+++ Cameron : “I Want to Freeze BBC Licence Fee” +++
Says he supports the principle of the Licence Fee, freezing is the right thing to do.
He is not proposing deep cuts.
Digested Read : Maya by Alastair Campbell – John Crace
What Happened To 19 Secretive Tories? – LibDemVoice
Charged MPs Still Take Labour Whip – Paul Waugh
Labour Distances Itself from Official Law Firm – Iain Dale
Labour Party’s Solicitor Defends Theft Charged MPs’ – Telegraph
Doing Emotional – Jon Craig
Gordon Brown’s Policy Inventions - Fink
Conservatives Need Clear, Discernable Principles – Fraser Nelson
Union’s £75 Million Lever on Labour – News of the Screws
Cameron Has to Come Up With Something Better – Fraser Nelson
Republican Twitter Kings – Time
Prosecute Racketeering MPs – Times
Yeo’s Pre-Blogged Ambush – Indy
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Sarah Palin said…
“A year later, I gotta ask the supporters of all that, ‘How’s that hopey, changey thing working out for ya?’ “
-Gilts (Mar)
As of 28 Jan 2010 +5.8%
I hope he depoliticises it too
He means freeze it in the glacial sense. For a neolithic epoch amount of time.
That, and McBroon’s rampant inflation legacy, will soon reduce the BBC licence fee down to a real terms figure equating what you would pay for freeview.
we’ll see what happens when he’s in power.
(if there’s still electricity)
BBC is just an Oxbridge creche, they’ll play whatever tune they’re told to play.
Freeze it, then reduce it, then eliminate it. Go Dave
The BBC is a nest of vipers!
The license fee must be abolished!
BBC have already reported Cameron’s words.
It matters when the fall of shot straddles the target.
Well, it’s a start. Next step – make it a discretionary subscription a la Sky, etc.
Guido – your site used to work in google chrome – it doesnt now – would be great if you could fix it – thanks
Google chrome is actually not very good. Surprising for the Mighty Goo, I know but you’d be better off with FF
Tested on Chrome and it looks good. Email a screenshot. We are working on the IE6 bug.
I’m using Google Chrome and it looks OK to me.
fine on chrome here too.
However ‘archive’ box could do with most recent stories being spelt out – instead of having to go to the archive page for other stories…
Google Chrome is fine here too.
Chrome is fine for me, and it is MUCH faster than FF
Absolutely ridiculous! Dave needs to get rid of the licence fee altogether.
He’s crazy. The BBC is a wonderful institution; well respected, with great shows like Bonekickers, unbiased political and news reporting (A.Marr etc) and really delivers value for money (especially for J.Ross). Of course it is hideously white but we are working on that.
I want to end it. ASAP. To destroy the enemy class, as Mr Gabb puts it :-)
Nice one. Now how about also freezing:-
civil service pay (min 5 years)
local authority salaries & pensions
MPs salaries & pensions
costs of all Govt services to individuals
Fuel/alcohol duties
Starting with the armed forces
why not scrap all taxation and any law and let Fred Godwin run the country
Because that’s obviously the only alternative to a country strangled by a burgeoning State which steals 45% of GDP every year from the productive sections of society to give to the unproductive ones…
YAY! Love it. Too many teenybopper presenters on there anyway. I’d do it for half the price. Can we freeze the presenters too while we’re at it (Marr, Toenails et al.) and get rid of the awful DG and his team of apparatchiks. Come back Aunty Beeb, bastion of the free world.
An outrage! I will be utterly furious if Mr Cameron delivers on this aspiration.
I for one am extremely satisfied with the BBC’s superbly slavish political bias,
charmed by it’s institutional hatred of Mrs Thatcher, inspired by it’s gloriously extravagant overmanning, sorry overstaffing culture, gladdened by it’s dogged, threatening pursuit of so many single mothers who cant pay to watch it’s fantastic content, and simply awed by it’s masterful ability to produce content so few people want or value.
Bravo BBC you’re a national treasure!
and like all treasure, it needs to be buried.
Mr Fawkes – I thought all ctnus were now Hoons?
