A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK T HE project for diverting fifteen per cent.
of the B.B.C.'s revenue from licence-holding listeners and viewers into the public funds has revived (in my mind, at any rate) a basic dilemma in the field of citizenship. Out of a population of fifty million there are roughly ten million licence-holders. It is certainly opportune that this minority is available to help to underwrite the Government's losses on the Fun Fair which it has solicitously organised, or to contribute to the cost of a new aircraft-carrier, or a Foreign Office Selection Board, or what- ever else the nation happens to need. But there is surely an element of inequity in the arrangement. It may be fair that the healthy should be compelled, as they are by the National Health Act, to subsidise the unhealthy ; for health is not a matter of taste or habit or outlook, and you cannot become entitled to it for even a limited period by buying a licence from the Postmaster-General. But the owners of wireless sets—the accredited customers of a Government monopoly—can hardly be regarded as flighty, privi- leged spendthrifts, whose extravagance provides the State with a legitimate source of extra revenue. The State already borrows their ears and makes them pay interest on the loan. The owners of these ears receive S.O.S. messages broadcast on behalf of the police ; they absorb culture, education and advice on hygiene ; they have the opportunity of listening at fairly frequent intervals to the stirring addresses of Mr. Attlee and his colleagues, to say nothing of their opponents. I do not regard listening to the wireless as an admirable activity. But I think that a man who owns a wireless set is probably a better citizen than a man who refuses to have this useful invention in his house ; and I fail to see why the former should contribute more to the cost of a new aircraft-carrier than the latter.
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