Douglas Carswell On The BBC

We agree and disagree with Mr Carswell.  We know that all politicians, including Mr Carswell, are bare-faced liars who conceal their true motives and beliefs behind semantics and word play.  It has come to something when such a sweeping statement can be made publicly, but this is where we are.  We have a feeling Mr Carswell will not be suing us.  

The cat is out of the bag.  There is no going back to some mythical era, itself based on official lies, in which we all more or less implicitly trusted in authority.  It’s over, and while we still have to put up with these people, the nuances of what they say always need to be considered carefully.

Mr Carswell is right that an organised boycott of the TV licence is on the horizon, however we would hope that the issue is ultimately resolved by Parliament in the form of an orderly dissolution of the BBC.  That is what realisation of our goal will bring about. 

Yet, despite his apparent antipathy to the BBC, clever Mr Carswell does not actually argue against the BBC, he only says that he thinks a boycott is coming and laments the prospect.  For all we know, he is a BBC defender and sympathiser who would stop us in our tracks, if he had half the chance.

Anti-TV licence campaigners should consider carefully the record of the Establishment in duping the public.  Brexit is but one example in a sorry tale that goes back decades and decades.  Politicians like Carswell will say the right things, but when it comes to the crunch, they will not hesitate to organise a stitch-up that preserves the status quo in some form.

That is why we have organised this independent political campaign for abolition of the BBC.  We must not make the same mistake as the Australians and end up saddled with a Soviet-style broadcasting monolith funded out of taxes.  As it becomes clear that the TV licence is no longer sustainable and has become indefensible, there must be a strong and unified political initiative for complete and total abolition, dissolution and dismantlement of the BBC itself. 

That means:

The Royal Charter must be revoked.

The statutory Corporation must be dissolved by Act of Parliament.

All BBC television and radio transmissions must cease and the BBC must end as a going concern (with all its commercial goodwill nullified). 

The government must appoint receivers to break-up, fragment and dispose of the BBC’s assets: every nut and bolt must be, variously, sold or leased on the commercial market.  Except that the state should retain ownership of the BBC brand to deter re-use.

The money recovered must be reinvested by the government in trust and used to fund legacy wage obligations and pension commitments, with any surplus returned annually to the taxpayer.

In short, the BBC must cease to exist. 

Additional optional measures, which we would support, include the privatisation of Channel Four - a mere formality and in itself relatively uncontroversial.  We would also support strong structural regulation of broadcasting, the press and the media to ensure a domestic market that is free of cross-media ownership and actual and shadow monopolies, and bans foreign ownership, while re-affirming a commitment of the state to withdraw from state involvement in ownership or content. 

Beyond the minimal regulatory necessities of maintaining the conditions for a functioning market, the state has no business in media and information.  To that end, we would support further privatisations of all state media and information functions within the sort of regulatory framework we have just outlined.  If there is no viable business model for a particular government information operation, then it should be shut down, the assets disposed of, and any surplus recovered should be returned to the taxpayer.  If ministers and civil servants cannot explain to the public their policies and actions, then they should not be undertaking their duties.

That is where we stand.

The following cop-outs and half-measures are not enough:

Somehow make the BBC unbiased. 

How this astonishing feat will be achieved is never explained.  Perhaps it’s proposed that the government should give the BBC a jolly good telling-off?

End the TV licence. 

Campaigners never tell us how they will persuade Parliament and the government of the day not to simply fund the BBC out of tax – the obvious thing to do and exactly what happened in Australia – or, alternatively, how commercialising the BBC will cure its problems.

There doesn’t see to be any sort of strategy beyond simply ‘not paying’.  It’s not enough.  We will end up in the same position as we have over Brexit – outmanoeuvred by cleverer people in the Establishment who do plan and prepare and will see us coming.

Privatise the BBC. 

This depends on what exactly is meant by ‘privatisation’ – we have learnt over the years just how deceptive and misleading the word is – but unless it means a break-up and pluralisation along similar lines to, or analogous to, the railway privatisation of the 1990s, it’s difficult to see how this can be regarded as any sort of fundamental change.  It just strengthens the BBC’s position, as it then (we assume) becomes entirely a profit--making enterprise, therefore virtually immune from political attack, yet with all the dignity and credibility implicit in the ‘BBC’ brand.  On reflection, privatisation seems like the worst option of them all.