BBC licence fee freeze is ‘cultural vandalism’ – Yorkshire Post Letters

YORKSHIRE people will be dismayed by the announcement that the Government plans to hit our local BBC television and radio services.

Why BBC’s ‘anti-Tory anti-British propaganda’ is turn-off as licence free frozen – Yorkshire Post Letters

The proposed two-year freeze on licence payments would in effect be a fine of £285m on our national broadcaster, forcing it to cut back on programming. This would come on top of the real terms cut of 30 per cent made to BBC funding since 2010.

Many of our senior citizens can’t afford the pay channels that target a younger audience, so instead rely on the BBC for local countryside programmes and news. Since 1927 the BBC Charter commits it to “inform, educate and entertain”, and its freedom from commercial profiteering has enabled world-beating content: from the excellent CBBC to Bitesize Education, which supported 5.8m students during the pandemic, and quality wildlife documentaries by Sir David Attenborough. In fact, according to the National Audit Office, the BBC is used by 90 per cent of adults and 80 per cent of 18 to 34-year-olds every week.

Decisions over its funding should be an independent and transparent process, and should not be made on ministerial whim to divert attention from the floundering Boris Johnson. This act of cultural vandalism must be stopped in its tracks.

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