What do you make of this then?
Labour’s deputy leader, Harriet Harman, says the BBC should investigate alternatives to the licence fee, in case a better option exists. She told Total Politics magazine that the licence fee was a means to an end, not an end in itself. She said if there was “a better way” to secure independence from the government, “let’s hear about it”. Her comments came a day after comedy producer Armando Iannucci advocated a subscription-based BBC.
WHERE are the Conservatives on this one? Why are leftists leading the debate?
you seem to forget there is no such thing as a conservative party anymore since the backstabbers ousted the best prime minister we ever had margeret thatcher,that is why they are quiet on every issue these days,now i dont want to rake up the past and go on about harriet harmans and her husband the shadow police minister jack dromey links to the paedophile information exchange in the 70s which by the way neither has apologised for, but it is a bit rich of i have come out of hiding harriet harman to take the moral high ground on any issue including the license fee which i would suggest she has done quiet well out of getting her regular appearance fees on the bbc which i am sure has made her bank manager very happy in the last few years,she is the last person that wants to see the license fee go since the bbc is just a propaganda wing for the lefties and the socalist labour party.
The Tory party? You are joking . The most useless bunch of politicians to afflict this country since er the nulabour lot.
The main enemy of the counter revolution is the Tory party not nulabour. Deception, prevarication and avarice. Their guiding principles.
The Conservatives are happy to let Labour pretend to have a debate before everyone decides that the current system is the cat’s pyjamas. Job done.
Why they would be happy is anyone’s guess but they appear to be content with the BBC as is, perhaps because those in charge of the party aren’t really Conservatives.
Is this article a Political Party Broadcast by the BBC?.
I quote: “Ms Harman, who is also the shadow culture secretary, acknowledged that the search for an alternative had proved fruitless in the past.
“It’s not easy to see what would be better than the licence fee,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean it actually shouldn’t be looked at.
I’m lost for words……
Clearly the liberal inquisition (who love the BBC because of its leftist bias) is preempting a call for the abolition of the licence fee as they want to control the terms of the debate.
So it wont be ‘licence fee verses subscription’, but ‘licence fee verses direct funding from taxation’.
Which is clearly what they and the BBC want above all.
Yes, they want to pay for it directly, because they think the public won’t be able to complain about the biased service, the poor value for money or the corruption and covering up of paedos if we don’t pay directly for the BBBC.
The case for subscription was spelt out in detail by David Elstein and others in the last Charter review. Harman is lying if she claims there were no alternatives proposed.
The case is even stronger now, the technology is more straightforward and ubiquitous.
Couldn`t the BBC take advertising revenue from the Paedophiles, the Labour Party, Hamas?
And the like.
Because the above groups all get free airtime now as things stand at the BBC…so all should make their “contribution” to fund their pervy weird lies and stuff?
Don`t see why WE pay for Dianne Abbott or Billy Bragg?…let the weird pervy coalition of the willing take out their own subscriptions to BBC Savile…
It is reasonable to surmise that if it wasn’t for the BBC’s brainwashing and subtle indoctrination over the last two decades, Labour and the whole New Leftist movement would be a fraction of the force it is now. This disgusting woman thrives on the putrid carcass of Broadcasting House; she knows that the mafia fee is going nowhere under her vile party of anti-British liars or the useless upper-class Tory buffoons.
The Labour Party aren’t leading the debate, Shapps warned the BBC, this time last year that there would be issues about how the BBC is paid for and they may loose their right to the exclusive use of the licence fee.
And only 4 days ago the new culture secretary said that as we move towards the Charter negotiations everything would be on the table.
NO! Labour are not leading on this, Harm-men is playing the usual Labour trick of hi-jacking an issue, climbing on the bandwagon and claiming it for themselves – quite a good tactic as their BBC tend not to report many Government initiatives or the progress that they are making (the action to tackle ‘aggressive’ tax avoidance being a perfect example). The only thing Harman didn’t say was that we have a ‘cotht of televithion cwithith’.
Harman was playing catch-up.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/05/30/bbc-licence-fee-to-be-reviewed-by-culture-secretary-sajid-javid_n_5420176.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2586482/Death-knell-licence-fee-Ministers-plans-lift-threat-jail-TV-viewers-dodge-TV-levy.html
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/oct/27/bbc-licence-fee-threat-greg-dyke-hits-back-tory
I was told that the Licence fee would not survive much beyond 2016, there was a hint in the media about this, see below.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2630893/Licence-fee-outdated-gone-little-TWO-years-BBC-bosses-warned.html
There’s a licence fee?
Well Labcon are at least pretending they may do something about it!
To be fair, reform of the BBC is very much off limits to the Conservatives as they would be immediately accused of trying to manipulate the BBC.
On the other hand Labour can say these kinds of things unhindered.
The Tories have nothing to lose by confronting the BBC. Indeed, one of their greatest mistakes in recent decades has been trying to appease it, in the hope of better treatment.
The BBC is so viscerally opposed to conservatism that not even wholesale adoption of the Labour manifesto (and sometimes it appears the Tories have tried even that!) would propitiate the cultural Marxists that run it.
They might just as well confront it head-on. Once we are rid of Albaman and his clansmen, Labour won’t be able to muster sufficient zombies to stop the sort of reform (abolition?) that sensible people realise is long, long overdue.
If Hypocritical Harman is talking about the possibility of voluntary subscription, as opposed to the current compulsory one, it is good news. As has been said many times, I would have no objection to any fully commercial broadcaster being as leftist or rightist as it wishes to be, in exactly the same way that newspapers are. In fact some extreme views from left and right would be welcome and make for a healthier democracy. ‘You pays yer money and you takes yer choice.’
However, we should remember that, even if the BBC was suddenly completely funded by subscription, it would start out with a massive brand recognition advantage over much smaller commercial rivals and there would certainly be monopoly considerations once it became fully commercial. ( there are now of course but the BBC hides behind its public service camouflage). Therefore, I would prefer that the BBC be broken up into five or six commercial companies, each funded only by subscription and advertising. But somehow I think that is a long way off unless someone finds a spare set of Lady Thatcher’s balls from somewhere. So I will settle for the compulsory License Fee being replaced by a voluntary subscription as the first step to ridding us of the BBC.
“As has been said many times, I would have no objection to any fully commercial broadcaster being as leftist or rightist as it wishes to be, in exactly the same way that newspapers are. In fact some extreme views from left and right would be welcome and make for a healthier democracy…”
My position, exactly. To leave things as they are, regarding the way the BBC is funded, is the worst possible outcome of all (and for all of us).
It is quite easy to make these kinds of statements for the time being whilst they search for a replacement to Patten. Such statements are all relatively meaningless, although they do assist in setting out the job-criteria definition of his replacement.
In that context these comments are quite interesting as they indicate a certain direction of travel, but I wouldn’t expect anything too significant to change too quickly, as the BBC does have a turning circle the size of a super-tanker (metaphorically speaking).
The BBC should be run as a subscription service. The BBC currently runs UK Gold as one, though they are quiet about that. At least they have experience.
This is just Liebour asking for easy targets to set up so they can knock them down. If they just renew the charter and the licence system there will be criticism, if they can show some alternatives – no matter how half baked have been investigated then they’ve protected their backsides.
Its all a sham.