Friday 31 August 2018

Have You Received An E-mail From Us?

Thank you for reading the e-mail we sent you, and thank you for visiting our site.

We'd like to stress that the most important thing you can do to help bring about change at the BBC is to sign the latest petition. Here's the link.  Please share that link with your friends, family and contacts - thank you very much.

More About Us

We appreciate you taking the time to find out more about our campaign.  Here we will explain things a little bit and also set out why this issue may be relevant to you and your local community.

We know you are busy, so we will try to keep this relatively brief.

As explained in the e-mail, our campaign is for the abolition of the BBC.

We summarise why we oppose the BBC in this link.  The issues we take are both with the concept of a state broadcaster and with the way the BBC itself operates.  It is clear to us that the BBC cannot be reformed.  Reform has been promised in the past and little or nothing has been achieved.

We demand nothing less than the total shutdown and closure of the BBC and its disposal by asset sale.  In doing so, Britain would become perhaps the world's first country other than the United States without a state broadcaster - a major step forward for civil liberties and an example to the international community.

What Does 'Abolition' Mean?

In practical terms, abolition of the BBC means:

- all BBC transmissions, radio and television, to cease on a specific date and at a specified time to be decided by Parliament;

- the shutdown and closure of all BBC operations;

- revocation of the Royal Charter under which the BBC operates as a so-called 'public service broadcaster'.  This can be done by a government minister (under Crown prerogative), with approval by Parliament;

- dissolution of the statutory Corporation (this requires an Act of Parliament);

- receivership, break-up and sale on the commercial market of all the BBC's assets;

- the proceeds of this sale to be placed under the custodianship of a legacy trust (two government ministers as the trustees, and administered by civil servants), which will meet all continuing contractual, statutory and legal obligations whatsoever of the BBC (including commercial debts, redundancy payments, pension commitments and so on);

- for the avoidance of doubt, abolition of the TV licence in Britain (each of the Crown Dependencies, where the TV licence also applies, would make their own decisions according to local circumstances);

- the refund of TV licence money to licence payers through time-limited claims at branches of the Post Office (and perhaps other government-approved outlets); and,

- any surplus from the legacy trust to be paid annually to support community-based broadcasting and other non-state media initiatives that Parliament may wish to assist.

What Are The Aims Of The Campaign Itself?

Our primary aim is to persuade a major political party to adopt abolition of the BBC as its policy.

Through this campaign, our further aims are to raise awareness of the problems with the BBC and build popular momentum for the cause of abolition - both to address what we regard as the evils of the BBC itself and also to abolish state media in this country for good, in the interests of all.

How Is All This Relevant To Local Communities?

The BBC is relevant to local communities in the following ways:

(i). Individuals and households are often the subject of aggressive, harassing and intrusive inquiries from the BBC's TV licence enforcement arm, TVL.  The BBC can and does criminally prosecute individuals - resulting in fines, and occasionally imprisonment when the fines are not paid.  This causes needless worry and distress, often for innocent people or people who simply cannot afford a TV licence.

(ii). There are consequences for the taxpayer in that the BBC's enforcement costs money, and the BBC is also subsidised in this regard by the involvement of the police (to keep the peace both during the execution of search warrants and when ensuing criminal fines are enforced through levy and seizure of goods), and through the involvement of lawyers, the courts, social workers and prisons, and others.  Some of these costs - mainly the police and social services - have to be met from local budgets.

(iii). The BBC plays an important role in news gathering everywhere in the country.  Stories from the BBC cascade down to local and regional press, and often local and regional journalists will pick up on and pursue the narrative set down by the BBC.  This helps set the political tone in society.  We believe the BBC's bias is generally towards the political Left and towards metropolitan concerns.  Even if you are politically of the Left yourself, the concern we are asking you to consider here is that the bias results in important issues that affect the public being omitted and censored from public debate.

