The UK media industry is losing out badly to the towering success of the USA.
The BBC is a great force against change. It seeks to freeze UK media in a top down take on what they think we need. Meanwhile the audience moves swiftly into an exciting competitive world of downloads, podcasts, on line videos,movies on demand and citizen journalists getting live clips of events as they happen. As a result the UK is slumping in the media rankings. The BBC slumbered and grumbled as Netflix surged from nowhere to have a turnover already six times the UK ‘s state broadcaster. They watched in denial as Amazon Prime and Disney sold subscriptions to their UK viewers who still have to pay the licence fee if they want to watch any live tv.
There are now more than 18 m Netflix users, 15 m Amazon Prime and 10 m Disney watchers in the UK. When asked what people look at first, 26% say Netflix, 25% BBC and 10% fast rising You tube. This means the revenue, the profits and the investment are surging in the US as the UK state company sees its market share, purchasing clout, ability to attract talent and to win audiences badly squeezed by more fleet of foot and now much more powerful rivals.
The BBC looks to the licence fee for its revenues. More and more people are deciding they can live without live tv, allowing them to watch downloads without paying the tax. The BBC needs more money to spend on technology, new market outlets and on programmes, only to find Comcast, Amazon, Netflix and Disney generate 30 times as much turnover as the sinking UK challenger. We should be in a panic about this collapse. The BBC is now a minnow in the world of fast growing US media giants. 30 years ago Netflix and Amazon Prime Videos did not exist. They have already both dwarfed the BBC.
The BBC has a commercial international company with a pathetically small turnover of £2 bn.This has access to the BBC back book of recordings, but lacks sufficient cut through in the global market . It should be allowed to raise substantial new share capital from private investors with a Golden share blocking foreign take over. It should spend the money raised on expanding its technical and global reach and adding new content. It should not have recourse to public funds. Currently it receives no cash subsidy and is profitable.
The BBC’s free website service impedes the establishment of competitors who need to charge to cover costs. This needs to be split between a factual and promotional website about the BBC and its offerings, free to users, and a site setting out BBC journalist and commentator takes on life behind a paywall like its competitors. The BBC domestic service model says it is advert free, yet it increasingly uses its remaining home market power to self promote energetically. A recent generic controversial advert has added to the stream of plugs for individual programmes and promotions of BBC people.
Debate about the BBC usual revolves around bias and editorial decisions. Defenders point to the Charter and to the understanding that government that automatically has great influence over funding and personnel should not use that influence to affect comment and coverage of the government. It is true the BBC does give a hard time to Labour, Conservative and Reform interviewees to demonstrate some fairness over parties. Critics allege deeper long term bias in the approach to climate change theory and net zero policies , where they have been a fan, to pro government bias over covid lockdowns, and an unwillingness to question the Bank of England and great quangos like the Environment Agency and Ofwat when they get things wrong. There is a perpetual reluctance to challenge the EU and pro EU soundbites. Coverage of the EU is thin and often uncritical.
My case today is all this political debate caused by the BBC being a state owned and directed broadcaster is getting in the way of growing and using the UK’s great cultural and news gathering potential. It means many do not look at the worrying loss of UK market share. The licence fee model cripples growth and requires a different approach to cost control and economic riskiness of ventures, as taxpayers rightly expect prudence in how their tv tax money is spent. The licence fee money will diminish as technology and US success undermines the numbers of people paying it.
Given the political sensitivity we need to examine new models. Offering everyone a share in a mutual BBC that paid a licence fee could create a people’s BBC. Licence fee shareholders could be guaranteed to keep at least 51% of the total share capital to protect from foreign takeover.A licence fee shareholder could just have one share all the time they had a licence, preserving it as a mutual . Alternatively there could be a single initial grant with people free to buy and sell the shares. There could be a block on anyone buying more than say 10% of the Corporation. The BBC would retain its Charter and requirement to be impartial.
It should be set the task to review new sources of revenue and to have a planned phase out of the licence fee. It could go on to raise new capital and add new revenue schemes .It should charge for web access, and could have a variety of subscription and advert based services.
