- Dowden defence of No10 parties ‘pathetic’ say Lib Dems
- ‘Back off our BBC!’ say Lib Dems
Dowden defence of No10 parties ‘pathetic’ say Lib Dems
Responding to Oliver Dowden’s appearance on BBC Sunday Morning, where he defended the Prime Minister and blamed an ‘underlying culture’ for the Downing Street parties, Liberal Democrat Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Layla Moran MP said:
This pathetic attempt to defend Boris Johnson will just fan the flames of public anger against this rotten Conservative government.
Boris Johnson is once again blaming those around him instead of taking responsibility.
If he really is angry about these parties, he must be furious with himself. Boris Johnson allowed them to happen, he joined in, and then he tried to cover it up by lying to the public.
The very same day Oliver Dowden ordered people to only meet in pairs outside, Boris Johnson was attending a party in Number 10. We don’t just need a change of culture, we need a change of prime minister.
‘Back off our BBC!’ say Lib Dems
Responding to DCMS Secretary Nadine Dorries’ comments regarding the future of the BBC, Liberal Democrat DCMS Spokesperson Jamie Stone MP said:
This latest Tory attack on the BBC threatens to destroy a service which is respected around the world for its high quality content.
Freezing the license fee represents a stealth cut of almost £2 billion that will put services, including local radio stations and children’s programming, at risk.
What’s worse, there is no clarity about the future and threadbare funding will only further chip away at our cherished national broadcaster.
Our world leading creative industries support thousands of jobs, but Nadine Doris only cares about trying to silence unfavourable headlines.
The Government must stop this reckless ideological crusade and back off our BBC.
Follow @LibDemVoice on Twitter
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Mystery at Witchend is Went the Day Well? and Seven White Gates is A Matter of Life and Death
The long role of the Jewish community in Liverpool
Labour's post-election (non-)honeymoon: The Week in Polls
September now
Farron photos
Joe Bourke
Peter Martin
Mick Taylor
Michael BG
Jennie
20 Comments
Personally I really object to paying the licence fee and helping pay for the BBC pushing political agendas. The BBC interpretation of impartiality is a total joke. I hope it changes to being financed by advertising as I would still be able to watch the odd programme but if it goes to subscription I won’t be signing up.
The comments from the culture secretary were far more humane and liberal than were the reposte from the Liberal Democrats.
Dorries said that elderly people would have no more fear of vans and detectors, or prison. As for the description by Stone, of threadbare funding, billions for a single body, a monopoly broadcasting mainly commercially oriented programmes, and a bureaucracy with massive fees and salaries, no sorry, try living in the real world of the creative practitioners! The BBc is worthy of praise only once in a while today! It is apallingly out of touch on its funding reliance on a compulsory fee.
Dorries is only saying and doing what all polls give huge support for. She does not denegrate the avhievements of the BBC, only the monopoly funds!She in fact said what liberals should have been saying but never do. I have , as one involved professionally in culture, for years , been calling for support for abolition of the tv licence, to be replaced by funds from the DCMS.
Gerald Kaufman, Tony Benn, the green party, all were or are committed to licence fee abolition. But not the official Labour Party line, or Liberal Democrats.
It is the Tories who are too often the radicals, on this rightly. The opposition on this, smal;l c conservatives!
“Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?
They paved paradise, put up a parking lot.” Joni Mitchell
Having just finished Fake Law by the Secret Barrister, which is in large part about how politicians and the press whip up a frenzy around non-existent “problems”, I have to ask, how many people, elderly or not are prosecuted and / or imprisoned for not having a TV licence?
I am curious to learn how the BBC is to be so improved following the abolition of the licence fee.
Shall we enter a communications nirvana in which everything shall be well-balanced from everyone’s perspective?
A fascinating prospect indeed.
‘Back off our BBC!’
So what happened to the concept of choice?
Why do we have a TV poll tax? It’s 2022 not 1922.
In terms of license freeze I’m sure they will manage on their existing meager annual budget of £4 billion.
Anyway as it’s such an admired institution how could it possibly not continue on a subscription basis?
