[M2Ys4U]

>The license fee costs £154.50 a year, or £52 if you only have a black and white TV (lord knows how given we're now 100% digital), but the government pays it for you if you're over 75 years of age.

The government stopped paying for it years ago, and forced the BBC to give out free licenses in order to hurt the BBC.

[tomatocracy]

To be fair, over 75s are one of the richest groups in the UK collectively. The government's argument then was not about hurting the BBC but about better targeting limited taxpayers money towards those who actually needed it, in the context of significant cuts being made to public expenditure more generally.

You could argue that not increasing the licence fee to offset the loss of income was about hurting the BBC I suppose though the government side of that argument would have been about not increasing the burden on the less well off who are forced to pay the fee if they want to watch TV.