Good news from No 10 on the fight against deflation
It looks like ASDA will soon be launching its £300 ‘recession suit’ range
Jobless to receive £300 for an “interview suit”
Excellent, I presume I just need a gold chain and a tracksuit to give myself the ‘unemployable’ look before I go down the job centre next time. I wonder if they’ll make me fill out a form including the ‘party affiliation’ question before I qualify though?
£300 would buy quite a few work clothes in this recession…
Brilliant. I only spent £250 on my last suit. A good quality one from M & S. I take it the jobless will be given vouchers otherwise the chavs will be using the £300 cash to buy another few tracksuits and burberry caps.
Just cancel it! Why should we pay for dumbed-down, politically correct, leftist propaganda, because that is what the BBC amounts to!
Don’t pay. It’s easy enough not to — loads of info on the net now telling you how. I scrapped my telly years ago and have never looked back, but there are 1,000,000+ refuseniks.
You must understand that all this BBC propaganda is no more than that — the detector vans, the infallible database, the £1000 fine, the super-intelligent investigators scouring your streets. Probably the vans are a total myth; the ones you see are decoys, and there are only about 75 of those in the UK. The database is a joke. The average fine is LESS than the cost of a licence. The enforcement officers are like Bettawear salesmen, with no powers except a search warrant (rarely obtained), and are paid an £18 commission for every “sale” they make.
Check it out. tvlicensing.biz is one place to start.
Thanks Dennis. I wish i had know about this site 2 weeks ago. I sadly decided to pay the BBC tax under pressure from my wife and not wanting to be on some kind of blacklist. Damn! I’ll not pay it next year….
And it seems you can even stop these obnoxious rascals banging on your door by notifying them in writing that you withdraw their implied right of access over your property. Then all they can do is stand in the road with a cocked ear and try to watch the light dancing behind your curtains (sic).
Oh and you won’t be able to get a US visa, but if you’re such a chiseller you probably couldn’t afford to either.
When they sent me threatening letters, I didn’t bother reading them I just wrote in any blank space ‘I do not have a TV’ and used the reply paid envelope. They got the message and don’t bother me now.
Anyway why addle your brain with tosh from the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corp?
Surely once the analogue signal is switched off it won’t be possible to “licence dodge”? I had assumed the digital signal it would encoded; though, no doubt, there would be a brisk trade in get-arounds.
The radio analogue signal is never likely to be switched off, alas, as digital radio seems to have proved a flop (not long for this world IMHO).
The only things getting “deep cuts” are our rights and our benefits from the taxes that we pay.
Come on Guido nothing short of revolution would cause politicians to vote for deep cuts in their own or others pork barrels.
The Beeb will be quick to come to heel – except for Marr – when power is passed over.
But, Guido, why have you made the many replies [that slammed you for you anti-Monarchist claptrap] unavailable? A bit ashamed?
BBC will fight a rearguard action.
When the Conservative government gets in, they will face a lot of hard choices and will upset a lot of people – perfect ground for the BBC to foment insurrection.
I expect the BBC to oppose Cameron from the second week in power onwards; working as best they can to prevent a Tory second term.
Not good enough. Axe the telly tax and make them pay their own way. Let them sink or swim by themselves. I’m hoping they sink personally.
“Sink or swim”? Do you mean share the advertising revenue of ITV and C4? They’ll all sink, of course.
As a minimum the BBC should share the losses from contraction.
Jackie Ashley(aka Mrs Marr)has a very proBBC article in the Guardian this morning but is getting a good kicking in the comments for not declaring an interest for herself and for her errant husband.
They are all still there – they have to be scrolled from the old legacy server.
Thank you Guido – a bit like moving lodgings because the toilet needed flushing and that blog certainly stank the place out.
Best £139.50 I never spent.
He should do better that freeze it. Now that Mark Thompson, and before him Michael Grade, have asset stripped all the best bits there’s now a long list of departments that no longer exist as part of the BBC so why are we still providing the funding for them? And how dare the BBC overcharge licence fee payers so they can indulge themselves by developing of BBC HD and then refuse us access to it unless we hand over yet another pile of cash. Its not a broadcasting corporation. Its a protection racket.