Not many I should imagine and there are so many concessions. However I love the BBC so well done Jamie Stone for defending its integrity and independence against government control. In many countries the BBC WS is still the main respected news resource. I would be quite happy to pay more for the licence fee from my benefits, love the radio and the many soul music shows on BBC local and national stations I tune into. The chorus on the right and libertarian right want to destroy it by stealth, it does not fit in with their privatisation mantra or social media agenda but the rest of us, we must campaign, protest even to keep this magnificent institution alive.
@Lorenzo Cherin – “The comments from the culture secretary were far more humane and liberal than were the reposte from the Liberal Democrats.
Dorries said that elderly people would have no more fear of vans and detectors, or prison.”
I laughed at that corker!
The only way for this to become true, as she implied and it will be understood, is for the government to fully fund the BBC and elderly people get access for free. Doing away with the government mandated licence fee and replacing it with a decriminalised subscription or some other payment requirement, does not remove the threat of payment demands, enforced by unscrupulous agents, courts and bailiffs…
We heard once again that chestnut that the BBC, that they have deliberately under-invested in for decades, should somehow compete with the likes of Amazon and Netflix which exist because of generous on-going cash injections; which demonstrates once again the poverty of traditional Tory thinking. Perhaps if successive governments had invested circa £8bn pa in the BBC for the last 20 years and encouraged and supported it in going global, it might be as big as Amazon Prime and able to compete…
Roland
‘Doing away with the government mandated licence fee and replacing it with a decriminalised subscription or some other payment requirement, does not remove the threat of payment demands, enforced by unscrupulous agents, courts and bailiffs…’
Just like Amazon or Netflix anyone that ‘chose’ to subscribe to a BBC subscription service & didn’t pay would of course face action.
Why do you hate the freedom of ‘choice’?
Roland, as with John, this is an argument about Liberal ideas and practices and or the reverse of those.
Choice, freedom, coercian, equality, poverty, harm. The tv licence is imposed with no progressive ability to pay. One size fits all, is not Liberalism!
Four billion a year, is what the organistion get! It is possible with less, to fund real public oriented not for profit broadcasts , and it would be something I could support, but funded by a grant from the DCMS. It would need that, but not a compulsory licence fee.
Anybody who thinks Graham Norton, Homes under the hammer, The Voice, Snooker, tennis, are public services, must think in a different way.
I was a little boy when Brunowski made The Ascent Of Man, when drama meant Play For Today, and when even then, it was evident ITV were as good!
I mention two left wing advocates, eloquent both, Kaufman, Benn, of alternative ways to fund the BBC, years ago, add Gaitskill, Wilson, not right wing!
I favour a split , BBC Public, BBC Private. One funded by commercial ways, adverts, subscriptions, and sponsers. One, a grant from a new Broadcasting Council. My ideas are those to keep genuine public broadcasting. It wporks for theatre and art. It can for tv.
Lorenzo Cherin
‘I favour a split , BBC Public, BBC Private. One funded by commercial ways, adverts, subscriptions, and sponsers. One, a grant from a new Broadcasting Council. My ideas are those to keep genuine public broadcasting. It wporks for theatre and art. It can for tv.’
What a great idea, BBC public: News, BBC external service & parliament with the rest private.
As you say forcing people to pay for a TV license via a TV poll tax is anything but Liberal.
‘The BBC interpretation of impartiality is a total joke.’ I alway find it funny that Tories claim the BBC is staffed by pinkoes and the left claim the BBC is staffed by Tories!
But got to love a government that stopped funding free licences for all over-75s, then cries ‘shame’ when the BBC says it can’t afford to do so, except for those on Pension Credit.
John
Thanks, appreciate that comment.
I have for years, researched and thought about the issue as I care about real public services.
My proposal is that BBC Public, and the “cultural BBc,” would be news,parliament, documentaries,arts, education, children, and science , open university. A grant funded scheme, from a new Broadcasting Council, funded by Department of Culture, Media, Sport. And also it could be available for other productions, companies, or channels that could also apply to for funds for not for profit broadcasts.
BBC Private, and ” the commercial BBC” would be anything obvious that is not in any way currently a public service, Graham Norton, Homes Under The Hammer, The Voice, detective series, thrillers, commercial sports. These would be funded by their own profits, ploughed back into it, not given to shareholders, plus sponsership or adverts, or subscription, a modest one like Netflix.
@John Oundle & @Lorenzo Cherin – I think you totally missed the thrust of my observation; Nadine Dorries claim is in the same category as the £350m on the Brexit bus, deliberately intended to be misread and mislead, just as you also pointed out, there will be “no more fear” unless people decide to not consume live TV.
