Free thinking

The BBC press release launching the public consultation on licence fees for the over-75s puts it quite starkly. Keeping them free would cost "around a fifth of our budget - the equivalent to what we spend today on all of BBC Two, BBC Three, BBC Four, the BBC News Channel, CBBC and CBeebies."

Of course, there are other ways of cutting that cookie, but it's now important to get people thinking about it. You have til 12 February.