This isn’t quite correct – “Freesat” gives free access to 4 channels of HD, including BBC HD (once you’ve bought the Freesat HD receiver), the purchase money for which goes to the manufacturer of the receiver not the BBC. The confusingly similarly named “Freesat from Sky” also gives (more) HD content, but you have to pay a quite large extra subscription to Sky for the HD material. Strictly speaking of course you don’t “own” the Sky HD box, it comes as part of their HD package.
Actually, you technically own the Sky box from day one. If you tried to cancel your subscription you’d have to pay Sky the remaining subscription + the cost of the equipment.
That is why Sky will send someone out for £60 when it goes wrong, and Virgin do not (since you really do rent the box off them for the duration of your subscription)
I I love the BBC Johnathon Woss is hilarious and well worth his meager salary. tThe politicial reporting is unbiased and excellent – they have raised my awareness of global warming, the need to recycle and the fact that Mrs Thatcher (who was apparently a prime minister) was a very bad lady indeed.
cCameron’s decision just shows he is as nasty as she was
Hopeless!
Don’t go walking your dog, Dave!
Hooray!
Circus tickets will not rise!
Now, what about freezing bread prices?
Stupid Hoon.
Guido,
Is this the guardian columnist and the same person. ???
A Muslim who advised the Government following the July 7 London bombings has been arrested after an alleged stabbing.
Inayat Bunglawala, 39, was held on suspicion of attacking another man at his £300,000 home.
Seems so;
http://notasheepmaybeagoat.blogspot.com/2009/03/inayat-bunglawala-arrested.html
I too love the BBC. I think its marvellous the way that they give endless repeats to shows featuring its favourite lefty luvvie actors and comedians. I just think its a pity that the BBC does not give enough opportunities for these lefties to come together and say how wonderful they all are.
And also don’t we all think it disgraceful that David Cameron had a version of the Union Flag on his podium. If Gordon can do interviews with his friend ‘Barak’ without flags so should David.
He can hardly say that he’s going to abolish it and expect a fair reporting of any election campaign. However, once he’s got his feet under the desk in 10 Downing Street, he’d be well advised to shut the whole fucking thing down and let commercial companies provide what is viable.
Here Here!
“Let commercial companies provide what is viable.”
There is a slight problem with your proposal, judging from what’s happening at ITV and C4 very little will be viable. Yet tens of millions watch and listen. Might not be the vote winner you think.
The average Brit apparently neither knows or cares about quantitative easing or 3 month libors. But come between them and ‘Strictly EastEnders’ and you’re lunch.
Don’t freeze it, cut it – starting with Chris Moyles’ throat.
ooh ooh, me first! I’m training to be awet shave barber! kinda new at it, still givin the odd nicked jugular…
OT:
Whats the bollox on moderate drinkers paying an extra £1 a month if wine starts at £4.50 a bottle ?
3 bottles of quaffing wine for £10 seems the standard offer – that would be up £3.50 per purchase. Average of a few glasses a night and thats £14 a month.
Why does some jumped up sore-bones think he can tell me what to do? Overpaid c*nt.
It’s Fondlebums at work again, scare the council house trash shitless with a bogus health report and a “look at me i’m important” twat saying the nations health depends on taking their stella away.
Win win for Gordo, If he rejects the report he is the saviour of the drinking class, if he goes with it, more money to share out amongst his cronies.
That flabby-jowled, pasty-faced arsewipe Donaldson is now talking about a minimum of £1 per unit in pubs and restaurants.
Not content to wipe half of them out with his fucking stupid smoking ban, he now wants to kill off the other half.
This self-styled saviour of mankind will be the first to feel my new roll of piano wire around his pudgy neck. Yes, even before McDoom, Jacqboot, Harperson and Gonads. Donaldson in DANGEROUS – an unelected medic playing god. He should fuck off back to his surgery charged with nothing more than dishing out cough medicine to kiddiewinks, though I wouldn’t send mine there.
It is a sane and reasonable approach, in contrast to some people who are forever proclaiming radical sol-ewe-shuns.
Sounds like it’s going in the right direction. You can tell by the way Mrs Marr is shouting. If somebody eventually takes a bloody great chain saw to it instead of pruning sheers, that would be good, too.
What an utter Hoon.
The BBC should be left to fend for itself, and fight for advertising revenue like all the other broadcasters.