BTW not all of the £159 pa TV poll tax goes to the BBC; the government has already taken slices out of it to fund other things like universal broadband…
Your ideas for cutting up the BBC are classic Conservative thinking – perhaps we’ll get a change to buy shares in “the commercial BBC”, but without the cross-subsidy don’t expect the reduced “BBC Public” to cost substantially less than £4bn pa… BTW “commercial BBC” still makes programmes like Bronowski’s, you can watch them, pay-per-view, on Netflix and Amazon…
Yes, the way the BBC is funded needs to be changed and for it to be removed from the whims of Westminster politicians. However, more thought and care needs to be put into the proposals. A first step is to separate the emotion and political bias about the current incarnation of the institution from the requirement: do we want a public broadcaster, how does it deliver services and how do we fund it. Remember Netflix and Amazon’s business model is predicated on Internet delivery; apply their model to the BBC and you effectively have to shutdown the radio and freeview transmitter networks.
Roland
Not Conservative thinking. Liberal thinking!
Compulsion to pay what you choose to pay for , is not as now, compulsion without deciding to!
Few countries do as we do on this. It is not Liberal or social democratic to have a flat tax in order to watch something, all the money going to only one monopoly.
My ideas are open to adaptation. We could keep the two parts joined effectively, allowing the commercial to subsidise the non commercial, even as it does now, but openly and with half the budget, as investment would be widened in the profiable productions.
WHat I know is, change must come on this, best to make it a liberal, solution. The Liberal democrats have so far offered nothing but conservative ideas, no change being thast, while the Tories, not a conservative party, b ut a mixture of populism and radicalism, offer both.
I do not.
@Lorenszo Cherin
“Few countries do as we do on this. It is not Liberal or social democratic to have a flat tax in order to watch something, all the money going to only one monopoly.”
Can you please provide the evidence for few countries having a flat tax to fund public service broadcasting? And the BBC is hardly a monopoly these days.
One interesting example at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/05/switzerland-votes-overwhelmingly-to-keep-its-public-broadcaster
“Swiss voters have rejected a proposal to cut taxpayer funding to public broadcasters, after a campaign that stirred debate about the media’s role in fostering national unity.”
noncomformistradicalism, ideed, in that you differ radically to me on this!
I see the BBC, as the only public broacaster to get the licence, as definitely monopolistic!
Your request is denied because you are correct. My reference to few countries, ought to read, few of our size and culture and history. Many ex dictatorships have compulsory fees, most democracies now prefer direct tax as source. However, Italy, France, Germany, Japan, all have licences, as art of a mix, of funding in some of them, so perhaps I should not say, few .
Numbers are not relavent unless you think it a fair system. I prefer our country to lead on being fair, not be in tow, aS being unfair.
@Lorenzo Cherin
“However, Italy, France, Germany, Japan, all have licences, as art of a mix, of funding in some of them, so perhaps I should not say, few .”
Exactly my point – a number of well-to-do countries, some of broadly similar population to UK, continue to support public service broadcasting via some sort of licence. That’s why I asked for the evidence which you now admit you could not provide. If you are going to make supposedly factual statements without having evidence to back them up why should you expect readers to believe what you say?
Do you or do you not believe in the the principle of provision of public service broadcasting?
If you do believe in it then how do you think it should be financed? Out of general taxation? Funded by the broadcasters who require subscriptions? Advertising? Or what?
noncomformistradical
I do not think the tone you take there, is pleasant, in this response to my humour and eating humble pie!
I admit I said few, but should have probably said, not that many today. The fact is that there is a split in most countries, in that some choose taxation, others a fee. Many have a mix. Many retain a licence fee, many have got rid of, many never had it.
I make it vey plain, I favour DCMS funding through taxation, like many countries. What on earth makes you take such a tone with your question on whether I believe in public broadcasting? I so belive in it , I have spent ages on thinking and writing and researching. It is that, and the fact that a few lines here are not conjusive to real understanding or explaining, that leads to bervity and fliuppancy, yours or mine!
I advocate choice and progressive funding. A flat and high fee forced on poor people, is not Liberal in any nation!
Apologies, for typos, utilising a new device and getting used to that!