Patrick O'Flynn

Arrogant BBC risks losing those who most treasure it, says PATRICK O'FLYNN

THE 20th-century historian Robert Conquest is remembered in academic circles for insights about modern life that became known as Conquest's Laws.


In the light of the BBC going ahead today with its threat to withdraw free TV licences from the over-75s, Conquest's Third Law seems particularly apposite. It reads: "The behaviour of any bureaucratic organisation can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies." Because a more provocative and self-destructive act by the BBC is hard to imagine.When it is losing viewers hand over fist to streaming services, it has turned against a vital segment of its core audience.

And the financial penalty it is imposing is not the half of it. The £157.50 annual licence fee is a hefty extra sum to impose on millions of elderly people.

But what will stick most in their craws is the feeling of being targeted as a soft touch by BBC high-ups who have calculated that they form the most lawabiding section of society and are therefore likely to cough up.

The overpaid "suits" at the Corporation, led by outgoing director-general Lord Hall, whose own £400,000 salary soaks up the licence fees of more than 2,500 households, should not get away with such cynicism. It beggars belief to think they could not find efficiency savings in their £4billion annual budget to carry on funding the over-75s.

As a first response, the Government should decriminalise non-payment of the licence, so the BBC has to use the civil courts instead of pushing thousands of hard-pressed single mothers and now elderly people through criminal ones.

Earlier this month Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden claimed to share the anger of pensioners, saying he felt "let down" by the Corporation and that its decision would "have an impact" on whether licence fee non-payment would be downgraded from a criminal offence. Clearly those BBC suits thought he was bluffing and now we will find out if they were right.

Oliver Dowden

Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden (Image: Kirsty O'Connor/PA Wire/PA Images)

As Julian Knight, the Tory MP who chairs the Commons culture select committee, put it: "It will be an own goal of epic proportions to start hauling people over 75 in front of the courts."

Own goals of epic proportions are, sadly, becoming a speciality of the BBC. In recent years it has turned its back on diversity of opinion by pushing a politically correct "woke" agenda at every turn.

This metropolitan bias is apparent in its reporting of everything from immigration to Brexit, climate change to the Black Lives Matter protests.

This increasingly intrusive agenda is not confined to news and current affairs, but also now infects comedy and drama. It is barely possible to watch Doctor Who or a new period drama without encountering politically correct preaching that has been crowbarred into the plot.

Even Countryfile is now expected to disturb our Sunday evenings by locating Left-wing identity politics issues amid the pastoral scenes.

Elderly woman watching TV

The £157.50 annual licence fee is a hefty extra sum to impose on millions of elderly people (Image: GETTY)

Meanwhile BBC Four - an oasis of grown-up programming specialising in documentaries, the arts and science - is being downgraded in favour of more money going into "yoof" orientated BBC Three output.

To top it off, the Corporation has announced a big round of redundancies among regional TV and radio journalists - most of whom did a good job in reporting news straight - at the same time as ploughing an extra £100million into a Londonbased "diversity" drive.

It now has formal commitments to ensure half of on-air roles are filled by women, 15 percent from BAME communities, eight percent by people with disabilities and the same proportion by LGBT staff. But there seems to be no target covering the biggest under-represented group of all - people from ordinary working class, non-London backgrounds.

The BBC has also poured vast sums into expanding its websites, with the primary effect of crippling independent local newspapers, thereby further reducing diversity of opinion.

No wonder there is such a surge in people stopping paying the licence fee - with the great majority insisting they are doing so legally by switching to streamed content and giving up live TV altogether. The BBC certainly does not have enough licence enforcement staff to prove that they are not.

Its decline from being a jewel in the crown of our society to a propagandist outfit turning off viewers in droves emanates from the arrogance of a collective leadership that has insulated itself from competing opinions. That insulation is about to be ripped away.