Tell me, just why the fuck should *I* be forced to pay for the BBC, and contribute to the ridiculous salaries of Hoons like Jonathan Ross, just because I like watching Sky 1?
Fuck off Cameron you utter Hoon. If you like the BBC so much, then YOU pay for it. Leave me out of it.
Twat.
Get rid of the licence fee and just make it compulsary to pay £150 in tax. Will stop people whinging about it being a hidden tax.
The BBC is one of the last great British institutions.
How exactly is it a “great British institution”?
It’s a parasitical organisation that the taxpayer is forced to fund, even if you don’t use any of it’s services, and just like any other state funded, state run broadcaster, it’s about as impartial as Arthur Scargill during a protest march.
Yeah, sounds great to me too. Hoon.
Having lived abroad for many years, in various countries, you won’t know what you are missing. I don’t care for the “I’ll put up with the adverts” argument…frankly, I get more use out of the BBC’s online and radio content than I do from their television content.
Personally, I couldn’t give a fuck whether they’re partisan one way or the other (swings and rounadabouts – they were percevied pro-Tory in the past)…the UK are too apathetic to be influenced by the BBC’s news output (me included).
The way some of you paranoid spackers go on you’d think the BBC was fucking Squealer.
£150 p/a isn’t enough. Make it £250 p/a.
@ Anonymong 66
So because YOU like the BBC, *I* should pay for it, despite not using it myself? How about FUCK YOU.
I like watching Sky 1, Sky Movies, and the Hallmark Channel. How about forcing everyone to chip in for my Sky subscription?
Now run along and try your logical fallacies somewhere where they aren’t so easily debunked.
Twat.
“It’s a parasitical organisation that the taxpayer is forced to fund, even if you don’t use any of it’s services”
I don’t use libraries, I don’t use leisure centres. I don’t use the NHS (I’m healthy and have to use private dentistry thanks to N. Labour) and I don’t receive benefits.
Should I insist on not having to pay for any of those? No. Because I don’t mind paying for a quality institution like the BBC (I’d rather not watch the utter dross that ITV pump out, same for some of the stuff on Ch4.
@Anonymong 88
You have to be fucking shitting me? You didn’t just compare the fucking BBC to the NHS did you? Jesus fucking Christ, you really are a retard aren’t you?
The BBC doesn’t provide a public service. It’s exactly the fucking same as every other broadcaster, only the public are forced to pay for it.
It’s not a fucking hospital. It’s not a library. It’s not a leisure centre. It’s a broadcaster, just like all the others.
Get some sense of perspective you ignorant twat.
How is the BBC not unlike a library (in fact, there are about 5 BBC library buses for my region!)? It’s more than just a load of TV channels…
Spacker.
Library buses? Well why didn’t you say so! That makes everything i’ve been saying null and void! :roll:
Are you being deliberately obtuse, or am I really talking to someone who found an iPhone on the floor of their window lickers bus and decided to just randomly press the screen?
Do you even know what a logical fallacy is?
Fuck sake. I’ve heard a more coherent and sensible argument from a Lib Dem.
Anon 66 said: “… they were perceived pro-Tory in the past …”
Oh yes? When was that?
Freezing won’t do at all. Deep six the fucking lot of ‘em.
The BBC is a wonderful institution, it has made simple humble people like me and my family rich beyond our wildest dreams and all we have to do is interrupt the opposition politicians when they have spoken one or two words and never all them to finish a sentence and so form a coherent argument.
Tra-fucking-La
It is even worse than you report. The Standard says he would freeze it for one year!!!
Not a penny to Channel 4 though. Their forum admin are deeply up the fundament of NuLab – particularly in the cases of Lawd Tarte de Crème Vert and the slimy Vaz whose letter to the High Court abusing his position as Chair of the Home Affairs Select Cttee was highlighted in Mail, Grauniad and Smellygraph today.
Yet Andy Burnham won’t allow the commercial companies to raise revenue from product placement.
Why was that?
What was the point of Marr yesterday what an outragous expense flying that show to Scotland utter tosh with very posh flowers
Then Mrs Marr writes a column today saying how great the BBC are
Just gets worse
Abolish it or are you suffering from Stockholm syndrome?
