This happened this afternoon at a Conservative election event in the North East:
Audience member: Why don't you abolish TV licence fees?Isn't it just!
Boris Johnson: For everybody? Well, I don't think at this late stage in the campaign I'm going to make an unfunded spending commitment like that. But what I certainly think is that the BBC should cough up and pay for the licences for the over 75s, as they promised to do. At this stage we are not planning to get rid of all TV licence fees, though I'm certainly looking at it. And what I will say is that I'm under pressure not to extemporise policy on the hoof, but you have to ask yourself whether that kind of approach to funding a TV, a media, organisation still makes sense in the long term, given the way other organisations manage to fund themselves. That's all I will say. I think the system of funding by what is effectively a general tax...isn't it? Everyone has a TV...it bears reflection, let me put it that way. How long can you justify a system whereby everybody who has a TV has to pay to fund a particular set of TV and radio channels, that is the question.
Just watch the ramp up to "Operation Get Boris" now. The luvvies won't like it one little bit. Bless' em!
ReplyDeleteThey were already getting desperate today following the latest Survation opinion poll.
ReplyDeleteI think desperation is the reason that they're promoting John McDonnell ahead of Jeremy Corbyn as the face of Labour. If Labour does badly as appears to be the case, Corbyn's days are numbered anyway.
DeleteMore encouraging than I would have expected. There is nothing to stop the Conservatives, should they win, establishing a Royal Commission to look into it.
ReplyDeleteI think BBC, and Channel 4 for that matter, have been so egregious in terms of bias throughout this election (and from Brexit through Grenfell) that the Conservatives have to act now to redress the balance in broadcasting in this country.
ReplyDeleteFailure to do so will imperil the Boris project just as the liberal media have relentlessly attacked and undermined Trump in America. Boris has to present the BBC, and Channel 4, with a reform or die ultimatum.