“The BBC licence fee is “regressive” and hits the “poorest” hardest, the Culture Secretary has said in his clearest indication since taking office he wants to reform the payment. John Whittingdale told MPs that by charging all viewers the same annual fee those families on lower incomes are forced to pay more to watch BBC programmes.
It is the first time Mr Whittingdale has revealed his views on the licence fee since moving from the backbenches – where he was a vocal critic – into the Cabinet. The comments raise the prospect that the Conservative Government will do away with the £145.50 annual fee and replace it with another funding system.”
It’s not a question of whether it hits “the poor’ hardest (even though that may be true) It is surely more simple than that; WHY is the BBC allowed to extort in excess of £3 BILLION a year from those who possess a TV set? It is an anachronism and it must be made to stand on its own two financial feet in 2015. I’m worried that Whittingdale may end up getting a ‘discounted” BBC license tax amount for “the poor” whilst the BBC makes the balance up by charging us all even more!
Do not expect to be pleased by John Whittingdale, he will just do as his master bids.
Have we ever heard Cameron speak about the BBC? Ah yes, ‘they are a national treasure’. Q.E.D.
It certainly is a disgrace that licence fee hits the poor hardest.
But it is also unfair for the state to make a billionaire pay for trash like Eastenders and Flog It! if he doesn’t want to buy them.
The obvious solution is to make the BBC a privatised subscription service.
They could turn BBC studios into mosques…..oh wait….they already have.
Most ‘poor’ people have Sky TV packages costing in excess of £50 per month. If they no longer need to pay the TV licence they can upgrade to The Family Bundle plus Sky Movies HD and Sky Sports HD for just £75.75 per month.
You don’t know many poor people then do you?
I do. I meet them as part of my work. It is a grim world of pre-pay electricity meters, expensive loans, second hand cookers and fridges from charities, people walking miles to work to save on bus fares, food banks, cruel benefit sanctions, poor, cheap food, poor housing which is unheated in winter and many other privations.
These are the people who the BBC preys upon with its snoopers, and who keep our magistrates courts busy.
The criminalisation hits women hardest as they make up a large majority of those dragged through the courts for not paying up for their licence fees.
This, oddly, is something the progressive BBC has never highlighted.
It’s not just the TV tax, they also get over a billion pounds a year from their commercial sales worldwide (who authorised the sodding bbc to be a commercial enterprise?) and many tens of millions from the communist EU.
“…WHY is the BBC allowed to extort in excess of £3 BILLION a year from those who possess a TV set?”
David is, of course, correct, to ask this most fundamental question. This is what it all comes down to – even if one can set aside the now clearly political nature of the BBC, the way it sees itself as a ‘campaigning’ organisation (so very far removed from its Chartered mandate). The BBC has absolutely no moral, ethical or financial justification for continuing to exist solely on the basis of an unfair, discredited, anachronistic poll tax.
Will John Whittingdale concentrate on this most fundamental issue?
Don’t hold your breath, folks. Get ready for discussions around issues of ‘quality’, of ‘impartiality’ (as in no discussion at all), whilst the BBC does its very best to ‘nudge’ the conversation away from anything to do with the core matter of whether it is in any way justifiable for every one of us to be forced by law (and a bullying Corporation) to continue paying for a clearly politically compromised public broadcaster to dominate the current affairs agenda day-in, day-out.
They are softening us up for the BBC to be funded by an additional levy on council tax, so that even people without TV’s will have to pay for it!
Disappointing that the Queen’s speech did not start the ball rolling by proposing the decriminalisation of the licence fee.
I recently sent an email to John Whittingdale regarding the biased bbc and the disgusting way the election was reported.
I received a reply from one of his lackeys;
Thank you for your e-mail of 14 May, to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, the Rt Hon John Whittingdale MP, about BBC impartiality. I have been asked to reply.
Responsibility for what is broadcast on television and radio rests with the broadcasters and the organisations which regulate broadcasting – the Office of Communications (OFCOM), the BBC Trust and the Welsh Fourth Channel Authority. They are independent of the Government and responsible for safeguarding the public interest in media dissemination of content. They set out the rules and guidance with which media organisations must comply. Within this framework, it is the media house’s job to make judgements about what individual programmes should contain and the time at which they are disseminated.
The BBC’s governing instruments, the Royal Charter and Agreement, place broad obligations on the Corporation in respect of its television and radio services, objectives, programme content and standards. Within this framework detailed decisions on programme content and scheduling are matters for the BBC, reflecting its editorial independence. It is a long-standing principle that the Government does not interfere in programme matters, either on arrangements for scheduling or on content. It is important to maintain the principle of freedom of expression, which political interference could undermine.
The Government believes it is important that the Corporation is aware of the concerns of viewers and listeners. You can contact the BBC Trust with your views at: BBC Trust Unit, 180 Great Portland Street, London, W1W 5QZ, by emailing trust.enquiries@bbc.co.uk or by calling the information line on 03700 103 100.