Considering the likelihood of a rapid devaluation in the £, freezing the numerical value would be equivalent to a rapid, systematic reduction over the years.
If I were the BBC, I’d then ask for the fee in gold…
I support the principle of the devil, but I think he should take the day off on Sundays.
`Bout time you did or said something useful Cameron, I mean really, what is the point of Cameron? EU puppet No 1.
How about
1. border control?
2. making our own laws
3. bringing our forces home
4. bring back equality of opportunity through grammer schools?
5. British jobs for British workers – particually when funded by British taxpayers!
6. End the EU political class gravy train that is bleeding us dry.
Go away Cameron you pointless smuck!
Excellent, keep it up!
Abolish it- Its just a tax to finance the Ministry of Propaganda
Dave has to be careful about the Beeb for several reasons.
Firstly of course they are at present the mouthpiece for Nulab, and although esteemed fellow posters here realise what an odious bunch of leftist propagands they are Joe Public is not so aware of this; Dave prefers to put up with this rather risk all out war.
Secondly, and more significantly, he wants the Murdoch press on side. Murdoch’s biggest fear is a privatised BBC taking on Sky. Freezing the licence fee suits Murdoch just fine, leaving it impoverished, public and crap. I use the word ‘impoverished’ loosely, of course, and the word ‘crap’ in its literal sense.
I know all this is true because I dreamt it.
You didn’t – that’s just what the BBC does to your head.
Freeze it. Then flog ‘em after the election. Best way to get a good price. Let the private sector work its efficiencies on them. After the Gaza humanitarian appeal non-broadcast there’s no figleaf of BBC “objectivity”. The BBC is the Blaggers’ Blagueurs Claque, part of the media-infotainment cartel.
Dear Sir Reginald Titbrain,
May I just say that I feel we’d all be better off if you didn’t use ‘the word crap in its literal sense’. God, this blog gets more and more like Viz every day.
having legitimately stopped paying my licence because I no longer have a telly i have been bombarded by mails from the beeb saying it’s unlawful not to have a licence; sending me rebate forms I’ve never requested and now been threatened with a visit from ‘inspectors’ – what is it that they don’t understand? I have never once received a response from them acknowledgeing my letters to them. They just keep sending me all this guff.
Get rid of the licence tv tax and get rid of the BBC and the media circus that surrounds it. There are too many hangers-on, too many sycophants and too many jobsworths. That’s the only way forward.
This is very cowardly of me, I don’t currently have a TV but have kept up the direct debits for fear of being lettered to death by the Beeb heavy mob.
A TV-less friend used to respond to the aggressive letters with a series of (fairly) witty responses: “I don’t have a television because I enjoy an excellent library” but it never stopped the humourless and soul destroying follow-ups. The BBC know of only two categories of Homo Sapien: TV licence payers or TV licence dodgers.
When you get the letter don’t bother reading it, just scrawl ‘I don’t have a TV’ and use the pre-paid envelope to send it back. They get the message eventually.
Dave, let us just have some policies. Anything will do, anything is better than NOTHING. I don’t even care what they are, as they must be better than the current bunch of muppets. Please, something. Pretty please….
Oh alright then, let’s stick with nothing. Agreed you might be better off with NOTHING and get elected.
You will prove to be weak, directionless and hopeless.
Even your most loyal tea sipping, fete hugging, financially prudent know it in their hearts.
How sad.
The time to do the controversial stuff is at the start of a government so a timid announcement on a year’s freeze won’t do at all. The BBC can be cut back to one public service radio channel and one public service TV channel paid for by a £10 tax per household, the rest can be closed down in the first year of the government and won’t be missed. Faffing around that it will be thought about later won’t work as it won’t get done. The existing BBC will do everything it can to keep Cameron out of ofice so there is no point in currying favour. Tell the truth Dave and you will lead us to greatness.
I understand your frustration but taking such hasty action would surely destroy a lot of early goodwill. Dave will need a decent honeymoon to get a lot of other important stuff done. Your proposal, tempting though it might be, would give the opposition parties a chance to get off the floor. Remember the context is a rapidly sickening traditional British media (local, regional papers, some nationals, non-BBC terrestrial all heading down the lavatory pan PDQ).
