Here’s Why We Should Scrap the Licence Fee

If you still watch the BBC (which is becoming increasingly a smaller and smaller group of twerps) and believe that the channel that aired the first episode of Doctor Who in 1963 still somehow maintains its “neutrality” in 2025, you’re in about as salubrious mental health conditions as Joe Biden was on that presidential debate stage last year. Because according to a dossier report issued by Michael Prescott exclusively to The Telegraph, the programme made Donald Trump (45, yet to be 47) “‘say’ things never actually said” on the day of the January 6th Capitol riots.

The clip in question comes from a Panorama programme, broadcast a week before this past US presidential election, which, by splicing together footage from the start of the speech with something Trump said nearly an hour later, paints a demonstrably different message. The BBC, instead of playing the full length clip, like any “impartial” organisation should, has Trump saying:

“We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.”

Here’s the actual quote:

“We’re going to walk down to the Capitol. And we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.”

How’s that for “not favouring one side over another and reflecting all relevant sides of the debate”? How’s that for “not taking sides, reflecting all relevant strands of public debate and challenging them with consistent rigour”? You don’t hate the media enough.

Now, this whole brouhaha wouldn’t be a such a big deal if it weren’t for the fact that a) you have to pay £175 per year for the BBC licence fee to watch any form of live television, and that b) the BBC has already been involved in numerous scandals involving impartiality this year.

You’ll remember that, at Glastonbury this year, the BBC televised, live to the UK general public, the genocidal Bob Vylan, who, mid-way through his set-list, started chants of “Death, Death to the IDF!”. Perhaps the BBC didn’t know that the esteemed gentlemen would break out into such chants. Ok - I hear you.

So then, how do they explain Gary Lineker, the now erstwhile Match of the Day presenter, who, after sharing a post on Instagram from the Palestine Lobby group showing a picture of a rat, being blatantly anti-semitic, had to step down? But hey, let’s cut the guy some slack, he did apologise after all! Ok then - how about comparing Tory party immigration policy to 1930’s Germany in 2023? Aside from the stupidity of calling out the Tory party for their immigration policy, who, in 2023, let in close to a million heads - in what sense is that impartial?

Meanwhile, the BBC’s so-called “Verify” unit has gone sotto voce on the whole debacle, despite the corporation having a strict pledge that “Whenever big news stories involving the BBC come along, journalists at BBC News and BBC Sport are required to report on the corporation just as they would with any other information that is in the public interest.” And yet, there are no reports on the BBC'w website about this whole thing, bar one article on a few backbench MPs demanding further information on the case.

At least the BBC isn’t a widely broadcast media station in the US: Trump 45’s antics, post the 2020 election, which were objectively a call to peaceful protest, seemed to have had no bearance on the outcome of the election last year, and the country is better off because of it. Despite intimations by the Democrats’ worst presidential candidate in decades that we should give her another shot, Trump 47 isn’t slowing down, and that includes takedown after takedown of the “Fake News!”. 

We have our own fake news here and we need to scrap the licence fee - it’s utter garbage.

Make the BBC Great Again! - if it ever was.