There would be a taxpayer grant to cover World service and related news broadcasting in support of a UK cross party foreign policy which would be pro democracy, free speech and impartial news.
Without BBC reform the nation will adopt more and more US services and the Corporation will have to cut and cut again as licence fee income falls.
Sent fro
August 9, 2026
I don’t watch the BBC. I don’t pay a TV licence.
I am strongly against the pernicious idea of a new general tax to fund the BBC instead of a licence fee. That’s effectively saying you will still pay for it whether you like it or not.
August 9, 2026
I agree Peter. The idea of a fee being added to our utility bills appalls me. This would make the BBC even more insular.
Really it’s beyond redemption as it has enjoyed decades of the population being coerced into funding it, paying salaries many times the actual value.
Newsreaders on upwards of a quarter of a million together with weather presenters. DJs on even more.
This is not confined just to the BBC, all Europe’s state broadcasters are way behind the curve pumping out sime absolute rubbish. This has a lot to do with the socialist mindset that treats enterprise as a dirty word.
The BBC is beyond redemption.
August 9, 2026
Ian, I think we need to be careful of two extremes:
1. Left-wing, WOKE media. That is great at promoting itself such as, ‘BBC revered around the world’ whilst not actually creating the original, interesting and creative TV it should be demonstrating to justify the huge £180 license fee.
2. Aggressive, greedy, right-wing media, pumping excessive and toxic advertising, in particular at children. And content with a lot of excessive s-x and violence and horror etc. To even more nefarious stuff on the internet.
August 9, 2026
Power need to be given to users of the BBC to withdraw their payments if they do not like what is being provided or the BBC’s moronic and endless political propaganda.
Just as they can stop shopping at Aldi, Tesco, Waitrose or their local grocery or butchers shop. The same should be true about the NHS, state schools, trains, energy companies, water companies …
August 9, 2026
Indeed the BBC is clearly unfair competition to other providers. Most irritation of all is their endless bias and now their endless adverts spending our licence fees to tell us how wonderful the BBC is or promote their products.
I personally and my family do however get good value from the BBC, my objections to it are mainly due to its absurd political line and its very selective and wrongheaded reporting. The line it take on open borders, illegal and legal mass immigration, endless approval for ever more regulation and red tape, the evil DEI agenda, the insane and evil Harriet Harman Equality Act 2010, their vast pro EU bias, their endless promotion of the climate alarmism religion and net zero…
So our deluded Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (a direct contradiction in the title) Miatta Fahnbulleh sends all her three children to private schools doubtless he flies around a lot too. Another do as I say not as I do grade one hypocrite. She clearly has little or no grasp of energy, science, logic or energy engineering…
Another Tory this AM saying people who use private schools pay twice over – no they pay four times over once in taxes for others schooling, then in tax and NI to earn the fees they have to pay, then the fees themselves and now 20% VAT on top. Is this supposed to be fair competition? Is the NHS free competition or the absurdly biased BBC.
August 9, 2026
@Peter. +1. My taxes already fund lots of things I don’t like, don’t consume and don’t want. Voting doesn’t rectify it. Why add to the list?
August 9, 2026
I too want to see freedom of choice, fair markets and fair competition especially between the private sector and state provision. We have absurdly and unfairly rigged markets in healthcare, energy, schools, universities, the BBC, banking, net zero, planning, law, transport… The state cannot really compete so they always have to rig the market in order to strangle the far more efficient private competition. You end up with most people having been taxed to deal just having to accept the generally dire Hobson’s choice of whatever the state offers or does not offer.
Even Thatcher retained most of this market rigging towards state provision near monopolies. Despite her claimed admiration of economist Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom she did far too little. From Major through to Sunak we got full on dire socialism from the Con-Socialists with pro-EU and pro-net zero lunacy on top to further kill the economy.
Reply I helped Mrs T introduce competition into telecoms, gas and electricity.
August 9, 2026
I can still listen to BBC for free, though they expect you to register if you want to do so via a computer ( I refuse to do this).
