A former Labour MP turned peer of the realm has made fresh calls for the abolition of the TV licence fee.
Baroness Kate Hoey, formerly Labour MP for Vauxhall, slammed the "derisory, nasty tone" adopted by the BBC in its coverage leading up to the elections of 6th May.
The results are still rolling in, but the Conservatives have performed particularly strongly in the English local council election, as well as securing victory in the Hartlepool by election - the first time in the constituency's 47 year history that a Conservative MP, Jill Mortimer, has been elected.
The non-aligned peer tweeted: "Expect there is quite a lot of misery [at] BBC News today and amongst so many journalists that all their biased attacks and insinuations on Boris Johnson did not work.
"Criticism is one thing but their derisory nasty tone has been rejected by the public.
"Time to end the licence fee!"
The BBC, which is incapable of any sort of self-reflection or modesty, refutes claims of political bias.
In 2019 the Director General, Tony Hall, wrote in the Telegraph: "Around 27 million people in the UK came to the BBC website to find out about the election results.
"It was a reminder of the trust people place in the BBC.
"But the fact criticism came from all sides of the political divide shows to me that we were doing our job without fear or favour."
Rebecca Ryan, of the recently established Defund The BBC campaign group, slammed the menacing tone of TV Licensing's noxious correspondence.
She said: "I think it is disgraceful really. Their communications is one of the worst.
"A lot of people want to cancel their licence but they continue to pay it because they are intimidated.
"They don't want to be funding this but they don't want to be hassled.
"And even if they don’t watch BBC or have a TV, they still pay because they don’t want to be hassled."
In terms of the legislation, a TV licence is only required for those properties where equipment is installed or used to receive TV programmes (that is programmes, at their time of broadcast, on any TV channel) or BBC on-demand programmes via the iPlayer.
There are many legal alternatives to paying the TV licence fee, which we would encourage people to consider. In many cases these alternatives provide far superior quality programming at a fraction of the cost.
Anyone who does not legally require a TV licence is under no legal obligation at all to TV Licensing. They should simply ignore TV Licensing completely, because experience shows that trying to assist TV Licensing is a totally futile effort.
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