ACCORDING to my arithmetic, almost a quarter of a million pounds was 'dodged' last year by TV licence evaders in Blackburn and Burnley alone.

Until the 2,229 offenders were caught, that is -- and helped to place the towns high in a 'League of Shame' that TV Licensing concocted last week in order to publicise its detection efforts and the fines that stigma dodgers stand to suffer.

And I would not mind betting that the £250,000 that viewers in Blackburn and Burnley tried to escape is but the tip of an iceberg of TV licence dodging here in East Lancashire.

For while such as Councillor Maureen Bateson, Blackburn with Darwen Council's executive member for consumer affairs, suggests that a TV licence is an expensive item that low-income families find 'very difficult' to pay, I wonder if East Lancashire's prominent position in the evasion league is assisted by another factor.

After all, the licence -- costing a shade over 30p a day -- can hardly be called dear. Not when it amounts to the price of one and a half cigarettes; items which, from my observations, many of our low-income families seem to have no difficulty in affording and consuming daily in much greater numbers.

No, it is rightful resentment at the TV licence's very existence in this day and age which I refer to.

For while the law says that if you have a telly, you have to pay the £112 fee -- and so you should -- it remains one of the most unfair taxes there is. This is because it is disingenuously passed off as a payment for the right to watch any TV and when everyone knows it pays for just some -- namely, the BBC's. TV Licensing is actually an agency of the BBC, but how many people watch or listen to just the BBC? And come to that how many people can get any of the fancy new digital channels -- of the BBC or anyone else?

There are millions of households paying the full licence fee -- which goes up in a few weeks to £116 --and only getting a partial service. And that's not fair.

The best way to scrap this injustice is to scrap the licence and let the BBC stand on its own feet.

As we see in East Lancashire thousands have taken it upon themselves to, in effect, do this. And, no doubt, many are not 'can't pay' people, but ones who refuse to out of the same sort of principle that saw the poll tax axed because they believed it was basically wrong -- and it is.