I rarely listen to the radio. I thought the ‘World at One’ was bad – in particular Sarah Montague who seems rather dim.
Listening to the ‘Today programme’ Nick Robinson seems capable even if you disagree with him. It’s also true of Kuenssberg.
Then one day it was Amol Rajan. I thought he had left. I could imagine him sitting there with his earring, possibly chewing gum between announcements. Today sacked Stourton for being too posh. Rajan was the way forward. To make it worse, Rajan was teamed with my new bete noir Johnny Dymond, who I thought was only allowed out on World at One. While he is not as dim as Montague, he has the annoying habit of stressing every other word, so he is virtually impossible to listen to. I was already in the habit of switching off during ‘Thought for the day’. I will not be hurrying back.
August 9, 2026
Rod Liddle tried to ditch “thought for the day” – alas he failed so we still have crass drivel for the day from endless deluded bores.
All BBC presenters (almost without exception)) are left wing, PC, woke art graduates with little grasp of reality. They have to be deluded on climate alarmism, economics, open door immigration fans and pro EU people.
August 9, 2026
For as long as I can remember, JR has wanted to break up the BBC, which is a national institution revered around the world. The usual accusation is “bias” and objections to paying the licence fee. Which is 50p/day for excellent news coverage and all that programming.
Not to mention court attacks by foreign presidents alleging untruthfullness and reputational damage
As such, I would regard any recommendations here for change as highly suspicious. Selling off the BBC to foreign media firms would certainly result in the BBC no longer representing British culture reflecting the political views of the new shareholders. I’ve watched GB News, it is the most biased, boring and dreadful channel ever.
The licence fee should be given a modest increase each year for the next five years.
August 9, 2026
‘For as long as I can remember, JR has wanted to break up the BBC, which is a national institution revered around the world.’
Hello. What TV has the BBC made in last 30 years that is worthy of being ‘revered’? I can’t think of anything except BBC’s Pride & Prejudice 1995 which was brilliant. And I’d pay a full year’s licence fee just to watch that.
In fairness, it’s made one or two documentaries I loved: Tribe with Bruce Parry and Amish: Secret Life. Both brilliant. But I’ve come across excellent, commercial documentaries on YouTube that are just as good.
But now let’s look at commercial TV. Commercial TV was behind Evelyn Waugh’s excellent TV production of Brideshead Revisted, a decade earlier.
BBC should be making films like Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music. Stuff like that. That all came from the commercial sector.
And it should stay out of politics. Leave sport to the commercial sector (except Wimbledon and cricket). And there’s no reason why the commercial sector can’t make great nature programmes.
I don’t want to get rid of the BBC. But as it stands, it’s bloated and just lives on this fantasy reputation of being ‘revered around the world’. A reputation it doesn’t deserve or at least doesn’t deserve now hardly at all.
Saying that, we also need to keep an eye on what is going on in the commercial sector. In particular, content that promotes violence and crime. And keeping our children safe from porn and other nefarious stuff on the internet.
August 9, 2026
Another good reason for keeping the BBC is that it protects people from excessive advertising. There is definitely a correlation here between too much advertising and decline in mental health.
I mean it’s great the way Wimbledon reduces advertising to a minimum. But there is advertising. Compared to the US open that I can barely watch because of all the excessive advertising.
(I don’t want advertising on the BBC. What I meant was that it does reduce the overall amount of advertising that one is bombarded with on TV in general in the commercial sector. People in advertising need to be challenged too. And advertising is thrust upon us against our will from one degree to another. And in particular, thrust upon children who need protecting).
I, also, forgot to add comedy. The BBC has made some great comedy in recent years.
August 9, 2026
When I was in the Netherlands I bought an excellent VHS recorder that allowed you to fast forward through ad breaks in 30 seconds increments or replay speeded up to bypass sections of tedious programme content. It made live TV all but superfluous. Doing the same with a Freeview recording box allowed some continued TV use (mainly 6 nations). But for quite some years content has been so dire that I no longer run TV at all, let alone use online catchup alternatives. The licence fee saving is a bonus.
