Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Grossly unfair to cut over-75s’ TV licences
FOR many years the free TV licence has been part of the Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWP) remit, and quite rightly has been seen as part of Government’s wider welfare role in tackling social isolation among the older generation.
Successive governments have avoided improving the state pension, and instead have offered older people individual concessions, such as the free TV licence for the over75s. According to the OECD, the UK state pension is the least adequate in the developed world. Removing this concession, without addressing the value of the state pension, is therefore grossly unfair.
In any democracy, access to information is crucial to enable citizens the opportunity to be informed and make decisions.
Loneliness among older people is now regarded as a growing problem. One in four pensioners view the TV as their main form of companionship.
The provision of such a concession should therefore be seen as playing a vital role in tackling this problem. However, the BBC has no such obligation or responsibility to tackle such issues. This is the responsibility of Government.
As such, the concession is clearly funded from general taxation by society as a whole. This correctly reflects the obligations that we all have – including tax-paying pensioners – to make a contribution towards benefits and services which we deem to be worthy.
Around 6.5 million older people have an income of less than £11,800 a year. The TV licence, as a proportion of income, therefore represents quite a considerable amount, and I have no doubt that if the concession were to be removed, many would simply be unable to pay.
Means-testing a benefit costs ten times as much as it being paid universally, and experience shows that those who need it most tend to be the ones who don’t claim.
The BBC also needs to look at its other areas of expenditure, such as the salaries paid to some of its top employees and on-screen talent, before it makes a decision to cut this concession.
IT’S been dangling up there provocatively since a rather nasty storm some time in the autumn of 2017 – teasing, tormenting, tantalising.
Every day there is a formal inspection to see if the badly damaged branch high up in one of the cedar trees surrounding my orchard is still there. About 30 feet up. Impossible to get any sort of machine in there and far too high to reach by ladder or by climbing bravely up with ropes and a chainsaw.
No, I’ll just have to wait until the attrition of nature, another storm and gravity combine to send the thing plummeting to earth. Fate could well decree that I’m standing underneath – but I can’t wait. The sheer size of it means there’s at least a week’s worth of firewood to be harvested.
By the time it’s finally sent into the domestic flames will that very act be a crime? Will the ecopolice come banging on the door accusing me of murdering children, old ladies and the planet? Under new plans announced by the Government this week that could be the case. Taking a short break from his hilarious Brexit back-stabbing antics, Environment Secretary Michael Gove has set out a long list of measures to fight air pollution.
We are all to blame for causing misery, death and an enormous bill for the NHS. That applies to transport, farming and industry generally and, most importantly, the way you and I heat our homes.
“Poor air quality harms the vulnerable most of all but none of us is immune and the effects stay with us throughout our lives,” he said.
“The lungs of children whose playground is by a busy road are less developed and air pollution leaves them more susceptible to conditions like asthma. Equally, it can shorten the lives of elderly people who may already suffer from an existing heart or lung condition and hasten a decline in mental skills.”
All very serious and something should be done before it’s too late, hence a long list of things to halt emissions of “particulate matter” which The Govey described as “tiny particles that enter the lungs and blood stream and are transported around the body harming the heart, brain and other organs”.
Again, it’s hard to argue against rules to make things right but there’s a big fear of blanket measures that may cause only slight inconvenience in big cities, but make life nigh on impossible way out in parts of the world where large branches can hang from trees for months without anyone calling the emergency services.
I think immediately of transport. Getting to work on a bicycle and wearing a silly plastic hat may make sense if you live half a mile away from your office in Islington, for example, but not if you eke out life anywhere surrounded by fields.
Likewise with all those heavily-subsidised trains and buses that turn up in town – but not the country. If you’re a City banker the purchase of a £35,000 electric car may be a laudable step, although that option is probably not available to a retired farm worker in West Devon dependent upon a clapped-out old diesel.
It is the question of home heating that worries me most.
The proposals include a ban on “wet” wood. Please forgive me if I’m getting this wrong but I think that means the standard, unmeddled-with, sawn-up logs that you, me and millions of others use to keep away chills in the front room or cook with on the Rayburn. It makes sense not to have a woodburner in Chelsea where a load of that “wet” wood costs about £500 but up on the hills logs are cheap, plentiful and very often free.
Let’s hope any new rules will have some leeway to accommodate those rural folk who rely on – yes – polluting technology but have neither the cash or plausible alternatives to opt for.
Or will that branch, when it falls, have to be carted off for treatment and returned before it can be burned? And all for the sake of the environment?
We are all to blame for causing misery,
death and an enormous bill for the NHS. That applies to transport, farming
and industry generally and, most
importantly, the way you and I heat
our homes