CONSERVATIVE MP: ‘BBC SHOULD BE DEFUNDED’: Simon Osborne (Express 14/9) said the Conservative MP Andrea Jenkyns had called for the BBC licence fee to be scrapped, and had urged prime minister Boris Johnson to use his Commons majority to push through major reforms of the corporation. He added that Ms Jenkyns had claimed viewers were fed up of paying the annual £157.50 fee to a broadcaster which was now behaving like ‘a politically correct nanny state’. She had said:
‘I think the BBC has had its monopoly for too long now.” “It is inherently leftist and pushing that agenda all the time – I know the number of interviews I’ve done where they’re just so biased. And I feel they are also teetering on the cancel culture as well which they shouldn’t be doing. If every penny of taxpayers money goes to the BBC or any public sector organisation it should have scrutiny.
And added:
‘They should be a beacon of light for British culture – it is the British Broadcasting Corporation – rather than trying to be this nanny state, politically correct role which they have being doing recently. This has got to change so let’s just get on and defund the BBC.’
BBC ‘TO SCRAP MEETINGS CULTURE’: Anita Singh (£ Telegraph 14/9) said that new director general Tim Davie had decreed that most internal meetings were a waste of time and that the ‘meetings culture’ – satirised in the BBC programme W1A – must end as part of a larger ‘unrelenting’ drive to make efficiencies and scrap unnecessary layers of bureaucracy. Ms Singh said the measures would be outlined in the latest BBC annual report, due to be published on 15/9. She said that the report would also outline that the gender split between pay levels among high corporation earners – now at 55:45 in favour of men, had improved from 75:25 in 2017. Other measures included a warning to staff about the need to be more circumspect in the use of social media and open about outside interests.