We are told these levies are politically impossible and would drive up the costs of services. Yet in countries where they are imposed, we find that the cost to the consumer is often lower.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Top-slicing debate
In The Guardian, Jeremy Dear of the National Union of Journalists, argues that rather than top-slicing from the BBC's licence fee, additional revenue for public service broadcasting could be raised from a levy on commercial companies.
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A curious argument. We, the UK public, fund all the BBC's content. Yet he is saying that the BBC's iPlayer drives broadband take-up so the ISPs should pay a fiver a year to the BBC, a levy they would naturally pass onto the consumer. So we'd end up paying for the BBC twice over.
ReplyDeleteThe BBC has had over £50 billion investment from the license fee (ie equivalent at 2009 prices) over the last 40 years. If they can't turn that into a self-sustaining global enterprise without us all having to dig into our pockets for them every year, it's time they shut up shop.
Edel Brosnan writes - Completely agree. Top slicing just divvies out the same sized cake in smaller portions. We need a bigger cake.
ReplyDeleteEdel Brosnan -
ReplyDeleteon edit - just to clarify, I'm in complete agreement with the levy proposal, not the rebuttal in the comment above!