Attempts to promote state propaganda via OFCOM demanding priority for BBC content in searches will be an inconvenience. Let’s hope we’re not reduced to Samizdat printed on airmail paper or passed around inUSB thumbsticks.
August 9, 2026
I remember the VHS recorder thing. For £180, I’d rather spend the BBC money on sponsoring a poet or something! I only buy the license for family and friends. Have barely switched on the TV myself for about 5 years (really ..). I’d rather stare at a beautiful tree (unless there was something decent on ..).
August 10, 2026
It was the height of Blockbuster, which allowed renting of films I wanted to catch up on or see again. Also, it was an excellent way to improve my foreign languages – our standard cable included stations from Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland and the UK as well as local Dutch. The ability to rewind a few seconds because I didn’t quite catch what was said first time, or re-read the captions to learn an idiomatic usage was invaluable.
August 9, 2026
@ED M
The forthcoming review of the BBC – which will include funding – is causing excessive salivation from Reform, the right of the Conservative Party and their media mouthpieces. At long last, after years and years of agitation, they see the prospect of breaking up the beeb – to allow American media giants to control editorial policy and dominate British broadcasting.
The vast majority of television viewers in the UK are happy to pay the very reasonable licence fee. The right-wing minority who refuse to pay should be prosecuted to the limit of the law. Why should the rest of us who do pay for their licence have to suffer because a few fanatics want to control editorial policy? The tiny minority who advise on social media how to avoid paying the licence fee should also be censured.
The BBC review should include banning political appointments to the unitary board of the BBC – including the Chair and members. The licence fee should have a modest annual rise for the next 5 years – say £7.50 each year. Anybody who insults the impartiality of the BBC should be banned from airtime and lastly, the BBC should be free to discuss any of the important issues of the day. And make good programmes
August 10, 2026
Hi.
‘is causing excessive salivation from Reform, the right of the Conservative Party and their media mouthpieces’ – I’m a Tory. Neither on the right or left of the party but in the middle somewhere. And no supporter of Reform (I think they are disloyal to the Conservative Party and undermining the Tories getting into power for our good). And I am not salivating about the BBC. I just think it’s not worth £180 a year (frankly, I don’t think it’s worth £1.80p at the moment but I hope it can be reformed then I wouldn’t mind paying about £100 for it). And I think there are lots like me (who want a strong BBC for people to be entertained and inspired and for patriotic reasons. It’s important).
‘to allow American media giants to control editorial policy and dominate British broadcasting’ – the BBC has already become commercial in spirit but without producing hardly any decent content. A lot of trash in fact.
‘The vast majority of television viewers in the UK are happy to pay the very reasonable licence fee’ – most viewers are not happy. More indifferent.
‘The right-wing minority who refuse to pay should be prosecuted to the limit of the law’ – if they watch the BBC, then I agree, that is illegal whatever they think of it. And the law has to be upheld.
‘Why should the rest of us who do pay for their licence have to suffer because a few fanatics want to control editorial policy?’ but the editorial policy of the BBC – within the BBC – as it stands is already rubbish.
‘The licence fee should have a modest annual rise for the next 5 years – say £7.50 each year. Anybody who insults the impartiality of the BBC should be banned from airtime and lastly, the BBC should be free to discuss any of the important issues of the day’ – sounds to me as if you’re having me on. An elaborate joke.
August 9, 2026
@SG. The BBC is a joke around the world. It’s known as a globalist propoganda outfit. People treat it as being as no more, and possibly less, objective on many issues than Russia Today or CGTN.
August 9, 2026
@Wanderer
Like most of what you post here, your comment is pure crap
August 9, 2026
The BBC is largely crap, nowadays, for how much it costs the license fee payer.
Just seen that a senior BBC exec is paid nearly £900K – for what?!
His salary should be reduced from £900K to about £125K. And if he’s not happy with that, then adios amigo. What brilliant TV is he involved with that justifies him earning nearly 900K? It’s a gravy-train joke.
August 9, 2026
GB News has more viewers than BBC News.
GB News will offer JR the opportunity to speak without constantly talking over him or pretending they know his views better than he does.
