Prime Minister,
I see that our ever-loving government has decided to use the BBC as its cover for introducing a Computer Tax, a move long-cherished by successive governments since the Digital Age really took off. (https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/licence-fee-needs-updating-bbc-033012223.html)
Question: Why should I pay £150+ per annum for a BBC service that I very rarely use? It would be fairer all round for people who, like me, watch the iPlayer service only when the Moon turns green, to be charged for its use on a pay-per-view basis. Levying a flat tax for something that goes unused by myself and many others for the majority of any year is grossly unfair and, quite frankly, indefensible.
Put it this way: Would you pay rent for a house with your own money when you had absolutely no intention of living in it or using it to improve your lot? That’s how a huge number of people view the existing BBC licence fee and I can see the anger over any change, such as the idiot in the link proposes, leaping off the scale. The fact that the proposal is an obvious cover for a new stealth tax upon personal computers and mobile communication devices, such as smartwatches, laptops and ordinary mobile phones, has my BS-ometer working on overdrive.
There’s a report out today that has Iain Duncan Smith saying that the Tories should not be seen as punishing the poor, yet that is precisely what a flat Computer Tax in favour of the BBC would do. The fact that ALL Smith has done since he took over at the DWP is punish the poor has been obvious to just about everyone who is disabled, seriously ill or has lost their job, or is related to or friends with those people, since May 2010. What will you call it in Toryspeak: “ISP withdrawal of the iPlayer subsidy” perhaps? Another “subsidy that never actually existed, like the Bedroom Tax, which historical DWP documents in my filing cabinet show all too clearly. (I’m a magpie when it comes to official and financial paperwork. I have records going back twenty years and more.)
I suppose we who do not watch TV all day, and who can’t hear even the barest mention of Jeremy Kyle without reaching for a barf bag, should thank Smith for giving us a new target in Maximus. The opportunity to blacken their corporate name further than they’ve already managed to do themselves in America and Australia will be a welcome distraction from the aches, pains and inaccessible public transport that we’d otherwise be complaining about. What is it about your Party in government that means you have not dealt ONCE with any reputable company in your one-step-removed war on the poor? Unum, Atos, “Skimmer” Rifkind’s NHS contract, not one but TWO deliberately unsuitable nominations for the head of the CSA enquiry, and now MaximurderUs. Are there really NO reputable companies or individuals who wish to be associated with your Party? I can understand their reluctance…
And what about businesses, Prime Minister? If every computer with a connection to the internet is to be taxed under the cover of “updating” the BBC’s paedophile-protecting licensing scam, how will businesses cope with what would likely be a humungous cost? What of law enforcement, with their PDA devices, all of which are connected via the Interwebs, and capable of receiving television programmes – how will the police cover that cost out of their dwindling budgets? And government Departments, of course; we would not expect them to be excluded from the liability and would wish to see annually documented proof that they had coughed up their fair share of the new stealth tax.
Presumably this new Computer Tax will be collected via ISP’s, who will no doubt be instructed to increase their prices to include a “BBC” portion, just to maintain the fiction for the sheeple out there? The BBC’s blatant right-wing bias caused me to scrap my own TV some eight years ago and – apart from Doctor Who and the occasional wildlife programme – I haven’t missed it one jot. I ditched Murdoch’s rip-off Sky TV even longer ago than that because I was fed up being charged £25 a month for interminable advertising and five-minute programme slots, along with the Tory-fawning news broadcasts that are their speciality. There were times that they made Fox News and the Westboro Baptist Church look positively moderate!
In view of your government’s national asset-stripping record for privatising just about every other public utility and service since you took office in 2010, why do you not simply do what the majority of people want done with regard to the BBC and SELL IT OFF? Then we would see what value it actually has for the average voter and we would no longer be burdened by a tax that many ordinary people have campaigned for years to see discarded.
Sincerely,
Darren Lynch
