sg77.org

Time to ditch the BBC and TV Licence?

Saturday, 11 March 2023

It's fair to say the BBC has had a bad day. In a little over 24 hours they 

• Withdrew Gary Lineker from Match of the Day for criticising a right wing Conservative policy. A move which the former Chairman has said was a mistake.
• Announced they will not show a David Attenborough documentary which looks at the destruction of nature in the UK for fear of upsetting the right.
• Trivialised the documented spousal abuse of former right wing Conservative prime minister Boris Johnson's father (the same person the former PM is alleged to have nominated for a knighthood and the same person who immediately took French citizenship after campaigning for Brexit).
• Didn't scrutinise or call out claims by former right wing Conservative culture secretary Nadine Dorries about Sue Gray.

It seems that far from being impartial, as they claim, the BBC are now running scared of the right wing of UK politics and I don't like that.

Every month I pay £13.25 for my 'TV Licence'. I'm now thinking seriously about cancelling that. I have no live TV in my home. I don't listen to BBC radio. From time to time I use iPlayer - although far less than I used to - and I use the BBC website. I don't stream live TV from any other provider. 

In the past year, I've only used the BBC iPlayer to watch Doctor Who and Top Gear. These days, losing Top Gear isn't a big deal and I can buy a season pass to Doctor Who on Apple iTunes for the rough cost of one month of my TV Licence. 

According to the rules, I don't need a TV Licence and so I don't see any need to keep financing a corporation which is more worried about pleasing a right wing government than telling the truth.

Update: Love to see the commentators, pundits and presenters refusing to cover games in support of Lineker.