From the Sunday Times:
“The Tories have reined in plans to freeze the TV licence fee and force the BBC to reveal the salaries of its highest paid stars. After the party’s combative approach towards the corporation in the run-up to the election, Ed Vaizey, the new minister for media and arts, has used his first interview to tell the BBC that it will be treated firmly but fairly by the coalition government.”
Meanwhile on the early morning news I caught a banal discussion between the presenters as to whether the millionaire status of caninet ministers meant they are out of touch with the reat of us.
I wonder how many millionaires the tax has created at the BBC. Hypocrites the lot of them
Unlike Mandelson, Blair, Balls and the rest of the Zanu Labour claque in million pound houses. Prescott at croquet, etc. Beeboid scum not in touch with reality is the more truthful analysis.
Don’t remember them attacking Shaun Woodward when Labour were in power.
I don’t know why the Conservatives bother to be so conciliatory. On the World at This Weekend on Radio 4, the Conservatives were demonised as “mostly sceptical” loonies on the EU reined in (“thank God for an ex-EU bureaucrat”) by Nick Clegg. Vince Cable’s sound – according to the BBC – “keep on spending” policies are also endangered by those dangerous Conservatives who insist on the laughably tiny £6bn cuts (against an annual borrowing requirement of £160bn).
OTOH, the BBC “jourmalist” analysing the failure of the BNP to gain traction in Barking allowed Eric Pickles to lie his Cameroon heart out (even the Conservatives are out-demonised by the BNP) by insisting that local authority hand-outs on the basis of “need” somehow doesn’t translate into favouring apparently destitute immigrants and is, moreover, undeniably “fair”. He also allowed Pickles to whitewash the Cameroon emasculation of the 1922 Committee by citing Churchill (were he still with us) as being, in some way, in favour of Cameron’s intra-party coup. Churchill, at the time of the establishment of the 19222 Committee was a minister and member of the Liberal Party. He – with the rest of the coalition cabinet – was slung out of office by Conservative backbenchers and lost his seat besides. That’s what Cameron wants to avoid: don’t expect to hear this on the BBC though. As always with the BBC, £3.4bn gets you bias and journalistic incompetence in one.
No surprise there.
Just why will no one sort out the BBC. Freeze the licence for at least 5 years. that will give them something to think about like the rset of us have had to.
Umbongo – I certainly agree that the definition of ‘Need’ is a sore subject which no-one in the media seems to want to highlight.
Don’t freeze the licence, cut it and offer no apology for the cuts. The power and arrogance of the BBC must be curtailed. There’s no need for a softly softly approach.