Category Archives: BBC funding and purpose

Interesting debate here between John Humphyrs and David Elstein on the decision to freeze the BBC TV tax for 5 years and a useful insight as to how the BBC like to tackle the subject of their own bloated funding. Elstein is clearly sympathetic to the BBC and thus Humphyrs is able to lead the interview without the irksome inconvenience of having someone point out that the UK cannot afford this annual £3bn indulgence. Note the title “BBC license fee freeze “wrong” – just in case you miss the message. Actually I agree it is wrong but not for the reason given by the BBC. It is wrong that the taxpayer contributes so much as one penny to this left wing burlesque. I’d sooner the billions went to our Armed Forces.

It’s a curious way that they look at it. I refer to BBC outrage that it will be “ordered” to pick up the costs of  TV licenses to those people over 75 years old. I would go further – the BBC should pick up the tab for the costs of all TV licenses – ie. let them pay their own way with their “world class” journalism!

Perhaps you may have read that the Adam Smith Institute has suggested that the BBC should wind up its licence fee and become a voluntary subscription-based service. I agree with that part but I would take issue  with the view postulated by the Adam Smith Institute that the BBC is the UK’s strongest media asset. It is the UK’s most dangerous negative anti-British media liability and the idea that it can play a positive role in global terms is also contentious. The BBC license imposition must go. The BBC bias can stay so long as it does not cost me one penny. The BBC monster must be slain and there is no point of compromise with it. That is not to say that it does not have some professional staff working for it – it does and I know some of them. But the bias is so deep, so instinctive, so visceral, that it will never go away.  

I thought that Emma Boon from the Taxpayers Alliaance was given quite a tough time on Today this morning as the BBC covered the Coalition suggestion that the public can decide which useless laws should be scrapped. Give it a listen. However it struck me that there is one piece of legislation that does need to be repealed without further ado – and THAT is the one forcing us to fund the BBC. Please Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg – can we just axe that right now?

The Times reports that the BBC has ignored pleas for public sector pay restraint with a multimillion-pound offer to boost the salaries of more than 13,000 workers.

On the day that the Chancellor George Osborne warned that the black hole in the nation’s finances was larger than previously thought, the BBC announced that staff earning less than £37,726 — 70 per cent of the total — would each receive a £475 pay rise.

I note that The Time has exposed more BBC duplicity...

A BBC executive who is paid almost £200,000 a year to award bonuses to senior managers tried to manipulate salary information to hide the number of staff earning more than £100,000.  

Robert Johnston, who is “reward director”, asked staff responsible for releasing the data to the public to “deliberately disguise” the number of managers on six-figure salaries, according to e-mails seen by The Times.

Have they no shame? And yet, day in day out, they talk about the “fat cat” bankers????

Quite a good take on the BBC here…

“…the public has realised that there is also another BBC: a corporation that purports to be a public service but pays its Director-General a whopping £816,000 and its head of personnel more than the Prime Minister. It is an empire that schedules TV programmes to wrong-foot its rivals. Proposals seen by The Timeslook like a welcome recognition that the empire has gone too far, and should focus back on quality programming. But they actually constitute an evasive and artful strategy designed to keep the next government from intervening, while in reality changing very little.

In proposing to axe the BBC’s UK magazines, relinquish its hold on the teenage market, halve the size of its website and cut two radio stations, Director-General Mark Thompson presumably hopes to give the impression of embarking on a path of serious reform. But if he is serious about reform, he needs to do much more than axe a few radio stations that no one has ever listened to and websites that few have ever visited. The real giveaway in the proposals is that the BBC seems to have no plans to give anything back to licence-fee payers”

So, hands up all those who think that Arts projects headed by Alan Yentob to mark the refurbishmeof Broadcasting House costing licence fee-payers £3.9m is well worth it? It’s that “special relationship” that the BBC enjoys with the British public, right?

Well, it at all sounded good.

Excellent article here by George Pitcher on the arrogance that defines the leadership of the BBC.

“There is now a Versailles mentality among the BBC aristocracy. On being told in their plush parlours that we peasants are being starved of decent broadcasting, the response is less “let them eat cake” as “let them watch cack”. But we peasants are revolting. I’m sure BBC execs would smirk in ironic agreement at that observation, but they would do well to mark that the public mood has turned ugly towards those who line their pockets at our expense.

There has been an assumption among the political and banking classes that all this will blow over and that they will return to business as normal, as they see it; that’s why parliamentary reform has been dilatory and the shameless “bonuses are back” slogan is heard in banks, even after their semi-nationalisation.

The third pillar of our public-sector greed culture is the BBC. The signs are that the public stick will eventually discipline Parliament and the City into behaving in a better manner than sponging off the state, which means us. So it must and will be for the BBC.”