AIBU to suggest a mass boycott of TV licence payments?

[BoycottBBC]

"He received between £435,000 and £439,999 in the year 2022/2023, which rose to £475,000 - £479,999 between April 2023 and April 2024, the BBC's latest annual report shows.
Edwards remained on the payroll while suspended, which is normal BBC policy."

See attached article.

He has been charged with three accounts of making indecent images of children. Six category A images. 12 category B images. 19 category C images on his WhatsApp.

Do you think the BBC will try and clawback any of that huge amount or wages?

Do you think we can clawback any of our financial support of this organisation? Because I sure as fuck don't want to pay my licence fee towards this. It's sickening. (And I realise it's "optional" but for those who do need access to iplayer or live TV for education purposes or similar, it's effectively enforced)

The real issue is such a ridiculously high salary being paid to any TV presenter,

Shall we shut down the NHS because of Lucy Letby? There will be bad people doing bad things in any large organisation and year on year organisations improve (or try to). No organisation is perfect. No person is. Commercial channels are not perfect either. Wasn’t Disney a Nazi supporting organisation at one point (vague memory). It’s right to be angry over Saville and the cover ups but don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.

That's quite surprising: from the rest of your comments you seem really reasonable and well-informed.

Do you think we can clawback any of our financial support of this organisation? Because I sure as fuck don't want to pay my licence fee towards this.

If you cancel you should get back any months you've paid for but not used. If you pay monthly by dd then you may be paid up six months ahead.

Yes most large organisations will have sex offenders among their employees. Yes it is normal practice for employees to be paid while suspended while investigations take place. It is not normal for it to take this long and they did not need to wait for the CPS to charge him. He could have been dismissed at the time this came to light for bringing the organisation into disrepute. A complete and scandalous waste of licence payers’ money.

Why was he even paid this kind of money in the first place?

The BBC needs to follow employment law just like any other employer.

Absolutely YANBU.

Because the BBC is a business that has to offer competitive salaries. A business that:

• In total, the BBC is supporting a total of over 53,000 jobs across the UK - with over half outside of London. For every one job directly created by the BBC, a further 1.7 jobs are created in the wider economy
• The BBC generated an estimated £4.9bn in the UK economy - £1.5bn more than if it was performing in line with the industry average
• Around half of the BBC’s total economic contribution is generated outside of London - an increase from 32% in 2012. The BBC’s direct economic contribution out of London is far higher than the industry average of 20%
• Over 60% (£3.1bn) of the BBC’s economic contribution was generated in the UK creative sector

The BBC’s wide-ranging impact on the economy and creative industries can also be seen through investment in content and commissioning, people and skills, and innovation and technology. The impact of these additional contributions include:

• Investing over £100m in skills and training over the last four years, including in apprenticeship programmes, and through partnerships with other providers, such as ScreenSkills
• Funding a total of 335 apprenticeships in 2019/20 with a potential lifetime earnings uplift for those apprentices of £91m
• Being the highest spending commissioner of new Intellectual Property among UK broadcasters in the UK

@Hatfullofwillow

"Because the BBC is a business that has to offer competitive salaries."

I support having the BBC but there are clearly shedloads of talent that would be perfectly capable of doing the job of a Huw Edwards and pretty much any presenting type job, at a fraction of the cost, if they were given the opportunity and the training. The BBC should be pursuing those avenues as a way of saving a ton of money and thereby maintaining their USP. But it's hard not to assume that the reasons they don't are due to decades of middle and upper class dominance in this field that they are loath to give up.

Britain loves to idolise its celebs and worship its corrupt institutions, OP. Lots of people think it's fine to be bullied and harassed into subsidising the presenters' obscene salaries, so they can watch crap feelgood telly of an evening.

It could be argued that despite having more than its fair share of high-profile paedos, and therefore being very well-placed to set an example to other organisations by pioneering e.g. codes of ethics, more accountability and summary dismissal without pay for gross misconduct, the BBC has not only learned nothing from previous disgraces, but also that it intends to learn nothing.

Sadly the £700 I've saved since cancelling the licence fee has gone to fund various other corrupt institutions, like my local council.

You can't really get rid of these organisations. They're like cockroaches.

I don’t really understand what the bbc has to do with it, tbh. As far as I’m concerned he could have been working at Tescos. I don’t see what his employer has to do with it. Are you implying he should have had higher standards because he worked at the bbc?? I think it’s irrelevant. If illegal activity went on at work in their premises then I can see why they would be heavily implicated but I think he’s solely responsible for his horrific actions.

I mean I think also that the huge salaries and license fee are whole other threads. We actually need more public broadcasting imo seeing as the rest of the privatised media is so utterly shite and self serving for a very few. But none of this has any bearing on one man’s illegal behaviour.

You might object to paying the BBC licence fee because of those salaries, but the commercial channels pay equal amounts to their big names. And you get the bill for them every time you buy a product advertised on TV. Over a year you probably pay more than the BBC licence fee.

You're probably right, but their news dept has been decimated, they barely do anything that resembles the kind of journalism they used to do and seem to rely on popular presenters to bring in viewers.

However, no-one is forcing you to buy the products advertised and threatening you with criminal proceedings if you don't. You have a choice, with the Licence Fee you do not.

Then millions of children would be poorer for it. Literally millions, It is one of the best free educational resources in the world

They charge you double for the first six months, so you are then paying 6 months in advance. For those leaving (dying mostly) so.ebody has to claim that overpayment back ... scandalous!

This

What has the bbc got to do with it? So anytime an employee does something wrong it is their work place's fault?

I think there's a hell of a lot of things wrong with the BBC, certainly compared with the way is used to be. Crazy salaries for sports presenters, for Christ's sake, their largely unspoken but heavily enforced ownership of Glasonbury, news programmes that spend half the time advertising other BBC programmes, I could go on. But on balance, documentaries like Attenborough's, most of Radio 4, some (not all) of the drama series, the World Service (far) outweigh the bad. I'd miss it. A Lot.

He stood down earlier this year, they didn’t wait for him to be charged, he’d already gone.

Agree that it's normal for employers to continue paying wages while an employee is suspended.

It's not up to the BBC, or any other company, to Police their employees.

Stopped paying the bbc years ago. Can't believe people still do 🤣🤣

I wonder what they are going to do about all the national events he presented and commentated on. Royal weddings and funerals, the 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony, major news events? Dub over them?