A marketing campaign to get it introduced again for 10 million pensioners has reached a key threshold
A marketing campaign is rising to get free TV licences for all UK pensioners (Picture: Getty)
A marketing campaign urgent for all pensioners to mechanically be given free TV licences has made a serious step ahead. The federal government must challenge a proper response after assist for the petition on the Parliament web site surged previous a key threshold.
Now virtually 20,000 individuals have signed as much as the decision, which could be learn right here, and as soon as a petition will get to 10,000, the Division for Tradition, Media and Sport should reply.
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This yr the usual UK TV Licence rose to £180 per yr. A black-and-white solely licence prices £60.50. To get a free TV licence as a pensioner within the UK, the particular person or their associate on the similar handle should be aged 75 or older and both should be receiving Pension Credit score.
Common free TV licences for 3.7m pensioners aged 75 and over formally ended on July 31, 2020. On the time the BBC stated funding free TV licences for all over-75s would have resulted in ‘unprecedented closures’.
The petition says: “We would like the Authorities to fund free TV licences for current pensioners and people who attain the official retirement age. When individuals attain retirement age, we expect they need to obtain a state-financed free TV licence.
“Many pensioners reside on the breadline with solely the TV for firm. With the price of meals hovering and utility payments ever larger, we really feel there’s a determined want to supply all pensioners with no less than this concession.
“We really feel it’s a double outrage that those that have given their all to this nation in taxes and elevating kids need to pay a TV licence payment and are solely exempt in the event that they obtain means-tested Pension Credit score. In the meantime, some media figures draw big salaries.”
A authorities evaluation of the BBC’s Royal Constitution is underway, particularly analyzing its funding. Tradition Secretary Lisa Nandy has already labelled the licence payment “unenforceable” and “inadequate”.
The BBC has stated that it’s “prepared to think about radical choices for future funding”. Final month, the brand new director-general of the BBC stated the company must make “some tough decisions about its dimension and form” sooner or later.
Former Google boss Matt Brittin additionally revealed that the BBC has begun engaged on modifications concerning its output, equivalent to programmes and companies, on account of modifications in shopper behaviour.
Mr Brittin steps into the function throughout a turbulent time for the company because it appears to slash 2,000 jobs to attempt to scale back prices by 10% over the subsequent three years.
Mr Brittin, 57, stated the BBC should “serve its content material into the digital surroundings”, including: “We’ve received to make some decisions about how to try this. Can we do it extra effectively?”
He added: “I believe individuals belief journalists, people like yourselves and others on the BBC, to be there and clarify the sophisticated world to them.
“We’ve received to seek out the appropriate manner to try this to take the values that the BBC has at all times had and reinterpret them for the fashionable world.
“How will we reinvent this establishment to serve in immediately’s second?”
To view and signal as much as the petition click on right here.
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