Failing Beeb

IS it any wonder Rishi Sunak is suggesting the TV licence fee may have to be reviewed?

Auntie is seriously failing its viewers at almost every turn.

Pro-Palestinian bias in its reporting of Israel’s war on Hamas has been shameful.

No doubt its “impartial” newsroom is also gleefully looking forward to sticking the boot into Boris Johnson when he appears at the Covid inquiry this week.

Meanwhile, BBC channels offer low rent reality shows and woke comedies aimed at a young audience who increasingly don’t pay the licence fee anyway.

There is some good, popular and important programming on the Beeb.

But if it produced more high quality shows it would surely survive as a subscription service.

The licence fee is now way out of date, a relic from a time when viewers could only choose between three TV channels.

It’s also a regressive tax that hits the poorest hardest.

And our courts are clogged up unnecessarily with otherwise law-abiding pensioners being prosecuted for not paying it.

We should be able to cherish our national broadcaster — and choose whether or not to pay for it.

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No Thatch heir

FORGIVE us for taking Sir Keir Starmer’s new-found admiration for Margaret Thatcher as just another cynical election ploy.

Just four years ago Starmer fought to make the terrorist-supporting anti-Semite Jeremy Corbyn Prime Minister.

Since then he has ditched almost all the pledges he made in order to win the leadership for himself.

Thatcher’s enormous popularity with the public came from her ability to make a decision and stick to it.

It was her unique political courage and strength of character that brought the fundamental change to Britain that Starmer now professes to believe in.

Attributes that, so far, the flip-flopping Labour leader has shown no real signs of having.

What voters want are answers to the nation’s problems.

Admirers of the Iron Lady have heard precious little of those from Sir Keir.

Strikers’ party

STARMER’S plans to paint Labour as a changed party were derailed yesterday by his very own ghosts of Christmas past.

Tucking into a festive lunch, Aslef train drivers baron Mick Whelan celebrated once again bringing the entire network to a halt.

For months the union has been sitting on a Government offer that would see drivers paid £65,000 a year for a four-day, 35 hour week.

The best early present commuters could receive is if Whelan accepted the deal and sent his members back to work.