From our Swindon Correspondent:
From the Daily Mirror
Mr Davie said: “If you are a law-abiding, paying customer and licence fee payer, what I am trying to do is get you the most value for money, and the decriminalisation proposal, frankly in my mind, just doesn’t pass the logic test.”
He said the numbers of people going to prison were “remarkably low” under the current system.
Mr Davie added: “If you look at civil systems, the fines are higher, the bailiffs arrive at the door. The system just is not good.
But setting aside the moral wickedness, this is a smart move by someone who really wants to hurt the BBC. Because unlike the electricity bill or a DFS sofa, payment is not inevitable. If you’re willing to break the law and lie, the BBC probably won’t catch you. “nope, no TV here, and no, you can’t come into my property without a warrant”. Previously, you risked prison for that if you couldn’t cough up. Now, it’s a fine, fees, maybe you lose a little property, repay a debt over a period of some months. It doesn’t have quite the same penalty if the risk doesn’t work out.
It’s a smart move by someone in government who wants to destroy the BBC. Cummings, maybe? Almost impossible for the BBC fans to oppose, but lots of poorer households will take the risk. And that’s going to mean a lot of money lost from BBC revenue.
It’s bizarre that as there are more and more households in the UK and so more and more TV licences, that fewer and fewer people watch the BBC. It’s why we have BBC channels and programmes for every minority group and interest going. Because they have to spend the money somehow. Because if they didn’t it would be blindingly obvious that they just have far too much money than is needed to provide the tiny core of services they ought to be providing.
The purpose of any bureaucracy is to maintain and expand the budget and power of said bureaucracy. All other priorities (even producing glitzy TV programs for the great unwashed) are secondary. Al Beeb is no different from the Department for Education in that respect, another bureaucracy whose existence is predicated on population control and propaganda rather than teaching kids the three R’s.
They’re hitting a really big problem (and it’s similar in the USA) that the people still watching a lot of BBC are old people who haven’t adapted. Middle aged people are a mix, and the kids are just not getting it.
For young people, their social stuff is around what’s on Netflix, Amazon, YouTube. My daughter isn’t getting a TV license at university because she doesn’t watch more than 1 show on the BBC.
It’s why license fee sales fell by 250,000 last year
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/bbc-licence-fee-paid-by-250-000-fewer-people-0xtqb7wpd
I gave up watching Al Beeb more than a decade ago and the BBC’s monthly threatograms go straight in the recycling. The prospect of decriminalisation in England and Wales that is being treated with such horror by Tim Davies has been in effect here for more than a decade since you cannot be jailed in Scotland for fines less than £500. Don’t recall the Beeb making a fuss about it back then, but then again Scotland’s population and contribution to Al Beeb is tiny by comparison to Englandshire’s. I don’t think this is purely an invention of Dominic Cummings, but… Read more »