If you enjoy paying subscriptions to Rupert Murdoch’s pay TV company, Sky, and to BT and if you enjoy your programmes being interrupted by countless adverts, then I have some good news for you. And if you are a big fan of commercial radio, with its limited, populist music playlists and, again endless adverts, then the news is even better. The dark forces are at work and they are doing their damnedest to make your day.
You may have noticed that the BBC is under attack from a government that doesn’t believe it should exist. The prime minister said during the election campaign that he would like to close the BBC down. No one really knew whether he was joking, but all the evidence suggests he wasn’t. Not only that, Cameron promptly appointed John Whittingdale as Culture secretary which tells you everything you need to know because Whittingdale is a big Murdoch supporter and is on the record as saying that the license fee is “even worse than the poll tax.”
When Whittingdale put together a group of eight people to advise him on the renewal of the BBC charter, by a complete coincidence he appointed only people with vested interests or roles in the media or private sector. You can see the way this is going.
Chancellor George Osborne was also on the attack recently, accusing the BBC of “empirical ambitions” and attacking the corporation’s website for being a threat to other media. The attack dogs are out in force and they have the full support of the media barons.
Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers do his anti-BBC bidding for him, viciously so in the case of the Sun, but not much less so in the Times. The Mail and Express are not far behind. They want to persuade you that the BBC should be slimmed down to the point of impotence so you can sign up for a world of pay TV.
I believe this country has two great institutions. The NHS and the BBC. The NHS is a world class provider of health services, free at the point of delivery. The BBC is a world class broadcaster, the envy of the world, which produces a wide range of programmes across a number of TV and radio stations. We pay absolute peanuts for it compared to what we pay for Murdoch’s company and when they get their way and destroy the corporation, you just see how much Sky will charge you then.
Do you really think the likes of David Attenborough or Brian Cox would have been able to make some of the finest TV shows ever but for the BBC? Does any other company produce high class dramas and other entertainment shows to the standard the BBC does? And now about the Proms and its Wimbledon coverage? Can you imagine a world without BBC radio, the soundtrack of our lives?
The government’s attack on the BBC is ideological, the media attack on the BBC is motivated by the same people who gave us Thatcherism and, eventually, the worldwide financial crash in 2008. They know the cost of everything but the value of nothing. They believe in the philosophy of Gordon Gekko where greed is good.
Be careful what you wish for with the BBC. Public service provision is almost non existent in America – believe me: I have seen it.
Yes, it is hard in some ways to justify a universal license fee, but there will be nothing that the powers-that-be will able to be come up with that will be better. They know that really and it will only be a matter of time when they say the BBC should shrink to perform only the most basic services imaginable. Goodbye Strictly, goodbye Wimbledon and all other sport, goodbye Attenborough and Cox, goodbye to the Bake Off, goodbye to everything that the BBC stands for.
And once again, hello Rupert Murdoch. Given a free rein, expect more Fox, less BBC, zero culture and higher subscriptions.
The scrapping of the BBC, along with the slow death of the NHS, the repeal of the Human Rights Act, the castration of free, independent trade unions, the vicious cuts to tax credits for people on poverty pay and the unprecedented full frontal attack on the sick and disabled all lead me to believe we are headed for a darker, uglier Britain and where our basic freedoms have been eroded, leaving us with as many rights as people living in a banana republic.
Cameron and co could make Thatcher’s Britain look like good old fashioned liberalism.
