Dangerous dogma
I’M DISAPPOINTED in Jeremy Hunt. His announcement that the licence fee might be cut is nothing more than a sop to the right wing obsessives in his party whose hatred for the BBC is second only to their hatred of the EU.
Cutting the fee makes absolutely not a jot of sense. Despite claiming that this is something to do with cross-government cuts, reducing the licence fee will have precisely no effect whatsoever on the deficit. Not a single penny. It’s not government spending, its ours. And if the licence fee were scrapped altogether (don’t get any ideas, Jeremy), it would still have no impact on government debt.
Cutting the BBC’s budget at any time is a stupid and vindictive thing to do. But cutting it right now would be utterly irresponsible. ITV is experiencing a calamitous loss of advertising revenue (which will get even worse if Osborne is successful in engineering his double-dip recession). So the Beeb are basically the only organisation still investing in TV drama production. And don’t imagine for a second that the only people who will suffer from this are some already highly-paid actors; the array of support industries will see completely unnecessary job losses, with their skills lost to the nation. And why? Because of dogma, pure and simple.
And where are the LibDems in all of this? Earlier this year, before the election, I attended a reception at the Commons at which the then Culture Secretary, Ben Bradshaw, spoke in full support of the BBC, as did the Tories’ then shadow minister (now minister) Ed Vaizey. But the best speech, and the one containing the strongest support for the BBC, came from Lib Dem spokesman Don Foster. What’s his view of Hunt’s summer silliness over the licence fee? Is Don going to do what all his other party colleagues do every day – roll over and say “yes, sir” to every initiative that comes out of this Tory government?