GB News also has the Camilla Tominey Show. BBC News can’t come close.
Both are biased so I watch both and one suggests questions for the other.
August 9, 2026
‘As of 2026, GB News is ahead of Sky News and BBC News in “average viewership for six months in a row”, but with a lower total weekly reach than both.’
Google. I am not quite sure how the two figures are arrived at though.
August 9, 2026
“Excellent news coverage” hugely biased news coverage in all there usual ways:- pro EU, left wing, pro climate alarmism, for ever more regulation and red tape, for ever larger government, for suppression of free speech, pro the net harm Covid “Vaccines” and lockdowns, anti-landlord, anti-business, pro rigged markets in transport, media, education, energy, universities, pro mass low skilled net cost immigration, pro the anti-growth agenda … in short wrong on every single issue. And I am expected/forced to pay for this evil and misguided lefty indoctrination.
They do not even have Farage or JR on desert island discs!
August 9, 2026
With his general attitude SG is proving that the BBC is currently a left wing construct.
August 9, 2026
SG, if you imagine the BBC represents British culture then I can only say you should get out more.
August 9, 2026
BBC is rubbish in terms of NOT making TV that is original, creative, interesting. The license fee is robbery.
If we continue with BBC, it should only exist to create the kind of TV commercial TV can’t.
The license fee should be slashed from £180 down to £100.
And if it fails to change, slashed from £100 to £50.
August 9, 2026
I realise it’s extremely dificult to break up the current model. Most sane people resent the fee for watching other channel’s live TV and certainly don’t want another mandatory charge added to Council Tax and the rest. A subscription service is the fair answer, but who in power cares about a fair solution?
Setting aside the political difficulty of curbing the BBC’s hold on our purses and society, can we at least agree that we don’t need a “national broadcaster” in today’s age? Private companies large and small will provide what people want to watch, including documentaries and news. The government will always find ways to push its propoganda and messaging, it doesn’t need a BBC either.
August 9, 2026
We still need a national broadcaster as a way of uniting people and as part of patriotism. Otherwise it’s another step of falling into the globalist soup without any identity or national personality. But the BBC should be cut from £180 to 100 and if it fails at 100, to reduce from 100 to £50.
I don’t think most people would quibble at paying £50 a year for a national broadcaster without ads.
August 9, 2026
Excellent idea. The Conservatives should propose a tax free distribution of BBC shares to license fee payers, with the govt holding a golden share as you suggest. The BBC would need to be given a proper corporate structure beforehand. Of course it will depend on the investment case, the growth and profitability, but it would be reasonable to assume (looking at comparable companies) that even if all the BBC achieved was to replace the license fee income with subs and ads, 1 license fee would receive shares worth c. £500-1,000 each. The market would facilitate trading, and if need be the articles could prevent large stakes. This is very low hanging political fruit as well as a good idea for the BBC, and would also sort out the bias issue.
August 9, 2026
The BBC doesn’t even try to make money. It is funded by an ever-dwindling customer base in the UK, but watched for free by anyone else in the world that happens to have a VPN or a dodgy Firestick. When accessing it from abroad, it asks if you have a license and seems to expect people to answer honestly. It can’t be that difficult for them to copy the security access that Netflix and Prime use. Therefore, my thinking is that profit is not their main concern; it is spreading propaganda. Their programming is full of climate change alarmist rubbish, net zero and diversity. All planned by the Nudge Unit. You are trying to fix something that is working as intended.
August 9, 2026
John as with most I agree with your thoughts. Hanging around the periphery and doing real damage to broadcasting and media, the sort of damage the BBC can’t escape is the so-called mega deals.
Just two of the deals Paramount, Warner Bros merger and before that Microsoft raid on Activision Blizzard have a value put at $180 billion. These might in our cocooned World seem meaningless, but what these type of deals (and there are many other) actually do the opposite of what the market, the free market needs, they remove their competition, their need to compete, their need to get better, to serve their customers. Each of these participants in these deals could easily fund taking the competition to the market compete for customers and improver the market for every one. But each of these and similar deals removes competition, the consequence is less choice higher costs. They also create cartels and monopolies that the likes of the BBC have to submit too, as they don’t have the money and resources to even contemplate being attractive to customer.
