Say what you will about the BBC, it certainly keeps our Courts busy!
More than 3,000 people a week are being prosecuted for not having a TV licence making up a tenth of all magistrate court cases, it has been revealed. Spiralling numbers of prosecutions courts deal with more such cases than any other offence. Two out of three of the defendants are women – thought to be because they are more often at home when enforcement officers call. Last year 140,000 defendants were convicted and saddled with a criminal record.
This is the side of the BBC that requires more focus – the way in which it criminalises hundreds of thousands of people in order to secure its multi-billion funding! To my way of thinking it’s morally wrong. WHY should the State Broadcaster have such a power? I can understand that any organisation would wants the requisite funding to operate but the License Tax, backed up by the Courts, is anachronistic and draconian.