Blue Peter badge scheme suspended

[flibbertygibbet]

I've only just read about this

I hope they sort out something more robust very quickly. My boys both have badges (which they earned legitimately), and it's saved us loads of money on entry fees!

why??!!!!

Mine are bitterly disappointed too (they earned theirs). No wildlife parks over Easter for us.

Never mind the kids -what about us MNers that are BP badge holders? (quite a few of us came out on a thread a while ago - until then I thought I was one of the chosen few!)

Ah Betty - do you use yours to get in free then?

ha ha, no -think they might laugh at me if I did yoyo . (Probably not seen a badge that old before!)

To be honest I wouldn't have a clue where you could get in free with one anyway

there was something on the news about them as fake ones are being sold on ebay

I thought the badges being sold on ebay were genuine, but people were selling them for vast amounts of money because you could use them to gain free entry to places.

(I've got a Blue Peter badge, but I earned it myself!!)

Supposedly a woman turned up at some attraction or other with six kids in tow, all of whom had a badge and all of whom were let in foc. Shameful example to set ones children in my stuffy old woman opinion.

I have a badge which I earned by being on the show last year. I remember when I was there there was loads of talk of the BBC taking action against ebay over it all as the sale of the badges was causing ructions with the venues who were providing free entry.

Its awful they've had to suspend the scheme, but I suppose its the only way they could keep credibility and work something out. I heard they were planning on having ID cards to accompany the badges of genuine badge winners so that the perks of being a badge winner were non transferable.

Sharklet - are you the artist who also does the Art Attack programme? We saw a chap on Sat in London who appeared on BP - he paints caricatures to music (we heard Elvis and Robbie Williams). He was brilliant.

When we visited Legoland with BP badges last year the boys had to go to customer services with their badges, and a delightful lady there asked them what they had done to earn their badges. Quite often they get asked similar questions when we use them, and dss love answering and go to great enthusiastic lengths to explain exactly what they did!

They certainly have got a problem now though, trying to devise a fraud-proof scheme which is not vastly expensive.

Loads of these attractions take part in many other 'kids go free' schemes. I would have thought a strict policy of just one free BP badge holder with each full paying adult, would sort out most of the problems, hostility, and ill-will.

Why not just issue a named certificate with it, and you have to take the kid's ID?

A bit unfamiliar and roundabout in Britain, but as we're all going to be ID'ed to death soon, it will become normal to produce ID wherever we go.