] A couple of weeks ago, I wrote that a lot of people ] seemed to be pretty unhappy with the BBC's coverage of ] the war, and I linked the BBC's attitudes - odd, I ] thought, for the national network of a nation at war - to ] the shared prejudices of the "New Class" of ] state-supported bureaucrats and their ilk. ] ] ] Since then, things have only gotten worse for the Beeb. ] Andrew Sullivan has kept up the pressure. The BBC has ] even been forced to respond, taking the absurd position ] that: ] ] ] The BBC is not state-funded. We are publicly funded ] through a license fee paid by every household in the ] United Kingdom. The British public, not the government of ] the day, owns the BBC, and it is to the British public we ] are accountable. ] ] ] Get that? They're not state-funded, they're just paid for ] by a mandatory tax that the government collects, and ] about which the taxpayers have no choice. Now if the ] British television viewers got to choose whether their ] "license fee" went to the BBC, or to some competing ] service, things might be different - and so might the ] BBC. But that's not how it works, and quite a few people ] - by no means all of them on the right - are unhappy with ] the BBC's slant.... TCS: Tech - New Class Crackup |