BBC Defends Feudal Privileges

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Michael Lyons, who chairs the BBC Trust, has declared in an interview with The Financial Times that the state broadcaster should not be subject to democratic controls. According to the newspaper he reminded “the government and opposition parties . . . that he and the other trustees were appointed by the Queen, through the Privy Council ‘rather than just at the dictate of ministers’”.

It is rare to hear such an arrogant confirmation from the horse’s mouth of the way in which the BBC fits in with Britain’s long-lingering feudal attitudes and institutions.

Mr. Lyons was “sending a defiant message to politicians of all parties that his organisation will conduct an ‘all-or-nothing’ struggle to protect” its legally sanctioned extortion of a tax on TV watching, according to the FT. But although the BBC insists that the people must finance it, it is resolutely opposed to the people having any control over it.

Yesterday the BBC successfully resisted a demand from the Conservative Party that the TV licence fee should be “frozen” during the recession. This would have meant the media giant sharing in the cut backs that are being forced on public services and business. The BBC is also opposed to sharing the fee with other public service broadcasters.

It is illegal in Britain to watch any TV broadcast through any medium without first paying £139.50 to the BBC. The Corporation collects £3.6bn a year this way. It enforces this charge with teams of “investigators” who use police powers to visit the homes of those who do not have a licence and interview them “under caution”. Mr. Lyons described the BBC as a “guardian” of the money it takes in this way.

The BBC has a long record of using the “independence” from public control that Mr. Lyons insists on to oppose republicanism and encourage devotion for the feudal Windsor family. Recently it followed a report of an opinion poll on support for the monarchy with the claim that “a leading republican” had been arrested for multiple murder in Northern Ireland.


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