I was an engineer on several Low Power FM RSL's when I was at Uni so I know the problems of pirates. We were scheduled to start an RSL when a pirate station started up about .5 meg off our centre frequency. We had to delay our launch for 2 days, we lost advertising revenue (rather important for a student station) and more importantly, 2 days of our licence. So I'm not really the No.1 fan of pirate stations. When I worked in Birmingham I remember there being a few pirate stations but I've only really heard one or two since I moved back to Manchester. As far as long-term LPFM (Low Power FM) licences go, there is zero chance of getting one anywhere else than the middle of nowhere and LPAM (Low Power AM) is worth bothering about unless it's a speech based station.