(iv). The BBC's coverage is generally London-centric and reflects metropolitan preoccupations.  This bias, together with the sheer massiveness of the BBC, helps to stifle discussion and debate of problems and issues in the rest of the country.  Furthermore, when the BBC does discuss parts of the country outside London and the south-east, it tends to be in a way that is negative and focuses on problems.  Of course, there are problems and they need to be discussed, but the negativity reflects a patronising attitude that BBC people have to the rest of the country.  The regions, whether in England, Scotland or Wales, do not have their own inimitable broadcasting.  BBC regional operations are mere cost centres and branches of the BBC, and mostly, if not entirely, fronted by a series of journeymen presenters who are not from whatever is the relevant county or region and who are believers in the narrow social dogmas that prevail within the BBC institutionally.

(v). The BBC does not, or does very little to, celebrate and highlight the regional cultures of Britain and its heritage.  Instead, the BBC has pursued a bland, anodyne, multi-cultural attitude to Britain and often presents white British cultures and ethno-nations in particular as 'problems' to be dealt with rather than unique and distinctive aspects of British life to be celebrated.

How You Can Help Us

If You Agree With Us, then please sign the latest anti-BBC petition.  Please also share the petition link widely with family, friends, contacts and work colleagues.  Please also consider assisting us in other ways, as explained in this link.

If You Want Change At The BBC, Not Abolition, then please sign the petition anyway, as that will help put pressure on the BBC.  Please also share the petition link with family, friends, contacts, work colleagues, etc.

If You Disagree With Us, that is fair.  We know that the BBC does have support and we obviously appreciate that not everybody will agree with us - in which case, thank you for your time.

Questions?  Comments?

If you have questions or comments for us, or if anything is unclear, please feel free to e-mail us.

THANK YOU!

3 comments:

  1. I think a more simple campaign would be to abolish the BBC Tax - the "license fee". Get rid of that and you break the spine of the leftist BBC. However, the privately owned television news stations are just as bad as the BBC - this is because government regulations ("Ofcom" and so on) make any alternative to the leftist control of television news and current affairs, illegal.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you for your comment.

      There are already campaigns to end the TV licence, and last year Parliament debated a mass petition against it.

      We disagree that ending the TV licence would either end the BBC itself or affect its various biases. There are already pieces on this site in which we explain this, indeed your own comment reinforces the point: you rightly remind us that there are 'left-wing' commercial broadcasters too.

      We know that some commercial broadcasters are also biased, but that is not the point. People can choose whether to watch and pay for their content, which is not the case with the BBC.

      We agree that an additional issue is regulation, but we disagree that the present regulatory system makes anything other than a leftist narrative "illegal". There are non-leftist broadcasting outlets that are licensed. There are also non-licensed independent media that challenge the leftist dispensation - indeed, a major reason the BBC is now redundant in our eyes is the multiplicity of media of Left, Right and other leanings.

      That said, it is probably the case that our campaign to abolish the BBC can only succeed if the wider political climate changes in a more conservative and traditionalist (even reactionary) direction.

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  2. I do find this whole campaign to be misdirected. The BBC is regularly accused of being left wing, especially by the Daily Mail - that bastion of truth and impartiality. If it has a bias you can make a complaint. Currently there are 2 complaints about the way Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn were treated on the Andrew Marr show. My view is that complains about politicians on both the left and right does suggest no bias.

    The dismissal of local radio and TV coverage is simply wrong and the idea that the BBC stifles competition is another statement without foundation. You don't mention the quality or gravitas of BBC programmes. The Blue Planet created a country wide campaign about the use of plastic.

    Your complaint about people being prosecuted for disobeying the law is ridiculous. You even point out that the removal of the licensing fee was debated in Parliament. The view that if you can't afford it it is quite alright to use it without paying is extraordinary.

    We have a right of centre Government yet they have chosen not to do anything about the supposed left wing bias of the BBC. Their last act was to dump the £700 million bill to give over 70's free licences onto the BBC. Combined with the austerity cuts that the BBC and every other area of Government funding has had to suffer the license fee is now a net contributor to the Exchequer.

    I have no strong views about what to do with the BBC but to make unfounded allegations and statements with no evidence to back them up does worry me a lot.

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