Today's Lords report on sharing the TV Tax with other broadcasters is a good idea. But aren't the Lords' recommendations a bit timid? The proposals appear to concern only a small amount of the TV Tax and only after 2012. So the BBC is free to use the TV Tax money we are forced to hand over, under threat of criminal prosecution, to splash money on glamorous buildings in Manchester, putting local papers, local radio and good magazines out of business with predatory tactics and harming competitors in regional telly.
Hasn't this all gone on for long enough? As an instinctive tax cutter, I'd love to scrap the TV Tax as it is totally unjust, falling hardest on the elderly and the poor. We don't have an internet tax, so why should we have a TV Tax? This quirk of history really ought to be axed in the interest of fairness.
Yet if there is a lack of will or conviction to axe the TV Tax, should it not at least be reformed? Would it not be fairer for the TV Tax money to go to channels according to who actually watches them? I'd be really interested to know if readers think that Virgin Media, ITV, Sky and other TV companies should get a slice of this money according to their viewers? Or should the TV Tax be used to help fund regional radio and regional TV in some way - or indeed are there other reforms that could be undertaken?
