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BoJo 'could look at' abolishing BBC licence fee + Evidence for impeachment looks thin

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Boris Johnson 'could look' at abolishing BBC licence fee (UK community)
https://www.bbc.com/news/election-2019-50718366

EXCERPT: Boris Johnson has said the possible abolition of the BBC licence fee needs "looking at". Speaking at a rally in Sunderland, the prime minister questioned how much longer funding a broadcaster out of "a general tax" could be "justified". Ministers have agreed the licence fee will stay in place until at least 2027, when the BBC's Royal Charter ends.

The fee for a colour TV licence is currently £154.50 a year. It will rise in line with inflation until 2022. Licence fee income was worth £3.6bn to the BBC in 2018-9, accounting for approximately 75% of the broadcaster's revenues and funding TV, radio and online content. Last year, 25.8 million households had TV licences. The government and the BBC are currently involved in a dispute over the funding of free TV licences for the over-75s.

Mr Johnson was asked by a member of the public whether he would consider axing all TV licences. The prime minister said that, while he would not make up policy with three days to go before the election, it was an issue that was worth "looking at" in the future. "You have to ask yourself whether that approach to funding a media company still makes sense in the long term given the way that other organisations manage to fund themselves," he said. "The system of funding out of what is a general tax bears reflection. 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."

Various alternatives to the licence fee have been floated over the years, including subscription services or a compulsory broadcasting levy. [...] Lured by the internet, many younger viewers now spend much more time on Netflix or YouTube than watching BBC services. That does pose a significant, perhaps existential, challenge to the BBC in the long term... (MORE)



Viewpoint: Evidence for impeachment of Trump looks thin (USA community)
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50722427

EXCERPT (Jonathan Turley): . . . For three years, the same Democratic leadership told the public that a variety of criminal and impeachable acts were proven in the Mueller investigation. None of those crimes are now part of this impeachment. Why? Because it would have been too easy an impeachment? Hardly. Instead, the House will go forward on the only two plausible grounds that I outlined in my testimony - abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Unlike the other claims, the problem is not with the legal basis for such impeachable offences but the evidentiary record.

This record remains both incomplete and conflicted. The Democrats have insisted on impeaching by Christmas rather than build a record to support such charges. They have burned three months without trying to compel witnesses like former national security adviser John Bolton. That is longer than it took for the critical case in Nixon to go from the ruling in the district court to the Supreme Court for a final decision to force him to release the famous tapes. Nixon resigned shortly after that ruling.

This is now the fastest investigation with the thinnest record supporting the narrowest impeachment in modern history. It is precisely what President Trump (who not surprisingly has supported the Democratic move for a fast impeachment) would relish. This schedule driven more by the Iowa caucuses in February than impeachment criteria.

The Democrats just gave Trump the best Christmas gift he could hope for under these two circumstances - two anaemic Chihuahuas with barely the energy to make the walk over to the Senate. (MORE)
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