BBC CAN Pay WON'T Pay!

I don’t care if Michael Gove snorted coke. Who gives a toss that Andrea Leadsom smoked a joint at University? That Mick Jagger lookalike, Rory was on opium and even whether Boris can keep it in his trousers or not. I am more concerned about real news like the BBC means testing and cutting 3.5 MILLION free TV licences for the over 75’s.

This is the kind of real news story that concerns the decent silent majority in the UK not the tittle tattle of a leadership contest for a political party that is falling faster than a kamikaze pilot and is no longer relevant to most of our lives.

Whilst this latest Tory pantomime dominates the MSM it is being used as a diversion for the despicable decision by the BBC to start means testing pensioners to see if they can get a free tv licence fee. So now pensioners now longer only have to choose between ‘meat and heat’ they also have to decide whether they can afford a licence, be isolated with no TV for company, or become a criminal.

Yes, it is as stark as that. Gordon Brown has said pensioners will have to choose whether to lie, as I suspect many of the 3.5 million other UK citizens who now say they no longer watch live TV do and therefore do not require a licence!?

Of course, with this loophole, people will tell porkies. The whole funding model for the BBC is massively out of date in an age where we have streaming and you can watch any programme on a computer, game console and even a mobile phone.

Tony Hall, the Director General of the BBC says that if they didn’t restrict the free TV licence then, it would have meant the end of BBC Two, BBC Four, BBC News Channel, BBC Scotland and Radio 5 Live. 

I ask you, do we need BBC Four- I don’t think I have ever watched it?

Who needs the BBC News Channel when we can all get Sky News for free?

Radio five dead?  Well, I am sure I can live without their lefty, anti-Brexit dull as ditch water and biased shows and as for the football, why can’t it be sponsored?

Talking of sponsorship would it hurt if a huge drama like the brilliant Line Of Duty had a sponsor’s message at the beginning of the programme as ITV do with Coronation Street? Commercial outfits would be queuing up to have their name on a programme like that. None of this would damage the artistic integrity of the programmes would it?

I would like to see Radio 1 and radio 2 sold off and I am sure many commercial operators would be desperate to get their hands on them, although I must admit I don’t know any young people who actually listen to Radio 1 or any radio these days. They have Spotify on their mobiles. Wake up people!

As for the knobs who say they cannot live without the Today programme or the Archers on BBC Radio 4 well they can easily afford to pay for it and I do not need to means test anyone to come to that conclusion! I don’t see why the majority who never listen should pay for it.

This is the only way forward for the BBC. It should be broken up, sold off and parts of it should become a subscription service. If the services and programmes are so good then let them fight against their rivals in the open market.

I do think there is a place for a publicly funded pot of cash for projects and programmes that the market would not fund but this money should be available for all broadcasters to apply for and not just the treasure chest of the Bloated Broadcasting Corporation.

Tony Hall bleats that he cannot afford to keep all the services and keep the subsidy for all OAPs.  This is utter tosh.

How about cutting out all the useless middle managers and diversity co-ordinators that infest the BBC?

How about not paying Gary Linker the massive amounts of dosh that he presently pulls. Are we really meant to believe that they could not get someone cheaper to do the gig? In my opinion he is not fit to wipe the spittle off the moustache of TV legend Des Lynam. Plus of course Gary abuses his BBC position to spout his lefty, Brexit hating vitriol all over social media

To add insult to injury this decision has been announced just after the BBC were celebrating and commemorating the heroes of D-day, many of whom, or their relatives will be deeply affected by this cut.

The BBC are blaming the Government for this cut but I am sorry as one of their former Director Generals, Mark Thomson, said, “the BBC has Jacuzzi’s full of cash” and these savings could have been achieved without the introduction of means testing for OAPS.

It was not a binary choice between cutting services and means testing they could have cut their massive staff bill and admin costs.

But no, the BBC is stuffed full of managers who have never worked in the real commercial world and who wouldn’t last a minute if they had to.

I will give you a clear example.

Years ago, the BBC spent over £3 MILLION pounds reopening the local radio station for Coventry. This was after some Oxbridge fool had closed it down as he though the people of Coventry could be served by a station based in Birmingham.

A few years later this stupid decision was reversed and the BBC then built a glass and steel state of the art studio complex right next to the Cathedral, in one of the most expensive retail spaces I imagine in the city.  A stupid commercial decision by any stretch of the imagination.

Then they approached me and asked me to leave BBC London and return to my home city to present the Breakfast show for them. I agreed. Then I had an approach from the Sun to write a column for them. I told the BBC, thinking that they would love all this publicity and that it would help to promote the re-opened radio station.

But no, the BBC decided that I couldn’t possibly do both due to their “impartiality” rules! (Stop sniggering at the back!) This was despite the fact that Vanessa Feltz was doing exactly the same thing on BBC London and in the Express. The stinking hypocrisy was crazy and stupidly uncommercial.

Then the BBC had the temerity to tell me that I had to choose between the BBC and the Sun. Well you can guess which I chose and the rest is history and the station has died on its arse ever since it opened.

But the story doesn’t end there as a couple of months after my departure to the “gutter press” of Fleet Street I received an e mail from BBC Coventry. I was still on the email list for some reason, telling me and all the staff that they had underspent the £3 Million-pound budget and that there was about ten grand left over and they were asking for suggestions of how to spend it.

The Manager who wrote the letter suggested a barbecue party or believe it or not Indian Head massages to relieve stress for all the staff of the radio station! However, she ‘stressed’ that they were open to other suggestions from the staff.

I note that no one suggested that they return the money to the licence fee payers and not spend it on such indulgences.

This is just one petty example but I bet there are thousands of others, the BBC just like councils and other public sector outfits just love spending your dosh.

I guess this would be more acceptable if the BBC itself was truly impartial but as we have seen during the Brexit betrayal they have been biased and are truly a REMAIN outfit.

The BBC funding model is hopelessly out of step with the modern world and their coverage is hopelessly biased and constantly pushing the Cultural Marxist Common Purpose agenda. It is no longer fit for purpose and should be dismantled and if the self-servers of Westminster are too cowardly to scrap the licence fee we should do it for them.

We should lead by example and join the 3.5 MILLION who are already refusing to pay or watch live TV and hit them where it hurts, right in their Jacuzzi’s of cash.

I say we stand with the Pensioners and to slightly misquote the great Italian Playwright, Dario Fo,  “we CAN pay but we WON’T pay!” Are you with me?

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.