We're Back!

We haven't gone away you know.  We've always been here, but we've been busy with Operation Target, and now we're back.  We've had some good responses from local communities, and we have a lot to report.  We also see that the government have given their usual predictable and banal response to the petition.  In the event, we decided not to write to the DCMS, as we realised that would be a waste of time - but we will be giving them our response to their response.

We also note that the petition sign-ups have slowed down somewhat, so further work will be required in that regard.  Time to step-up a gear.

TARGET 20,000

THE NEW TARGET IS 20,000 SIGNATURES

Thank you very much for the support with our Campaign To Abolish The BBC, and thank you for all your support with the petition.

We don't have time for anything more than a short post as we all have regular work and also still have a large mass mailing to finish off for the campaign.

The petition is now at 10,000 signatures, which means a response from the government is required. We fully expect that the response will be dismissive, derisory, boilerplate rubbish. We will however be contacting the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport, the department we believe responsible for this, to outline the kind of response that would be helpful within the realpolitical parameters that exist at present. We hope they take some notice of us, but we don't hold out hope.

The target is now 20,000 signatures - a tall order, but let's see how near we can run!

Thanks again!

And just in case you haven't signed or shared the Tim Price Petition, here's a link.

The Push To 10,000

The Tim Price Petition is now approaching 10,000 signatures.  We expect it to finally reach that target over the next couple of weeks.

If you haven't already, please sign the petition and please also share the petition link as widely as possible among your friends, family, business contacts and work colleagues, etc.

In the meantime, we are busy with Operation Target.  Consequently, posts to this site will continue to be sporadic, though a further update to our How You Can Help page will be added today.  We hope to resume normal service early next week.

Tim Price Petition & General Campaign Update

The Tim Price Petition is going respectably, but - as we expected - sign-ups have slowed-down after the initial novelty wore off. At just over 7,000 signatures, the petition has reached the natural limit of what can be achieved based on low-intensity effort.  In particular, we noticed that over the last two days there have been virtually no new sign-ups without our active intervention.  We are not aware of any other organised efforts to promote this petition.  Taking these points together, any further progress will depend entirely on our own exertions and those of our supporters.

As of this morning, we've stepped-up our sign-up efforts and we're starting to get lots of interest again. Certainly, we want the Petition up to 10,000 signatures at some point in September, if we can.  Given the radicalism of the Petition, even just 10,000 signatures overall would be respectable, though we do hope to exceed this.

We're also slowly building-up our campaign in other ways:

1. From tomorrow, we will be sending our a mass mailing to key contacts and influencers in local communities where support for the petition is strongest.  This will be an e-mail in which we raise awareness of our campaign and the issues with the BBC, and ask that recipients sign and spread the word about the latest petition.

2. We intend to get our campaign hashtag #AbolishTheBBC trending on Twitter.  Over this weekend, we will be bringing together the tweeps who want to help us with this for a 'dry run' and to formally launch this aspect of our campaign.

3. We will also be developing our web and social media presence further and hope to improve the look and professionalism of our 'brand'.  Some tentative steps will also be taken towards putting our campaign on a more 'legal' footing.

4. We will also be looking at ways to hone our social media strategy and work with other campaigners on lines of attack.

5. We will be expanding our presence online and looking at avenues to spread our message to a wider range of people as well as improve communication with our existing contacts and supporters.

6. We will be looking at how we can reach out to other pressure groups with similar interests, not just in broadcasting-related matters but across the spectrum of issues.  Some of these, we hope, will help spread the word about our campaign and the petition; others may assist our campaign in other ways, and possibly vice versa.

7. If the petition sign-ups continue to climb, we will consider making a surgery appointment with one or more of our activists' constituency MPs in order to begin pressing our case at a more formal level.  We know the reception we are likely to receive in some quarters, but we also know that at least a few MPs, especially in the Conservative Party, are (to some degree or other) quietly sympathetic to campaigns such as ours.

8. Another major aspect of our campaign at this stage is related to policy work.  We intend to write to every political party and campaign group registered with the Electoral Commission, and any non-registered parties and groups of which we are aware, with a series of questions regarding their policy on broadcasting and the BBC.  This is the first stage of our Green Paper process, which we hope will culminate in a consultation to be circulated among our supporters and any other interested parties.  

9. Finally, we will be filing a complaint with the House of Commons' Petitions Committee regarding the handling of our original petition application.  We are of the view that our own petition, which explicitly called for abolition of the BBC, was wrongly rejected.  Nothing can be done about that now, but we want to seek assurances from the Committee about the handling of any such applications in the future.  We also believe there are flaws in the petition process, which should be drawn to the attention of the Committee and on which we will be seeking a response and comment.

