The BBC is finally being punished!

[longfingernails]

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?

smallwhitecat/longfingernails - citation needed.

Matsikula It's not called Cuts Watch I don't think. It's something about the spending review.

It is advertised regularly on the TV. In the minute or so of that single ad, all the senior BBC editors talk about the "dangers", but never, curiously, the "necessity", the "impressive improvement in gilt yields since the Emergency budget", the "legacy of debt", the "structural deficit predates the financial crisis", etc.

I can't find a link on either the BBC website or Youtube, but it has been playing for the last few days.

Here is the link where the BBC explains it is having a "Spending Review season".

www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/aboutthebbc/2010/09/the-spending-review-making-it.shtml

For some reason, it never saw the need on any of the Labour Spending Reviews, when Gordon Brown as Chancellor increased taxes so astronomically, or destroyed private pensions, or sold our gold at the bottom of the market.

longfing - do you understand what "unbiased" means?

(hint: it does not mean taking the midpoint between two opposing arguments)

Oh good, another avenue closed to DH (a recently qualified lighting specialist- thank goodness he is furtehring his training down a different route)

If it's not called cuts atch then where's the issue? Are we denying that the cuts will be hige news and affecting many, many poeople? or just saying that should not be publicised on the BBC? I think we're down something like £35 pw from a low income already prior to tomorrows big announcements (from whcih i will be hiding until I feel strong).....

You say legacy of debt; I sat labout tax credits saved our arse and home when shite happened. Ho hum. Seems to me, cuts watch had it been a real programme would have been relatively neutral.

Then there are ludicrous articles like this:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11552869

which seem to suggest that
a) the cuts will be 40%
b) that they will be all in one go
c) that there is no growth

to conclude (shock!) that they are impossible and irresponsible. Oh yes, and they come complete with a sneery dismissal of the concept of comparing national finances to household ones.

I bet the Islington blogger could cut 4% a year (which is closer to the real cuts) quite easily, actually.

"Oh yes, and they come complete with a sneery dismissal of the concept of comparing national finances to household ones."

Do you think that kind of simplistic innumeracy deserves more than a sneer?

I have never understood the BBC= raving leftie thing.

I listen to R4 a LOT. Never mind the Guardian, the phone ins are audio Daily Mail.

My mum goes on about the left wing BBC and is a DM reader.

Odd.

Obviously my idea of left wing and my mum's/OP's are very different.

but public spending cuts do take money out of the economy don't they? or am I missing something?

why do right wingers hate the BBC so much btw?

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/breakfast/2128811.stm

So the indepth coverage of the 2002 spending review is a mirage is it?

spidookly Fine - let's stick to the coverage of objective facts.

Why do Stephanie Flanders and Robert Peston never mention the fact that real interest rates have fallen one whole percent since the coalition took office, and that this enables businesses and individuals to borrow much more cheaply?

A 1% drop in rates, thanks to the increased confidence about Britain's creditworthiness, is a massive monetary shot in the arm to the economy. Yet the BBC's main financial and economic reporters never report it!

witlesssarah Of course they have a programme each Spending Review. Dedicated news coverage on the actual day of the Review, is obviosuly perfectly proportionate coverage.

When was the last time they had a whole season of political programmes about a Spending Review?

CatIsSleepy No, cuts don't take money out of the economy (necessarily).

They leave money in the private part of the economy, where it is usually more productive, instead of giving it to the public part of the economy.

The misguided conflation of "government spending" with the "economy" is at the heart of most of Labour's big economic mistakes over the decades.

longfingernails - I'm not intereseted in individual examples. Where is the systemic review?

That is a very silly item though. But it's not in any way serious journalism.

LFN

You keep telling us the scale of teh deficit

people are scared; some will lose thir homes as a result of this review and other recent cuts

We are in finacial trouble on a scale outweighing 2002, by a long way

Of course that warrants a series of programmes! Some of us are reliant on Government funded resources of the type that might well be cut- Social services (LA cuts), special needs schools... of course we are worried and the sensible worried look for information.

"No, cuts don't take money out of the economy (necessarily).

They leave money in the private part of the economy"

Er, what?

In what sense do cuts leave money anywhere?

Can't you reason?

Is Rupert Murdoch going through his Howard Hughes phase then?

TheCoalitionNeedsYou As far as I know, there has never been a formal survey of the political opinions of BBC employees.

The best evidence we have is a 2007 survey of Facebook profiles. It included around 10000 BBC employees - and showed they were about 11 times more likely to describe their political views as "liberal" than "conservative". The UK Facebook average at the time was about 2.5 to 1.

Not scientific but very indicative.

Money all shifted into private sector? What, like the housing benefits cuts?

So teh rpivate sector will see the costs directed there yes?

OK. So you are saying that if the boy's SNU (currently due a review) closes then there will be private SNU education available for them at a cost we can afford (about 50p)? or that if SSD cuts are huge then there will be private affordable holiday disability schemes in aplce to replace it?

of course not

private = for those whoc an afford

Those that cannot are in many cases the more vulnerable

hence fear, hence a need for info.

'and showed they were about 11 times more likely to describe their political views as "liberal" than "conservative".

I though we had a ConDem coalition?

Liberal does not = socialist.

in spain, they also finance the national tv channel through taxes, it has so many adverts that harry potter last 4 hours and yes it starts at 9 pm... news goes with the current govertment, as they set up the channel bugget as no tv fee, production of tv dramas and documentaries is so dreadful that they normally show the bbc ones...

bbc is worth the money, how much they pay for the 'talent' is a different question.

spidookly OK, to elaborate - cuts leave money in your pocket because you don't have to pay tax (either for the public service, or for the "opportunity cost" of the debt and debt interest otherwise incurred).

You can usually choose what to do with that money better than the government. A pound of money you spend will usually go further than a pound of money spent by the government. For example, instead of paying for a quango, you could buy a sofa. If enough people did that, then the sofa company could hire more employees. Maybe an entrepreneur carpenter would decide to set up a new sofa making business. All much better for the economy.

longfingernails - The opinion of their employees is irrelevant. We are talking about the output. That is public and anyone could analyse it.