It has been vandalised from within, and it’s now in the process of vandalising the nation it’s obligated to represent and strengthen. Let’s put it out of its misery and defund it, Joe Baron writes.
The TV license burdens hard-pressed households – struggling to meet inflated energy, food and council tax bills – with a compulsory charge of £180 – a charge, especially in the current economic climate, that needs to be cogently justified and widely supported. In addition, the white paper outlining the terms of the Royal Charter’s renewal is due to be published this year, giving the need to justify the statutory levy even greater urgency.
Those who support the tax – usually but not always leftists – claim that the cash generated pays for impartial and trusted news coverage, cultural enrichment and the extension of British influence abroad – claims that are, of course, utter hogwash. Once more, the fact that some Conservative panjandrums make similar assertions – giving cover to an organisation saturated with far-left groupthink – reveals why the party did nothing remotely conservative during 14 -wasted-years in office.
Let’s begin with the BBC’s feted and entirely illusory impartiality. In a recent debate hosted by The Spectator magazine on whether we should abolish the license fee and defund the BBC, Charles Moore, Daily Telegraph columnist and official biographer of Margaret Thatcher, rightly argued that we should, stressing the loss of trust incurred by its partiality on a whole host of subjects as the primary reason. The license fee can only be justified if the BBC’s output is trusted, he made clear, and it can only be trusted if its output is impartial....<<<Read More>>>...