Who seriously thinks Dave we will want to cut down on his EU/Tory propaganda channel?
Seeing as all he or Labour for that matter can do is what the EU tells them to do and they need the propaganda channel to brainwash us into believing the illusion of democracy.
You don’t have a Labour goverment, you have an EU goverment.
You won’t have a Tory goverment, you will have an EU goverment.
Now get back to watching Eastenders before you hurt yourselfs.
Jesus wept.
Fer fucksake Guido, this is taking censorship too far. I wanted to describe “Sir” Liam Donaldson by the only word befitting him – a c*u*n*t – and it comes out as hoon. Hoon is a stupid word, playground name-calling stuff. This jumped-up quack is the very embodiment of the word c*u*n*t.
Well, if he really freezes it, this will be one of the very few upsides of the coming hyperinflation ;-D
Let us know your views on the proposed freezing in licence fee duty. Just send it to 81234 and start your message with “I think it’s an absolute disgrace”
“He is not proposing deep cuts.”
Not yet, anyway…
Mandy’s Dept spends more on flowers a month than Elton bloody John!!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/4998039/Government-departments-ran-up-780000-flower-bill.html
Hmm. They didn’t do that in my time in the DTI (19833 to 1996). Some brought in their own, though, so the watering of them was at public expense — though I don’t suppose that really amounted to very much!
Its common knowledge that some major record companies disguised the money spent on cocaine for their artists as “flowers” in their annual accounts.
Of course Toenails’ angle is that if CMD can do this to the BBC he can do it to the client state
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/nickrobinson/2009/03/nothing_should.html
Maybe he fears that if actual spending cuts are announced for the client state they could even end up being applied to the BBC
We refuse to pay the BBC anyway. We’ve not applied for a BBC TV licence since 2002 and we won’t ever again.
Hmm. In practice, that’s probably the best first step. It will send a message to the BBC chiefs as well, so they’ll know that the writing is on the wall:
“Do a proper public service job, as per the Charter, or we move to Step Two, and so on…” Politically a sensible methodology.
Privatise everything which is not pure public service ( and has a private sector alternative ) IE. BBC TV 1, Radio 1, Radio 2, Radio 5.
There’s not enough advertising to go around now. And would what would Sky say?
Do you want to threaten to deprive the Great British Public of their junk TV and favourite tunes? Hell hath no fury like a voter scorned. Careful.
The Rt Hon Geoff Hoon is an imposter. At the time he was supposedly posting on this blog he was in fact travelling on the London Underground talking in a loud show offy voice about helicopters.
The fact is that the BBC has unashamedly become the propaganda mouthpiece of New Labour.
Partly due to this and also the mess the economy is in should persuade the Tories to sell off/close down most of the BBC when they come to power in the next 15 months.
The rump of the BBC that is left should become similar to PBS in the USA with no finance or room in its schedules for the kinds of programmes that can be delivered by the privately owned broadcasting media.
What’s holy about the BBC? If we must have public service broadcasting (which seems to mean only selfadvertising and political adverts) why not put it out to tender? and why a monoploly supplier? Two or three broadcasters with a couple of channels each might diversify the output a bit and make it cheaper.
Hey we could even tender for a “Devils Advocate” channel- contracted to dispute whatever the others put out- would get things looked at a bit more closely.
Now the BBC has admitted to hacking into and takling control of 21,000 users computers in an ‘experiment’. The BBC have admitted to funding organised crime by buying an illegal program, a ‘bot-net’ to gain access to users computers and take control of them. Who knows what information/passwords they have read.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2009/03/click_botnet_experiment.html
It’s a propaganda tax, don’t pay it, I’m not.
My defence is thay the 1848 treason an felony act specifically prohibits it, I’m not allowed to support threason and acts of felony, I mean do we have laws in this Hoonry or not FFS !!!!
It’s a nice start!
