Licence Fee To Be Abolished

Not unexpected. It's an article of Conservative faith that the BBC is run by "leftists", even though most of the world considers the BBC to be fairly neutral.

I find the current Conservative attitude to the BBC chillingly similar to the way the Republicans in the US are trying to discredit any news source that isn't on their side. Neutrality is left-wing bias; reporting everything the Party says as unquestioned truth is neutrality. It was, remember, the Conservatives who decided that the largely Conservative-supporting newspapers could be trusted to regulate themselves.

Where else can you get radio, news, drama, documentary, arts, culture, comedy and more for thirteen quid a month? Anybody who's saying it's anything close to a Netflix subscription model is utterly deluded.

It's not about whether you want to watch it. It's a public service. Impartial news. Radio. All of it. We all pay into the pot. It's fair and how it should be.

Channel 4 is a public-owned not-for-profit public service broadcaster and we don’t all “pay into the pot” for that. And what’s more Channel 4 don’t criminally prosecute and convict 100,000 people a year (75% of them women)for non-payment of a license fee.

But you do have to get bombarded by adverts as a consequence. All programming suffers as a result. Imagine the Proms with 15min ad breaks. Dire.

I appreciate the "no adverts" side of watching the BBC, and I understand its importance as a public service, but a legally-enforced license fee to cover what amounts to a small fraction of the average person's TV viewing feels like a throwback to a long-gone era of entertainment. Even if you don't OWN a TV you get hounded by letters demanding payment until you contact them.

Some of its localisations are outdated too. The whole operation could certainly be streamlined to make the whole thing just... work more efficiently. I think a lot of the money that goes into it is dead on arrival because like all big companies so much gets funnelled into silly, unnecessary admin.

I once worked as an agency temp and was sent to the office of some big board of safety somewhere in London. I was covering the building's postman. His job was to, at certain points of the day, do a lap of the building and take envelopes/files from one floor to another. Just a handful, maybe once every hour or so. That was his entire job. In a private company, fine, but taxpayers are often paying into a system which has so many unnecessary quirks. It was the same for a guy I met once who worked for the NHS. He worked in a department where appliances were ordered. The rigmarole and red tape of ordering something as simple as a microwave for a staffroom was ridiculous!

To be honest, I think the amount of airtime devoted to 'partygate' is itself a distraction.

As we've known for some time now, the Conservative Party is not conservative any more. It's become overrun by an extreme fringe of the party, analogous to what has happened to the Republican Party. True conservatism would mean protecting great British (and Great British) institutions, whereas everything this government does diminishes this country's soft power and influence.

Until they get around to selling that off (which is also on the cards).

Radio completely separate, no fee required.

It is always disappointing when the BBC fails to acquire the big sporting events as it never has enough dosh for them. A separate sports channel might address that problem with a subscription to it which could be flexible and which you could pop into and out of, so when the big ones are up, you join and pay enhanced fee then leave if you want to; probably a lot of people would join up and stay joined up.

Earlier in the thread there is a pic of all the stuff contained in the licence fee. But I do not want all of that. Most people don't want all of it. BBC3? No thanks, CBeebies, nope not now thanks. I don’t expect to pay for the lobster on the menu just because the restaurant is offering it when I want to eat the salad.