A colour television licence costs £101.00 per year, per household. It's been announced that as of 1st April 2000 this will be increased to £104.00 per year.

In 1998-99 the BBC raised £2,155 million from the Licence Fee. This amounted to approximately 75% of their £2.8 billion operating budget.

Below is the BBC's pretty little chart that shows where the money went.

(Note: this chart only shows where the Licence money went. It does not account for the remaining £650 million of the £2.8 billion operating budget)

In 1998-99 it cost the BBC £133 million to collect the Licence Fee. How many intensive care beds would £133 million buy?

Instead this money is squandered trying to enforce an unfair and unworkable Licence Fee system...

• The Licence Fee is paid per household, which means, for example, a household with four people pays less proportionally than a household with just one person.

• The Licence Fee is not means tested, whether you're a pauper or a millionaire makes no difference, you pay the same amount.

• Likewise, whether you watch one hour of television per week or thirty hours per week makes no difference, you pay the same amount.

• There is no choice between commercial television and the BBC: even if you never watch the BBC channels you still have to pay the Licence Fee. It is a government tax that is given to a commercial organisation.

• The high cost of the Licence Fee, and the inherent difficulties associated with collecting it, encourage people to evade paying.

And if you don't pay the Licence Fee they will eventually throw you in jail, which costs the taxpayer a fortune.

General Pinochet, whose record of human rights atrocities has not deterred the TV licence detectors - a van drew up outside the General's Wentworth estate home in Surrey last week, although the officer was refused entry because of lack of security clearance. The Lawyer Online, 10th May 1999.

Before this happens though, the people from TV Licensing (a company contracted by the BBC to collect and enforce the licence Fee) will knock on your door. These people will pretend to be police officers. They will read you your rights. They will bully, threaten and intimidate you. They will lie and try to deceive you. They will try to coerce you to sign a piece of paper admitting your guilt.

This kind of behaviour is to be expected from con artists, or the secret police in an authoritarian state, but it is just not acceptable from the British Broadcasting Corporation in what is supposed to be a modern democracy. With the Licence Fee the BBC criminalizes the very people it's supposed to be serving.