Bits and Pieces (round three)

THE PRESS ARE reporting today that the BBC sends out 100,000 TV licence fee letters a day. They sent out 46 million enforcement letters in the last two years at 20p per letter costing £10 million.

            

            Is it not about time the BBC abandoned the public tit and sought  to plough its own furrow in the market place like its competitors in the  private sector have to? The licence fee belongs to that pre and post- war eras, when the country was seduced by the state into allowing its advance ever deeper into society. The power of the state grew during the Second World War, which was understandable; and still remained useful for the two decades after the war when the NHS was created, and a safety net of welfare benefits introduced.

            

            The BBC became associated with the state through being allowed to tax its viewers, on threat of imprisonment. The Corporation, however remained popular with the people and even enjoyed the whimsical honorary, 'Aunty'. It was an institution that was truly loved and the licence tax was willingly paid. Public broadcasting had become an important part of British culture: and the BBC grew in popularity as well as in complacency. It developed a Divine Right to exist complex.

            

            In the first decade following the Second World War, the BBC bias was toward that of  a traditional conservative establishment that had existed for over a 100 years, and covered the values of empire. But in the coming decades, from the 1960s onwards, the country's establishment became ever more liberal – or, to use that awful liberal oxymoron, 'progressive'.

            

            Today the BBC's bias is Left of centre liberal. The problem is; that the population the corporation broadcasts to are not. The British are by nature, and on the whole, a small 'c' conservative nation who find the BBC's liberal bias intolerable and do not wish to be taxed  for its upkeep.

            

             For such a 'progressive' institution it sublimely tolerates the intolerable. Can the licence tax in this modern age be seen as truly progressive? Of course not, it is a plant wilting and in its death throes: and even many who support this institution feel that it cannot continue by taxing its viewers.

            

             The BBC's funding, like the age of steam, is an anachronism and has outlived its public subsidy. Hunting down and prosecuting citizens; not only for the none payment of its tax to watch the BBC; but for owning a television set in the first place. This is absurd and no BBC executive can find a justifying argument in the age of digital multichannel media to justify its continuance. Today the BBC are just five channels among hundreds of others. Why should we have to pay the BBC to watch the hundreds of others?

CHOICE IS THE backbone of an open and free society. But when it comes to owning a television set the BBC, egged on by the political establishment, continues to frisk us on a yearly basis just for the mere purchase of a television set.

            This is Alice in Wonderland stuff. It can however be stopped; but only if enough of the BBC's taxpayers refused to pay. It would bring the whole charade to an immediate end, and the Great and Good would have to find another way to keep the BBC alive and functioning without public subsidy.

            Let those who wish to watch the BBC pay for privilege; or perhaps the BBC could compete for advertising revenue, or a combination of the two. The BBC boasts of its worldwide reputation. If this is true the BBC will have a head start over their competitors like Sky, and ITV; not to mention the hundreds of other freely (and I do mean freely) available channels.

            The BBC, if it believes its own propaganda, should shed their publicly subsidised skin, and grow a much healthier one in the private sector.

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LEAFLETS ARE BEING handed out in Oxford Street of all places by ISIS supporters (now to be re-Christened (sic) Islamic State), urging Muslims to leave the UK and fight for the newly founded Islamic state bulldozed into being by ISIS in parts of Syria and Iraq.

            

             We also have the bravery of an aged Nun to thank for removing the black ISIS (to me they are still ISIS) flag in a part of London for fear of antagonising local grievances. The police, fearful of upsetting the local Islamic community, had ignored its presence; as they always do when it comes to the criminal behaviour of Islamists.

            

             The liberal establishment has allowed this country to drift ever deeper into the multicultural sinkhole of their creation since the 1960's, when liberal guilt conducted each and every invitation to members of our one time colonies to come and live among us; transforming our society into a multicultural society of different pales. Meant to be diverse and inclusive, multiculturalism has produced alienation, separation, and resentment.

            

              The Muslim communities, for instance are cut off and enclosed; and the law and the politicians are frightened to upset them; thus the ISIS flag was left to flutter; thus, in Rochdale and Oxford, children were kidnapped and assaulted; thus arranged marriages and honour killings went ignored; thus female genital mutilation went ignore; thus the brutal exorcism of children went ignored – all in the name of, presumably, greater diversity.

            

             We now have schools in Birmingham being accused of indoctrination and gender separation within the class room…boys at the front and the girls (where else) at the back.

            

             There is another, and  more ugly side to tolerance… such as the above.