10,000 Is The New Target

Day Seven of the Tim Price Petition, and we’ve crossed the 5,000 mark already.  

Let’s see if we can now make it 10,000! 

Here’s how you can help: 

1. Sign the petition.  

2. Share our blog posts with others: click the social media links at the foot of each post.

3. Add your own comments to our blog posts to let us know you support us.

4. Visit and click 'Like' on our Facebook Page and invite others to do the same; 'Like' and share our Facebook posts.

5. Follow us on Twitter.

6. Get in touch at campaigntoabolishthebbc@gmail.com, with messages of support, ideas, and suggestions. 

7. We're especially keen to hear from anybody who can promote our campaign and spread the word. Perhaps you have a network of contacts or influences that will help?

THANK YOU!

The Push To 5,000

As we type this, the Tim Price Petition is at just over 3,600 signatures.

Let’s now aim to reach 5,000!

Share the petition around – family, friends, contacts, followers, online forums, etc.

We can do this!

Sign the Tim Price Petition Today
Share It On Social Media
You Can Make A Difference!

Why A Campaign For Abolition Is Necessary

We are the only campaign group that is calling for the abolition of the BBC – that is to say, our goal is that the BBC should cease to exist.  All other campaigns demand something less than this, normally one or a combination of the following:

1. that the BBC’s funding should be reformed through ending the TV licence;

2. that the Royal Charter should be revoked and the Corporation should be commercialised; or,

3. that the BBC should somehow stop being biased.

Starting with 3, we do not believe it is possible for any media organisation to be unbiased.  The goal is unrealistic.  The BBC is biased, but this is perfectly understandable: it reflects the people who work for it.  The BBC has to be defended somewhat on this point because once it tries to become ‘unbiased’, it will be playing a fool’s game in which it can’t please anybody.  We do criticise BBC bias, indeed it is at the centre of our concerns, but only on the basis that it reveals the shallowness of the Corporation’s notional goal of impartiality.  The Corporation has been set an impossible public mission that looks more and more chimeric as the technical and commercial realities of the digital age move apace.

Regarding 2, this is the subject of the latest anti-BBC petition (link - The Tim Price Petition). We have already made it clear that we do not believe this Petition goes far enough. Merely revoking the Royal Charter still leaves us with the BBC as a going concern, and the problems and potential dangers we cover below in relation to 1 also apply to this option.  Nevertheless, we are actively giving this Petition our support as a step in the right direction.  Should the Petition gain sufficient signatures for government attention or even be considered for parliamentary debate, we will be putting the case for abolition very strongly.

Turning to 1, we oppose the TV licence and we support and sympathise with all non-payers.  We believe passive resistance in particular is crucial to the eventual abolition of the BBC, but our point is that there needs to be an overarching strategic alliance for abolition, otherwise all that will happen is that the BBC will be reformed in a way that favours the elites: the worse-case scenario is a Corporation funded out of general taxation, the best-case is a commercialised Corporation funded by advertising or subscriptions, or both.  

Either 'reformist' funding scenario fails to solve the real problems.  The Corporation would be entrenched in British public life under a reformed structure, leaving us in a worse position than before.  In some ways, a fully-commercial BBC would be the worst of all outcomes because a revitalised Corporation could easily attract investment and unfairly dominate commercial broadcasting as an entirely profit-making enterprise.  This would be on the back of investments made over decades by the taxpayer, more or less at the point of a gun.

We come back, then, to the real problems, which are that:

(i). the BBC manifestly cannot fulfil its public mission;

(ii). the BBC is a subversive organisation that is undermining the country; 

(iii). the BBC is an archaic monolith, modelled on social-democratic era institutions and unresponsive to its putative market; and,

(iv). the BBC is too large and dominant.  

The 'reformers' who complain about the TV licence or BBC bias do have a point, and we are not trying to start an argument with them, but our aim shouldn't be to help the BBC by reforming it to make it run better and thereby cause even more damage to the country.  The BBC is an enemy bureaucracy and a waste of money.  Wouldn't it be better and fairer to dismantle the BBC and return the money recovered and saved to the public?  We think so.

Is abolition a realistic goal?  Emphatically yes!  We have seen with Brexit that populist campaigns can work.  Our aim is to persuade a major political party to adopt complete abolition of the BBC as its policy.  This in turn can only be achieved by creating a popular momentum in favour of abolition.