . Oh joy some common sense at last next the council tax, I wish, LOL.

If this goes ahead Barstons will no longer be able to hunt down non payers like a pack of wolves .Pursuing you up and down the country regardless of how old the debt is.Being a cynical Londoner , I am wondering how many palms will be greased by said bailiff company to keep this law in place ?Have they got an inside man in the MOJ ? Shurley shome mistake !

The BBC and Crapita TVL will lobby and fight this all the way, as their funding streams fgo down the pan, It was noted on the news today that MPs feel it is ridiculous that 70 people a year or more are jailed for non payment of criminal fines an offence that should be civi, as in £145 is too much for poor peole to pay just to be allowed to watch TV legally anyway.

As well as opposing the move the BBC basically want to extend the TV Tax to anything that can show video, live, streamed or from a file.

Part of the reason they are looking to change it, is because people now view TV programmes in a total different way. You don't have to watch live TV per the schedule and can view programmes when you want via i-player or similar. People also can watch online content, via Netflix and similar. You can have a TV in your house, but never watch any live programmes. I can watch TV programmes from all over the world via various online sites, without ever watching any UK TV.

There is also the issues of people watching TV programmes via portable devices, when they may not be in a household where there is a TV licence.

I predict that the TV licence will be scrapped within the next 10 years and it may be replaced with something else. Perhap instead the government adds £10 tax to the purchase cost of every mobile phone, i-pad, laptop/computer, TV that is capable of receiving live TV broadcasts. That would generate a lot of money, that the government could distribute to broadcasters. The BBC would have to move away from being reliant on TV licence and use advertising/product placement.

An excellent summary UB The BBC TV Tax model is so last century, and the TV Tax needs to go

TV Licensing could save lots of money by unnecessarily chasing up people harassing and threatening them. I went to live abroad for a while and wrote to them explaining I would be renting out and would notify them when a tenant moved in. After three months they starting sending a barrage

of mail to the house. Unfortunately the estate agent had gone out of business so I didn't know anything about it. The language in the letters was so threatening. I know it happened to someone else whose mother went into a home. The house was empty but despite informing them the letters just kept coming. In the end they were just ignored and said their system could only stop correspondence for 3 months. I'm sure this could be changed. I wonder how much such unnecessary enforcement costs. Apparently they have a list of all properties in the UK without a licence and continue to check them. Quite frankly I won't be sorry to see this draconian system disappear. I pay mine at the beginning of the year but this year I was a little late. I had you are under investigating notice in the same post as my licence. If the BBC want to treat ordinary people like this I for one don't care if they lose a few radio stations. Get advertising like the other stations.

I am not the first person to mention this but the way forward is to make the BBC channels pay per view. Then you have no choice but to cough up, thats the logical step.forward The reason why they probably dont is how many people would subscribe . At the moment they have a captive audience but if we were given a choice ! Jailing people for not having a license what are we coming to ?

You would surprised. I think many people would pay say £2 a week to get all BBC channels. But it would be a lot less than the current licence amount, so they would need to earn money in other ways.