Renewal time at BBC a licence for bad content

The annual government rip-off where the public are forced to obtain a TV licence in order to watch any TV channel even if no licence is required for it and it is paid for by adverts.

I rarely watch the BBC channels. I do not believe the TV licence is good value for money unless you are a football freak or wish to receive constant news from Northern Ireland, India, Pakistan or Afghanistan.

God knows what goes on in the rest of the world day by day.

Sky News isn't marvellous either.

Sport and football - all because after the Russian revolution in 1917, the ruling classes couldn't get the protesters off the streets.

With the police understaffed, the idea was to give the people Saturday afternoon off and move football, then a street interest, to the stadium where protesting members of the public could be better occupied and caged for the afternoon watching a ball being kicked from one end of a field to the other between two posts. It worked.

I can honestly say, having access to many TV channels all over the world, that the BBC and its news coverage are in my opinion the worst.

The BBC should stop the TV licence requirement but they can't of course because they know perfectly well that they would have to do some real programming and journalism work and would sink to near bottom of the ratings table.

Their management would also have to take a severe pay cut.

It would take more than Michael Palin, brilliant as he is, to save the BBC if the licence was abolished.

Do they have a journalist in Poland? What happens in France, Germany, Italy and Spain and all the other European Union countries each day? Thanks to Palin we do have an insight into life in the lost world of Latin America, the Far East and parts of Africa.

I'm not sure when a journalist from the northern hemisphere last visited Ghana, but I'm working on it.

Richard Lawrence

Ashford