Right, that’s it. I’ve battened down the hatches and my mind is made up. I just refuse, full stop, end of story, to pay any more of my hard-earned cash towards having even more terrible television piped into my home via satellite, than I already get terrestrially!

The digital switchover is coming to us all and though we’ve been getting pitiful TV for some time now for the cost of our TV licences, let’s face it, digital TV isn’t all that much better, there’s just more of it. The point is that we’ll now be paying twice for the pleasure of watching repeats, when once is bad enough!

The TV companies test me constantly by giving me ever more useless and repeated programmes to watch. They think they’ll wear me down and force me into signing up – I, however, have the stubborn nature of a true Taurean. I’d rather throw my TV away and find something more interesting to do instead, than give in and find myself paying through the nose for double the dose of second-rate viewing. And Freeview’s fine as long as you don’t live behind a great big hill. Like me.

I wouldn’t mind half so much if the old TV licence was scrapped, or even partially incorporated into the cost of satellite TV. But to expect us to happily fork out for both just shows how out of touch the BBC really is with what is going on in the world, what people want and, let’s face it, with the state of our bank balances.

Now, I realise I’m not going to win this one. I understand that my little mutiny will have no effect whatsoever on the imminent digital switchover and, regrettable though it is, heads will not roll at BBC headquarters as a result of my taking a stand.

But as I dust off my trusty transistor and get settled into the afternoon play, I will have the enormous satisfaction of knowing that my evening will be free to pursue more interesting activities, instead of spending it ranting at the same trashy TV programme I saw the day before yesterday (and will no doubt have the opportunity to ‘catch up with’ again, the day after tomorrow), and all for free.

The bottom line is that television is just not important enough to me to start trebling my normal monthly TV budget for it. And at a time when many have to toss up whether to have food or heat for the day, because they can’t afford both, suddenly having to find extra funds for satellite broadcasts is the last thing we need.

So don’t cough up for digital, throw the TV away and you can wave goodbye to the licence fee too. It’s either a genius solution or I’m just the grumpiest woman in Shropshire . . .