The licence fee could go, admits BBC boss: Cost of watching TV might be put on council tax bill
By Paul Revoir
Last updated at 2:02 AM on 05th July 2009
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Admission: Mark Thompson suggested the licence fee could become obsoleteThe BBC’s director general has conceded the licence fee could be scrapped and replaced with funding via council or income taxes – or even a levy on electricity bills.
Mark Thompson’s comments have been taken as an admission-that the growing use of new technology to watch programmes will make the licence fee obsolete.
At present, anyone who owns a TV set is forced to pay for the BBC through the compulsory annual charge which is purchased online, over the phone or in shops.
But increasing numbers are switching to computers and other devices to watch shows via websites such as BBC iPlayer – for which they do not need a licence.
This has sparked fears that fewer and fewer will actually bother to pay the £142.50 charge. Now the BBC’s most senior executive has admitted that ‘you might define the licence fee in a different way’.
He said ‘perhaps’ you could ‘bung it in’ with taxes or impose it via electricity bills – though he personally did not think this was a good idea.
Critics pointed out that this would be unfair for those who choose not to watch television shows at all.
They also pointed out that those who claim benefits are exempt from income tax or council tax – meaning that those that do pay them would have to pick up the shortfall.
There are further concerns that the BBC’s independence could be compromised if it becomes part of the overall general taxation regime.
In an interview with Prospect Magazine, Mr Thompson said: ‘The BBC’s reach and perceived indispensability to virtually every household in the UK still feels very secure.
‘You may argue that a television licence fee may no longer be the right fiscal treatment – but it seems to me that, if the public and political support for a shared investment exists, fiscal means can be found to pay for it.’
When asked if he meant through normal tax revenue, Mr Thompson replied: ‘Perhaps you could bung it in with council tax or income tax, or increase the levy on electricity – though I think this is undesirable.’
In the interview he admits that, in future, the internet may be the main way the BBC broadcasts its content out to all of its audiences.
Tory MP Philip Davies, who sits on the culture, media and sport select committee, said: ‘I suspect the problem that Mark Thompson is envisaging is one where it becomes increasingly difficult to collect the licence fee.
‘It is not difficult to envisage a time in the not-too-distant future when the licence fee becomes anachronistic as a way of collecting money.’
He added: ‘Obviously lots of people don’t pay council tax because they are on benefits. Poor people would be getting it for nothing in effect. So
those people that did pay would be paying proportionately more.’
But Tory MP John Whittingdale, who is chairman of the select committee, said: ‘People’s methods of accessing TV are changing so rapidly.
‘I don’t like the idea of the council tax or anything but I think the BBC will still need to receive public money. We may well have to move to direct funding from the exchequer.’
The BBC clarified Mr Thompson’s position last night. A spokesman said: ‘Various alternative methods of funding the BBC – including through the tax system – were put to the director general in an interview and he replied that this was undesirable.
‘That remains his view and he strongly believes in the licence fee.’
BBC needs a ‘Beeching’
ITN news presenter Alastair Stewart called for BBC services to be probedVeteran ITN news presenter Alastair Stewart has called for a ‘Beeching-style’ inquiry to assess whether all the BBC’s services are ‘necessary and viable’.
He said more funds could then be channelled to cash-strapped commercial broadcasters, to protect the plurality of news services.
The hugely-controversial Beeching Report into the railways in the 1960s slash costs by closing many little-used and unprofitable lines.
Stewart (above), who has been with ITN since 1980, told a Confederation of British Industry dinner: ‘A monopolistic, guaranteed, inflation-proofed income stream is to dream of. They [the BBC] woke up to find the dream is true.’
‘I think they may benefit from a Beeching-style inquiry to explore just how well they are serving the public with the public’s money and just how many of those media branchlines are really necessary and viable.’
WHAT ELSE CAN THE FABIANS PUT ONTO THE ILLEGAL COUNCIL TAX—-ILLEGAL IT IS!!
Mrs Elizabeth Beckett handing over a letter to a Police Sergent in Penrith, Cumbria, asking the Chief Constable to protect her rights under the Constitution.
Mrs, Beckett has refused to pay her council tax to Eden District Council since discovering that some of the council tax money is then illegally siphoned-off for use by the European Union to create a new regional authority under its control.
Mrs Beckett believes her rights under the British Constitution are being flouted because the local authority is attempting to coerce her into payment of the rates before she has had the opportunity to appeal the matter to a higher court.
