3 minute read
BIG, SPLASHY WEDDINGS
Nora Johnson Breaking Views
AFTER a few years of uncertainty, the wedding season’s back in full swing. Post lockdown, everyone deserves a party but if, with the costof living crisis, it’s a choice between a big wedding or house deposit, I know what I’d choose.
Expensive weddings are a rip off. The bride and groom are a salesperson’s dream and the more extras they can flog you the better their bonus. Anybody who considers a big party to be more important than a roof over your head is bad news. A wedding day only lasts 24 hours. A marriage lasts (hopefully) a lifetime. It makes far more sense now to spend potentially limited funds on property as the length of marriage is invariably inversely proportional to the amount spent on the wedding...
Oh, and a few tips. Always get married early in the morning, so if the marriage doesn’t work out you haven’t wasted the whole day! And check the organist’s familiar with the wedding music because one hapless bride who’d asked an aged organist to play the theme tune from Kevin Costner’s ‘Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves’ found herself galloping down the aisle to ‘Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding through the glen . . .’ Oops!
Nora Johnson’s 12 critically acclaimed psychological suspense crime thrillers (www.norajohnson.net) all available online including eBooks (€0.99;£0.99), Apple Books, audiobooks, paperbacks at Amazon etc. Profits to Cudeca cancer charity.
Letters
LAST week we discussed the latest figures surrounding the issue of 2.8 million television viewers who believe that they should not be required to pay the £159 annual charge for a TV licence as they no longer watch BBC channels or any kind of live television.
The rise of streaming services such as Netflix, Disney Plus and Paramount Plus have been giving traditional channels like BBC and ITV a run for their money over the past few years, with the above figure showing an increase of more than 360,000 people in the previous 12 months.
There’s been a significant uplift in the amount of people who watch live television through social media channels such as
Comments
Pay per view would sort out this antiquated policy, and then the BBC will see the exact figures willing to tune in to the channel.
I object to the BBC using the licence fee as their own bank account paying obscene wages such as £1.3 million to Gary Linaker for hosting a programme for one hour a week, and paying one of their news readers £350,000 for three days work and a total of 12 hours on radio which I never listen to.
William Hughes
Where have you seen these shows already? The licence is free for over 75s in receipt of Pension Credit. You’re on £52k a year so probably too rich to get pensions credit though.
Jase
The BBC has now become a game show channel and a repeat channel with nothing too exciting in the middle.
Les
The BBC send letters to intimidate people who don’t own a licence.
Anonymous
The BBC is a self serving and obsolete service. Yes, they have a few series that are good, but with over three billion from stealth enforcement of li
YouTube. According to TV Licensing.co.uk, even if you’re watching live TV through YouTube indirectly, you are still required to have TV licence coverage to be compliant with the law.
Toby Young, the Founder and Director of the Free Speech Union told the Daily Mail: “These figures show that the TV licence fee is not a viable funding model for the BBC going forward.”
He added: “The obvious alternative is to become a subscriptionbased service like Netflix and Amazon Prime.” cence paying they should have! Why it still exists is beyond me and paying 44p is far to much for a generally mediocre service, that unless you want to be hounded by Television Licensing as if you were a criminal, you will pay under duress!
Perhaps, times are changing and preferences are evolving. Will streaming services eventually render traditional live television as irrelevant and outdated?
Rob
Why do we have to pay the BBC to watch all the other channels who pay their own way. Shocking.
John
Do away with the TV licence. We live in the 21st century, not the 20th century when BBC was created.
Stephen Nield
It’s disgraceful that the BBC charge pensioners £159 for a TV licence. Shame on you.
John
Repeats and more of them. Then there are the quiz / game shows giving obscene amounts in prize money, that and the astronomical salaries paid to some of their presenters. My husband is over 80, I am in my 70s, the only reason we watch BBC is no adverts, we are not into streaming, so watch more DVDs than TV these days, but still we have to pay the licence fee. We have just over the limit in pension between us not to be able to get pension credits.
Jacqueline Drew
