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Original poster

The BBC is finally being punished!

179 replies

longfingernails · 19/10/2010 04:58

Apparently there is a great plan to shift the cost of free TV licenses from the taxpayer to the BBC - with no increase in the license fee to compensate!

That amounts to about a 20% cut in the BBC budget. I am over the moon at this news.

It's incredibly progressive too! It shifts the burden from poor taxpayers to overpaid BBC staff, who will probably have to take a 25% pay cut! I am sure the newsreader who revealed she was paid £92k will be distraught. I can't even begin to imagine how much luvvies like Robert Peston and Andrew Marr are paid.

Maybe the next time the BBC says that "public spending cuts take money out of the economy" on the news, it might like to reflect on why Tories are so cock-a-hoop tonight.

They are in the middle of a "Cuts watch" series of programmes, I understand. Funnily enough, they never seemed to get round to a "Deficit watch" or "Tax watch" series during the Labour years. Strange, really - I wonder why?

OP posts:
nobiggy · 19/10/2010 07:07

You do realise most BBC employees are just paid a normal wage and don't appear on your TV?

Igglybuff · 19/10/2010 07:05

longfingernails have you listened to shows like radio 5 live breakfast and various phone ins on that station (to take an example)? It's like a poor man's Fox News.

You do have a choice - don't get a tv.

Original poster
longfingernails · 19/10/2010 06:38

mathanxiety The BBC is shamelessly biased towards the left. They are the broadcasting arm of the Guardian.

The TV tax is forced on us if we so much as view any single broadcast channel, and we have to pay for the Labour propoganda machine whether we want to or not.

BBC staff shouldn't be paid in comparison to American presenters, or even British presenters on commercial channels. They are in public service broadcasting and the licence fee payer has no choice but to pay for them. There are plenty of people who would be perfectly prepared to read an autocue for a lot less than £92k.

OP posts:
mathanxiety · 19/10/2010 06:23

You should live in the US for a while and see what passes for 'news' organisations there. And you would gasp at the salaries of newseraders/anchor personalities. You would appreciate the Beeb a lot more if you saw the dreck that passes as news elsewhere. (Or maybe not, given the general drift of your comments.)

Privately owned news organisations add exactly nothing to the common good, to public discourse, or to democracy as a whole.

No matter what it costs, the BBC is fabulous value for money.

The idea that public spending cuts take money out of the economy sounds like common sense to me -- it's an idea that might bear discussion in the current climate; the idea that a government should attempt to muzzle or control any sort of news outlet by reducing its financing sounds like a false economy at the very least, and a blow to public discussion at the worst. What sort of government seeks to reduce the amount of serious attention to policy? What do the Tories see emerging in the place of the BBC if its operations are curtailed to any great extent? Another Murdoch-controlled 'news business'?

(A 92K salary is chump change btw, in the world of broadcast news in the US A newsreader saga in Chicago is referenced here. Note mention of ratings of news broadcasts. A sad phenomenon indeed is a ratings period for local TV news in the US.)