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UK TV Broadcasting – Is the Licence Fee an Anachronism or an Essential ?

The short answer to this question is that, for the BBC at least, it’s both an anachronism and an essential…. The licence fee was originally introduced to fund public broadcasting way back in the 1940s after the enforced break in transmissions caused by WW2. It worked reasonably well while the number of channels was small, TV broadcasting was still analogue and radio retained a significant audience share. Since the dawn of digital TV in the early 2000s, with its plethora of new commercial channels, the BBC’s ‘market share’ of viewer attention has steadily dwindled, while the licence fee has risen nearly 20-fold from the princely sum of £10 p.a. for a colour licence in 1968 to the current   £180 today. Unsurprisingly perhaps, this has generated much argument as to why all of us should pay a substantial amount for a service we may not actually use at all (the parallel with exorbitant Electricity and Gas standing charges here may not escape readers). The recent scandals s...
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What’s Happened to my Bus/Train/Flight ? The Canny Traveller's Guide to Finding Your Way Around on Public Transport in UK

Editor's Note: As a frequent local bus user, I was inspired recently to write a brief guide  for my website's travel page  on how to get the best out of our bus and train networks . Herewith a copy for the blog...it now includes some additional info on local UK air travel....  Update 7.10.26: For a couple of weeks now I've been having trouble with map rendering on bustimes.org. This seems to be independent of device/access method since it occurs on Android tablets/phones as well as pc. There is now an alternative pc site: BusMap which does seem to provide viable mapping, and also offers Android and Apple app versions (via PlayStore/AppleStore only at present). I have reported the mapping issue to bustimes.org but with no reply forthcoming to date. Those wedded to bustimes.org can still track individual services via the 'Vehicles' option, bus this presupposes you know which service you're aiming for. ... ------------------------- Our UK public transport networ...
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UK Prisons: The Great Escape

Update 24.9.26: The prison system still seems to full to bursting, with a major bout of early releases due in early October. Check out the suggestion at the end of this piece for reducing overcowding...perhaps not so off-the-wall as it sounds ? Enjoy....  Our prison system does appear to be in something of a crisis at present.... It has been full to bursting over at least the last 5 years. Reasons quoted for this include lack of investment by successive governments, failure to build more prisons, over-enthusiastic sentencing policies., etc , etc.  No doubt the current administration will at some stage attempt to blame it exclusively on the now infamous ‘Tory Black Holes’ as they do for most other things that have already failed, or are currently failing, under their watch….(I wouldn't be surprised if they even blamed the Tories for their own administration's eventual demise at the hands of Reform!) The sad fact is that we really can’t afford to imprison as many people as ...
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