Perspective Channel 5 is owned by Paramount. We are now looking at just 2 major broadcasters that are out of reach to the likes of the BBC, the Paramount/Warner tie up & Comcast
The BBC’s value World wide is $2.5 billion, their competition from the 2 above is $210 billion.
As nice as it is to have a home grown propaganda machine, there is no way the taxpayer (the licence is a tax) can fund that sort of revenue to compete. Its a bit like the UK’s last remaining centre ground news outlet be handed over to an EU Socialist monolith pure blatant destruction by a Socialist Parliament that believe BIG is best – for them
August 9, 2026
I had occasion some time ago to listen to the World Service, which I hadn’t listened to for many years since living abroad. I was very disappointed by the change from what it was, a British voice in the world, to what it seemed to be now: a service offering especially broadcasts from English-speaking countries in South and South-East Asia, by citizens of those countries, talking about events in those parts of the world. It came across to me as the third world broadcasting to Britain, not vice versa.
August 9, 2026
John, you say the BBC gives tough time to Labour Tories and Reform when interviewing them.
I can not remember a time when the BBC gave any Labour interviewee a tough time?
The usual style is ” Thank you for coming to speak to us oh magnificent one, we are not worthy to consume a moment of your time, but can you tell us what glorious policies you will be promoting now those horrible other political parties are on the opposition benches”?
The BBC is socialist/Labour and only allows those on the left to be heard or employed by them.
Can anyone name a single right of centre program or presenter on the BBC?
August 9, 2026
Another diatribe against the BBC for early morning readers and I am left wondering Cui Bono and what will be next? the Royal Family? It seems to me that there is a cohart of British ‘well to do’ types who feel the need to blur the lines for their own past mistakes also this we see on GB news – but for whatever reason they are determined to tear down the last vestiges that once made Britain Great. My advice to British people is to pay your TV lIcence fee and rejoice in your great British PSB – you have nothing to gain by following the American model except dysfunction – if 77 million in the US were so convinced to vote for that fool of a president then the source of their decision making information for doing so has to be highly suspect – no doubt about it. murphy Dublin
August 9, 2026
The famous BBC interview with Evelyn Waugh (the full version) shows what CAN be so wrong with the BBC.
At the beginning, we’re told Waugh was basically off-hand with the BBC in the interview. But if you look at the interview, Waugh is actually quite charming and humorous. He doesn’t come as off-hand. Rather it is the interviewer who is off-hand – overly-personal, dour, judgemental. No wonder Waugh didn’t like the BBC (and ironic that ITV was responsible for their great version of Waugh’s novel, Brideshead Revisited). I’m more favourable towards the BBC than Waugh. But the BBC is simply NOT worth £180 license-fee per year. Its content is too mediocre to justify that. The fee should be halved. And if they don’t learn from that, the fee reduced to £50 per year.
August 9, 2026
No government is going to close down the BBC as it is too useful a propaganda tool. The country should be ashamed of our national broadcaster’s dreadful bias and its disgraceful refusal to allow alternative views to be aired despite declaring itself to be “impartial and independent”. Perhaps the worst is the incessant CAGW/Net Zero propaganda which includes lies such as in 2007 that Arctic summers would be ice free by 2013 and in 2017 that the Great Barrier Reef was almost dead. Or that renewable energy is the cheapest form of energy and of course, the biggest lie of all, that CO2, and hence anthropogenic emissions of CO2, controls the planet’s temperature and consequently burning fossil fuels will cause the extinction of life. Given that the government’s Nudge Unit needs the BBC to continue I would suggest the corporation is changed to the Sky model where the news/current affairs/propaganda is free to air and the entertainment is available through subscription. This should substantially reduce the licence fee if not cancel it altogether. The Russians don’t pay a licence fee for TASS.
August 9, 2026
It was not the BBC, they just reported what Mark Serreze of US National Snow and Ice Data Center had predicted in 2007. This ‘piece of news’ was repeated by Al Gore in 2009.
