After Gary Lineker the BBC TV licence fee was on its last legs – now it’s totally finished
You’ll pay more for BBC propaganda from April 1 when the licence fee increases to £180 – and the joke is on those who continue to pay, writes Giles Sheldrick.
Gary Lineker was forced to quit the BBC in disgrace after an ill-judged social media post (Image: Getty)
Imagine a world where you are forced under the threat of prosecution to consume a daily diet of propaganda. And pay through the nose for it.
Welcome to Keir Starmer’s socialist Britain where the BBC licence fee – currently an eye-watering £174.50 a year – will rise to £180 a year from April 1.
That’s not a joke. The only April Fools will be the ones still paying.
What a turn off. Literally.
Millions of households already refuse to cough up for the TV tax with evasion rates now standing at around 12.5% at a cost of £550m to the corporation, while another 3.6 million have said they don’t need one (costing a further £617m). This means the BBC is haemorrhaging more than £1.1 billion in lost revenue.
And here’s the news: The number refusing to have anything to do with the Beeb or its pious presenters will only grow after this latest and indefensible hike.
The list of inexcusable scandals is long, but the theme is depressingly familiar. It is now impossible to rely on the BBC for impartiality – and that is meant to be its raison d’etre.
The one good bit of news to come out of Broadcasting House recently was pompous crisp flogger Gary Lineker being shown the door.
Smug, self-righteous Lineker was paid more than £1.3 million a year by taxpayers as he pumped out a stream of Left-wing nonsense on his social media channels.
But his position became untenable when he shared a social media post about Zionism that included an illustration of a rat – an antisemitic insult used by Nazi Germany to characterise Jews.
Think this was a one-off? Think again.
From April the licence fee will increase to £180 a year (Image: Getty)
Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone was pulled from iPlayer after it emerged its 13-year-old narrator was the son of a Hamas official.
In the summer BBC coverage of Glastonbury showed Bobby Vylan leading a crowd in chants of “death, death to the IDF [Israel Defence Forces]” and “free, free Palestine”.
And only last month BBC Radio 1 became the first station to play Liars Tale, Irish band Kneecap’s new song, which focuses on Britain’s stance on Israel’s offensive against Hamas in Gaza. It brands Sir Keir Starmer “Netanyahu’s b**** in genocide armour”.
That came just three days after the state broadcaster was forced to issue a grovelling apology when it was pointed out its coverage of Holocaust Memorial Day across TV and radio failed to mention the very point of its broadcasts – the word Jew.
Taken together the failures led to accusations the BBC was now “essentially trolling the Jewish community” with its barely disguised anti-Israel bias.
Is it any wonder that vast numbers are turning to streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime?
Last year the licence fee increased by £5 and by £10.50 in 2024.
Tory Shadow Culture Secretary Nigel Huddleston questioned how the latest £5.50 hike is in any way justifiable “when serious questions remain over its impartiality and governance”.
Reform UK MP Lee Anderson went further and said the BBC was “institutionally biased” and has a “death wish”.
The bloated broadcaster has only got itself to blame as the chasm between the pearl-clutching world in which it operates – and the public it claims to serve – continues to grow.
No wonder so many want to defund the BBC. And it’s looking more and more likely they’ll soon get their wish.
The licence fee was already on its last legs. Raising it even higher should be the final nail in the coffin.