She says she has received numerous letters from council officers and visits from bailiffs to her old vicarage home in Alston, Cumbria, where she has been threatened with forcible confiscation of her property and with bankruptcy
Mrs. Beckett, who was a District Officer’s wife in India, believes that adding onto local taxes the cost of illegal immigrants or local assemblies that are a link to the European Union, itself a body not allowed under our Constitution, is illegal. Money raised for local councils should be described as a service charge, not a Tax.
Mrs. Beckett says the adding to our Service Charges of other items stems from the 1911 Parliament Act when the Marxists, Socialists, Fabians and Sinn Fein and the Liberal Government under Asquith took the power of Taxation from the King and the scrutiny of the Lords, so that the party that gets into power can tax in any way they like without any supervision or control.
“That Act is to this day illegal, but the words used to destroy the Lords were the same words used to get rid of the Queen’s authority,” she said.
“Our Constitution is clear:
MAKE NO MISTAKE- FABIANS WILL RELIEVE YOU OF EVERY PENNY YOU OWN- AND THEN THEIR ATTENTION WILL TURN TO REMOVING YOUR PROPERTY—-BY MAKING SURE STEATH TAXES ARE TOO HIGH YOU CAN’T KEEP UP……………….COMMIES DO IT THEIR WAY-FABIANS ANOTHER–EITHER WAY IT’ S YOUR LOSS NOT THEIRS!! YOU WERE WARNED-DON’T FORGET THAT!!
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centurean2 // July 5, 2009 at 11:59 am |
14 MILLION PENSION TO BBC—FUNDED BY YOU!
BBC chiefs ‘rack up biggest pensions ever seen in public sector’
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 12:03 PM on 05th July 2009
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Two BBC chiefs have racked up taxpayer-funded pensions worth more than £14million – the biggest in the public sector, according to new research.
Deputy director general Mark Byford and creative director Alan Yentob’s retirement funds even dwarf that of Bank of England governor Mervyn King.
Mr Byford, 51, is to receive a pension of at least £229,500 a year from a pot valued at almost £8m, it was claimed today.
Pots of cash: Mark Byford (left) and Alan Yenton have accrued pensions of £14m
This could rise to more than £10m if he works at the BBC until the age of 60.
And Mr Yentob, 62, who is also an arts presenter for the corporation, is thought to have accumulated a pension worth £6.3m, giving an annual retirement income of £216,667 for the rest of his life.
Until now it was thought that Bank chief Mr King had Britain’s largest public sector pension, with a pot valued at £5.7m that would pay a retirement income of £198,613 a year.
Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrats’ Treasury spokesman, said: ‘As more and more massive public sector pots are revealed, it only strengthens the case for reform.
‘Taxpayers simply cannot afford to be paying lavish pensions for executives who are already extremely well paid.
‘For teachers and nurses these schemes can deliver an appropriate pension, but these figures show that they can deliver obscene retirement packages for senior executives.’
This weekend it also emerged that the BBC has for the past decade rewarded senior executives with lavish receptions and leaving parties, with one farewell costing more than £150,000.
The extravagant send-offs were not disclosed last month when executives’ expenses were published.
The research into BBC executive pensions was carried out by financial services group Hargreaves Lansdown on the request of the Sunday Times.
It came after the corporation rejected the newspapers request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOI) to disclose the size of pensions held by executives below main board level.
The BBC said the scheme was exempted from FOI because it is managed by a third party.
The analysis found that Mark Thompson, the corporation’s director general, has a second ‘hidden’ BBC pension worth nearly £2.9million.
No details of this pension, accrued between 1979 and 2001, appear in the BBC’s most recent accounts.
They record only the pension rights he has earned since his appointment as director general in 2004, after a short spell at Channel 4.
Similarly, the corporation makes public only the pension earned by Jana Bennett, the director of BBC Vision, since she returned to the BBC in 2002.
It fails to reveal the value of her pension accumulated from 1979 to 1999.
Hargreaves Lansdown calculated how big a pension pot an individual would need to buy a given value of annuity.
The valuations took account of how long the executive had worked at the BBC, their age and current salary.
Members of the BBC’s final salary pension scheme contribute 6.75 per cent of their annual salary to the pension.
The full cost of meeting these pension benefits far exceeds the members’ contributions.
The BBC said: ‘It is irrelevant to talk about how much it would cost to buy these pensions on the open market because they are not on the open market.’
GREEDY BASTARDS!!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1197613/BBC-chiefs-rack-14m-pensions-funded-taxpayer.html