The near death of the Great Barrier Reef had originally been reported by ocean scientists from James Cook University, Australia, from in-situ observations.
As for CO2 and climate change there is no science done by the BBC, that comes from various
observations, meteorological analyses, climate simulations, none of them performed by the BBC. Their journalists report what the scientific journals publish and simply put the material in a form they think might be understood by lay people.
I have to admit I find incredible that people supposedly intelligent are unable to figure out where the information appearing on the BBC (or any news agency) actually originates or at least realise that the Beeb does not produce the information.
Is that the result of a British education of fifty years ago? If this is the case, and not simply a particularly non-enlightened person, the British state has a lot to answer for.
In such conditions the idea of a ‘citizen-scientist’ is the worst gag of these last forty years.
Reply People know where this comes from. They object to the bias in selecting who to speak and what they are allowed to say.
August 10, 2026
You’re a very positive and generous person. Looking at what some write on this blog I am not at all convinced they are able to make the difference between the producer and the distributor of information, scientific or otherwise.
August 13, 2026
Hefner, it’s just a case of supporting the view you want to.Universities actually teach this.They are not interested in analysing all known facts, they want students to focus on a belief and find information to back it up.
August 9, 2026
The BBC should be tasked to become one of the top 4 international media companies through global subscription services and the licence fee should become a subscription.
August 9, 2026
Regarding media, I really think we need to think a lot about our children.
If you were a child back in in the 1960’s, there was no porn on the internet, no cannabis at school, no excessively sugary, processed foods, no social media, no violent crime, most kids had some sort of mum and dad at home, with neighbours looking out, no mobile phones – and you could often get out on your bikes and go for long bike rides, you could read Just William, Tintin, and the Railway children, you could go to the cinema and watch Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music, and sure, by a few sweets such as Apple Drops or Bon Bons but nothing excessive like all the sugar in foods today. Sugar (and processed foods) is a killer. It spikes insulin which is probably the number one thing behind ill health – both physical and mental, disease and premature death. It also leads to lower productivity at school – and work.
August 9, 2026
The BBC doesn’t deserve to be saved nor advised, especially in an age of multi-media. What is needed is immediate abolition of the license fee, a great way to relieve cost of living pressures, especially for poor families. Perhaps we should tell Burnham as he says he is looking for ways of reducing the cost of living and I doubt he has seriously considered that! Then I suspect the BBC would fold as it is so grossly expensive and inefficient and few would mourn it especially as people can just flick the channel switch and go to Sky or independent television!
August 9, 2026
0. Remove the licence fee.
1. Move the BBC to a purely subscription based model.
2. Remove their back catalogue and make it freely available only to UK citizens (who paid for it) via a streaming service.
After that I don’t care what they do, they haven’t represented Britain’s culture or interests for 25+ years.
So remove “British” from their station name.
August 9, 2026
The BBC being taken over by our people and leading it on a sensible path would be a fine way forward.
August 9, 2026
There are also today some good comments / discussion on Spiked / Youtube article – ” The BBC is haemorrhaging viewers, money and trust”
( Robin Aitken talks to Brendan O’Neill about BBC bias and the future of the license fee )
August 9, 2026
I still hold an affection for the BBC, and see it as a progression that reflects the attitudes of the nation, for better or worse. I appreciate what’s left of a great institution, that served us so well in the past. Better the devil you know!
August 9, 2026
As at 8pm our government has failed to release any figures for illegal crossing from yesterday …yesterday
August 10, 2026
On there now for 9th also. Making the total number of illegally crossed individuals 1300 on 18 boats – official figures for 01 AUG to 09 AUG inclusive.
August 9, 2026
As John Cleese says… “if you only listened to the BBC you would have no idea what is going on”…
August 16, 2026
The US has dominated cinema for years, sowhy should streaming of films and series be any different. Online it says US has five free-to-air networks available widely to the US population. We have four, with a fifth of their population, so the quality of ours is poorer. Channel 4 shouldn’t have been split off from ITV and Channel 5 not created.