Category: Republic

Although the government is to increase the TV licence fee from £131.50 to £151.50 by 2012 the British Broadcasting Corp. is complaining that it will be £2bn short of the money it needs. Director-General Mark Thompson has claimed that it will be unable to improve the poor quality of its programmes without this money. The…

Australia may have won the Ashes but Australian republicans are smarting. When England won in 2005 Liz Windsor thanked each player. But there have been no congratulations for the Australian victors from their head of state. The problem is that Australians do not have their own head of state. They share the English Windsor with…

The BBC’s tax on TV viewers is to go up by much less than it demanded, according to press reports. The BBC asked first for an increase of inflation plus 2.3% per year for seven years. Later it scaled this back to inflation plus 1.8%. Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell has won an average annual increase…

Canadians may soon be able to elect their Senators if Prime Minister Stephen Harper has his way. The Canadian constitution requires that Senators be appointed by the Prime Minister and serve until aged 75.  Mr. Harper intends to get around this with a law stating that only those who have won an election should be…

According to research commissioned by the Department of Media people are “on average” willing to pay almost £163 a year at today’s prices for the BBC licence. This is more than the state broadcaster has asked to government to agree. The current fee payable by those who ask the BBC’s permission to watch TV is…

Charles Windsor, heir to Britain’s hereditary office of head of state, has published details of his tax payments for the first time in an apparent effort to counter criticisms that he is too highly paid. Mr. Windsor revealed that in the 2005 – 2006 tax year he paid £3.3m on his income of £14m from…

The BBC has contracted to pay at least £15m over three years to TV and radio celebrity Jonathan Ross. This news comes as the state broadcaster is lobbying for a licence fee increase of 2.3 per cent above inflation for ten years. To raise the money to pay fees such as this, the BBC already…

A law giving special rights to Anglicans has been declared a breach of human rights by the High Court. The Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004 required that immigrants pay a fee of £135 in order to marry in the UK. But those who married in an Anglican church were exempt from…

The BBC state broadcaster is asking the government to increase the licence fee by 2.3 per cent above inflation each year from 2007 to 2013. This would increase the price of the licence from the current £121 to £180. The corporation wants to spend another £5.5bn. £3.9bn of this would come from improved efficiency. The…

The Windsor family is resisting greater parliamentary scrutiny of its £21m annual income from the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall. Parliament’s public accounts committee wants the Treasury to review the workings of the duchies and for their accounts to be audited by the National Audit Office. The family’s head of finance, Michael Peat, said that…