It is the role of the BBC Trust to ensure that the BBC Executive has in place an effective, clear and fair framework to respond to complaints. Complaints are considered by the BBC Executive first, followed by a right of appeal to the BBC Trust. If you would like to make a complaint, you can contact the Editorial Complaints Unit (ECU). The unit examines complaints independently. Its address is: Editorial Complaints Unit, BBC, PO
Department for Culture, Media & Sport
Box 1922, Darlington, DL3 0UR. Phone: 03700 100 222. E-mail at: https://ssl.bbc.co.uk/complaints/forms/?reset=#anchor.
You can also contact Ofcom to make them aware of your views on this matter. More information about how to do this is available at: http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/enforcement/audience-complaints/.
I hope that this is helpful.
Yours sincerely,
Dempster Marples.
The message I got from this reply was…blah,blah, blah bullshit….blah, blah, blah standard reply…blah, blah, blah nothing will change. I certainly won’t be holding my breath?
Nice try Glen but the Conservative Government won’t do anything about the BBC as many suspected. I’m glad I didn’t vote for them.
Don’t blame me I voted UKIP!
I caught Dempster Marples whilst on holiday.There is a latin name for it which I cant recall. It was horrible but after a couple of weeks the symptoms receeded. Lukily I did not suffer long term conservatism which is one of the worst aspects of the prognosis.
Poor sod is all I can say. Came from a disadvantaged background too!
A warning to the Tories. Either deal with the BBC this time or face another uphill and unfair battle at the next election and face the expenditure of huge amounts of political capital trying to push through any legislation that the leftist BBC doesn’t support.
Whilst forcing the BBC to fund itself completely by subscription is beyond the Tories they can do several things which would clip the wings of the BBC. Of course the corporation will attack the government but it would do anyway even if they gave it a LF increase.
Things that can be realistically done are:
1) Break up the BBC by giving control of broadcasting in Scotland and Wales to the respective Parliaments and having complete independence and funding for whatever national broadcaster they wish to have from the ‘BBC’ in England.
2) In England , under the banner if increasing localism and of fair and open competition, sell off all BBC local radio, Radios 1 and 2 and the website, to a wide range of buyers and foster private local radio stations.
2) Limit the number of TV channels that the BBC in England can run to no more than four.
3) Decriminalise the LF in England and prevent the BBC from forcing or bluffing their way into people’s homes.
4) Prevent the BBC from attempting to establish a foothold in new ways of distributing content.
5) In line with the reduction in service, reduce the LF.
Doublethinker
Whilst I agree with all your sentiments , the simplest answer would be to float it on the open market as a private company, as with the gas, electric & telephone services etc . If its a popular service it will survive .
If not then good riddance.
I agree that privatisation would be the best way forward.But I don’t think that the Tories have the stomach for the massive protest that the left would whip up and the endless judicial reviews as the judges tried to stop the legislative programme of a democratically elected government. I was simply trying to suggest some things that the Tories could just about politically deliver and which would clip the wings of the BBC.
Would that be the 24% mandate you are referring to?
Because you arent really British you dont recognise the BBC as a fine longstanding British institution. Shame on you.
You do realise this site is only here because it is being paid for by Press barons in an effort to profit from a fire sale.
You dont get to the top of a Google list for small money. If you want to be someones poodle then carry on.
I am very worried about Whittingdale, he seems hell-bent on re-assigning the licence fee so that it is paid as a tax – so just based on income instead of abolishing altogether.
This is a very bad idea.
With all the fuss pre-election engaged by the BBC (on behalf of the Labour party) you would think that the BBC would recognise that the NHS often quoted (by the BBC) as being ‘the best in the world’ is not endorsed by the BBC Execs who in ‘protecting the NHS’ from ‘Tory Cuts’ fail to inform us that they use private healthcare themselves and for their privately educated children… (no doubt)!
I quote from the Daily Mail (last Friday) Ephraim Hardcastle newspaper column points out the continuing ‘hardship’ of the BBC executive…
‘…you’ll be reassured to learn that BBC executives don’t rely on the NHS, about which the Corporation often laments. Some 364 of director general Lord Hall’s top executives enjoy privates health insurance costing the BBC a trifling £700,000 a year (of TV tax payers money).’
And IF that alone is not enough expenditure of ‘grandeur’ whilst in austerity (for the rest of the nation). Or as Lord (Haw Haw) Hall would say splendid ‘value for money’ (at just 33p per day forced from every man woman and child in the country forced to pay the ‘Telly tax’.
The BBC spent £10,315,695 last year on hotel rooms for staff. That alone is the equivalent of almost 71,000 licence fees!
Another £15.5m of license fee money (£100,000 a week) blown on ‘Health & Safety’ (sharp pencils) and ‘talent’ advice from left sourced ‘private’ PR companies to spot anything needing ‘advice’ (meaning offshore banking and tax evasion for Graham Norton and Gary Linekar to name but two). That’s another 3793 TV license fees!
There are so many examples that one wonder how the BBC gets away with it. It does because it can and it will do so until it is privatised or abolished. Its is time for it to be Axed in full.
http://www.axethetvtax.net/the-tv-licence-fee-is-seen-as-the-joint-second-most-unfair-tax-by-voters-in-all-parties/