Malice in Sunderland
The electoral registers for Sunderland North contains incorrect
voter registration numbers printed in the columns alongside voters
names. Sometimes the Registers are printed with the same error
numbers year after year, one particular period from 1958 to 1961
shows that these numbers cannot be common human error as during
this period the housing estate was covered by two separate electoral
wards and both of these wards show the same and also similar errors
for this one particular housing estate. Some people have even received
a wrong electoral number more than once in their voting lifetime and
nearly all of the electoral registers that I have looked at dating
from about 1950 to 1972 contain errors, errors placed in such a way
that they can only have been put there for a reason or purpose
beyond their normal intended use. I suspect that the error numbers
continue into the early 1990’s
The registers for Sunderland north are available for viewing in the public library fawcett street Sunderland Tyne and wear.
Well fuck me rigid!
This is utterly stupid.
Cutting the BBC budget IS NOT A GOOD IDEA. In fact it’s the worst possible thing to do. It WILL NOT reduce the bias in the news (in fact, it will galvanise the BBC against the Tories even more), it will just reduce funding to entertainment and other programming. This in turn will make people think that “privatisation” results in worse service (or, at least, that’s what the BBC propaganda machine will say, even though no privatisation has actually taken place). This will make it MORE DIFFICULT to actually privatise or break up the bloody thing.
The correct way forward is to say that after the digital switchover we will encode the BBC digital transmissions and make the TV licence optional. There, you’ve killed the beast. Because now there is no impediment to privatisation (it’s de-facto operating on market lines anyway), and it is commercially accountable either way. No one can legitimately argue that people should be forced to pay for the BBC even though they dont want it and are happy for it to be scrambled so they cannot receive it – that is simply theft, and the Tories can go to the public with that argument and legitimately win the argument.
Cuts, on the other hand, make them appear ‘nasty,’ ‘despoiling a national institution,’ etc. Because the fact is, many are perfectly happy to pay £150 for television (or whatever, I dont own a TV, as a poor student), even people who dislike the BBC, they just dont want to pay it to the BBC. Just hacking down the licence fee without privatising it, and deregulating entrance for new channels, does not solve this problem, it just reduces the quality of the pseudo-monopoly outlet they didn’t like in the first place!
Surely the broadband revolution, and the convergence of media offer other possibilities. I would pay a subscription to Radio 4, like I do the Economist now, but I watch only 2 programs on BBC 1 TV. I would rather pay per view. That surely is the point of the BBC Iplayer experiment. If access was subscription based they will attempt a Sky style package deal. I don’t want to pay for the 166 hours a week of BBC1 I don’t watch. I might just bootleg it instead. As all you ‘puter literates out there know, there’s no program or movie you cannot download illegally nowadays.
I think we will get even worse telly in due course, cos there won’t be a market for innovation or minority programming on mainstream TV, and the money available will be so thinly spread that the quality will be gone.
But for their propaganda on behalf of this government they truly deserve to be wound up. Its a shame so many of their news people are P G Woodhouse connected rather than William Joyce connected, for really they deserve the latter’s fate.
Anonymous, you can forget switching off the analogue radio signal – too many issues – it’ll be around for decades. Also digital radio might not last much longer, it hasn’t caught on so is expensive and people are getting tired of subsidising it. Much wider use of internet radio might be possible, but many people couldn’t handle the ongoing expenses or technology.
Likewise, not everybody has a fast broadband connection, decent screen and technical whatnot to replace the TV with ‘internet only’ subscription TV. Think of the Royle Family, that’s much of modern Britain. “Make us a brew, our Barbara.”
Of course, that would be the way to go to knacker the BBC. Presumably, in a recession, only three people and a dog would sign up.
But …. just a thought. What would this do to what little cohesiveness we have left in the UK? I realise that we don’t all sit round the goggle box and watch Morecambe & Wise and TOTPs anymore, but do we really want everybody to turn to video games and internet porn? No BBC Proms? No England footie matches? No national news? Could the BBC not be chopped back to a core remit and made to stick to it?
Victoria Derbyshire anyone??
thought not!!
Sounds like something you have with Earl Grey.
Cameron knows the score. He will know that the beeb is a rat’s nest of commies, marxists and labour shills.
He should already be putting out soundings, to find senior staff who are neutral rather than acting as the propaganda arm of labour.
The BBC doesn’t even pretend to be politically neutral any more…..the day of reckoning is coming.
