Lord Reith, the BBC’s founding father, enshrined the BBC’s purposes as ‘to inform, educate and entertain’. These officially remain the BBC’s guiding principles to this day. Add to this, the BBC’s motto: ‘Nation shall speak peace unto nation.’

The BBC is an institution incorporated by statute as a public service. It was not set up to make profit via a constellation of companies providing services/products to select groups.

Blocking this site (no doubt very lovely and educational, informative and entertaining) to UK citizens is plainly outrageous.

What state are we living in? Stasi Britain? UKSSR?
For whatever reason, it’s censorship.

Non-UK readers please note that the BBC has seriously lost its way and to a growing number of Brits does not represent or reflect the realities of British life now – although I’m sure it still produces some high quality programming. In fact, I stopped watching television many years ago now partly because of this departure from its public service mission and because of political biases.

Thus I do not have a TV licence (nor any television – shock/horror!). This means that I may not even visit a BBC website! How contrary to the intention of the internet and contrary to the BBC’s own principles!

And, perhaps not so coincidentally, if you do not have a television in the UK(and thus do not buy a licence), the TV Licensing ‘authority’ sends the boys round. I do mean ‘sends the boys round’. They stand on your doorstep unpleasantly (and unlawfully) demanding entry to your home to check if you really really haven’t got a TV.

If you don’t allow them in they endlessly send all sorts of nasty letters threatening you with summonses to court/large fines/jail sentences, even though you’ve done absolutely nothing wrong. This ‘authority’ collects (some might say ‘extorts by fear’) money that goes directly to the BBC, which indirectly employs this scary firm.

I’m sure that BBC Futures is a great site, very educational, informative and entertaining. However, obviously I shall not be able to visit. Perhaps you could kindly repost your articles here or elsewhere for those of us who either refuse to be bullied by the BBC’s TV Licensing strongarm into paying license fees for TVs they don’t have or who, like me, are convinced that the BBC is no longer offering an unbiased public service per its statutory terms of reference.

(BTW, many years ago, I used to work for the BBC and loved it, I have no axe to grind apart from the points I make above. But I do have first hand knowledge of the way the Beeb has gone so far off track – and also the massive wastage of public monies there; that’s another story though!)

Let me get my head around that while I’m googling a proxy.