OPINION: If it wasn’t clear sufficient already, the license charge should go.
The BBC licence charge wants to finish now (Picture: BBC)
It is only one scandal after one other in terms of the BBC, and but we’re all nonetheless right here forking out £180 a yr for a licence charge. The newest controversy centres on Scott Mills, a long-serving presenter who was axed from his BBC Radio 2 present after spending greater than 25 years on the company. He was among the many BBC’s highest-paid presenters incomes between £355,000 and £359,999 in 2024-2025, funded by taxpayers.
After Mills, 53, was sacked, it transpired that he was investigated over “severe sexual offences in opposition to a teenage boy” again in 2018. The investigation, which started in 2016, was closed in 2019 after authorities decided there was inadequate proof to carry costs. Whereas these on the BBC have been made conscious of the investigation on the time, it has been claimed they determined to terminate his contract after turning into conscious that the alleged sufferer was beneath the age of 16.
Scott Mills was axed from his BBC Radio 2 present (Picture: Getty)
Now, consideration has turned to the likelihood that Mills might obtain a pension reportedly value as much as £160,000 a yr. That determine would in the end be funded by the general public.
Let me repeat. The taxpayer will probably be funding Mills’ potential £160,000 a yr pension, after he was sacked from the BBC over accusations of “severe sexual offences in opposition to a teenage boy”.
That is the place I really feel uneasy. On one hand, it’s essential to emphasize that no costs have been ever introduced in opposition to Mills. On the opposite, the concept somebody dismissed beneath such severe circumstances might nonetheless obtain such a considerable, taxpayer-funded pension raises troublesome questions.
Jimmy Savile was a presenter for the BBC for many years. It’s now estimated that the paedophile preyed on as many as 500 susceptible victims, some as younger as two-years-old.
Huw Edwards labored for the BBC for 40 years. He was arrested for making indecent photographs of kids. Rolf Harris was an everyday on the BBC. He was convicted of the sexual assault of 4 underage women.
Then there’s figures comparable to Gregg Wallace and James Hazell, who have been each dismissed over allegations of misconduct. It leaves licence charge payers questioning what precisely they’re funding. Edwards pleaded responsible to 3 counts of constructing indecent photographs of kids, and right here he’s raking in £300,000 a yr.
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On the very least, there ought to be a transparent morality clause to make sure that public cash just isn’t used to help people discovered responsible of significant wrongdoing.
The truth that this stays a gray space solely reinforces the sense that the system is outdated and never match for function.
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