Call me naive but isn’t the Beeb potentially a very powerful propaganda tool? When a gun is pointing at you it is very threatening and you want it gone, but when YOU have the gun …
Come off it Dave if it wasnt for these Hoons at the BBC we wouldnt know Cleopatra was African .
The bbc must be suffering from a falling tax income – got a 21-30 hours visit from one of their inspectors (basic pay plus bonus on type of visit) wanting to know if I have got a TV.
Told him NO and will not until the bbc stop dumbing down and being a mouthpiece for NuLiebor.
Took it well but wish Marr or some other bbc twat would come a calling.
If Cameron is Pro EU ( which he is ) then the EU needs to BBC if only to continue Brainwashing our kids after we have gone ( or been renditioned to some East european Waterboarding holiday resort )
He wont scrap it, he’s a Safety valve for the New world order, if Brown fails then we get the Tory’s and still end up with the New World order ( which depends on media manipulation of the masses.)
Look :-
Trust your instincts, not Bush, Blair, Brown, Obama
Bin Laden Is DEAD
I’m not sure how much manoeuvre room the Tories will have to cut the BBC down to size, due to the crisis elsewhere in the British media.
Remember that the local and regional papers are about to croak, meet their maker, get nailed to their perch (300 titles to go in 2009?). The nationals are sickly and haven’t yet found a funding model to ensure their long-term survival. ITV and C4 are withering on the vine too.
If an attempt is made to enfeeble the Beeb there are those that will argue that it is a threat to democracy.
Derek Draper = Hoon
Derek Draper = Hoon
Derek Draper = Hoon
Derek Draper = Hoon
Derek Draper = Hoon
Derek Draper = Hoon
Derek Draper = Hoon
Derek Draper = Hoon
Derek Draper = Hoon
Derek Draper = Hoon
Not a mention of the licence fee freeze on the Beeb’s 10pm news. Odd that.
bbc change?
Of course it is needed as they have completely lost it in providing objective unbiased news and are now a public disgrace.
First task – get rid of Lyons and Thompson and replace them with professional media persons and not apparatchiks.
Lyons diatribe on radio 4 this week was disgusting in its use of government style mantras, as well as trying to put the usual sticking plaster over a serious wound.
“He is not proposing deep cuts.”
So weak.
Mark Thompson says:
March 16, 2009 at 10:28 pm
“If an attempt is made to enfeeble the Beeb there are those that will argue that it is a threat to democracy.”
Who are you talking about exactly? Those in the BBC canteen? Get fucking real will you.
We have this new fangled inventioned called the internet. If you want any real data that is where you get it these days. The days of traditional broadcasters and the dead tree press are numbered. The BBC is not stupid – it knows the only way it will survive economically is through coercion.
The underlying economics of these entities suck because so much information, education and entertainment is available a mouse click away, often for free, hence their slow but sure deaths.
Frank, I’m only being realistic. I’ve been around a bit.
As someone else said on here, “for modern Britain, think the ‘Royle Family’”. All this talk about Brits being 21st century whizzkids on high-speed internet is delusional, alas.
I don’t want to witness the Labour Party rising from the dead with “Look how out of touch the Tories are!!” and running a “Save EastEnders and Strictly Come X Factor!!” campaign (no doubt backed by Murdoch’s muscle).
What does all this matter.
We’re all heading top speed towards membership of a European Superstate; nothing can stop that. Obama wants it. The Europeans that matter want it. Now I hear even China wants it! Dave can do nothing about it. Let the BBC provide the funeral music. UK RIP.
The licence fee is an indefensible burden on poor people.
Why does the BBC need to spend zillions to make light ent programmes that would be made commercially anyway – at no cost to us?
The BBC Trust can’t be trusted to represent us and stop this monumental waste.
Who’s for setting up a BBC Reform Society?
1m non-payers is a start.
why not close down the BBC, show repeats of it’s programmes on Sky, and give everyone Sky or Virgin TV with the remaining money?
Job done
I take any newscasts, political programming, in fact anything I see produced by the BBC with a very large pinch of salt.
At best the truth and the BBC are strange bedfellows.
The same goes for Westminster and anything that comes out of it.
Well the newspapers are are on their last legs. What does that leave? Sky and Fox News? Anonymous comments posted on blogs? Anything that comes out of the EU?