I n his speech announcing his PreBudget Report, Alistair Darling said
that he was going to put up the top rate of income tax to 45 per cent from 2011, because he wanted the burden to be borne by ‘those who have done best out of the growth of the past decade’. This was not only, as many have said, an abandonment of a New Labour article of faith about tax rates: it was also an admission that the past ten years have not worked. The Blair/Brown view was always that the purpose of holding the top rate at 40 per cent was that this, by increasing general prosperity, benefited ‘the many, not the few’. Now the Chancellor is saying that it did not, in which case what, or rather, whom, were those ten years for? I think, though, that the rate rise will damage Labour more than it thinks, for two reasons. The first is that the dogma that tax should be punitive is now back. Many people, even people who are not rich, really hate that idea, and see it as discouraging their own efforts. The second reason is that almost all the people in the media who form public views on politics will be in the new 45 per cent bracket. For example, Mark Thompson, the Director-General of the BBC, is paid £816,000, so he will now have to produce an extra 5 per cent on £666,000 of his income, which is £33,300 a year, the equivalent of annual private day-school fees for two of his children. Every Fleet Street editor, top current affairs presenter, columnist etc will be feeling the pain. Even if they are left-wing, they will not like this. They will probably be too shy to tell the world about it directly, but they will take it out on the government in all aspects of coverage.
South Pavilion in Wotton Underwood, the house which Tony Blair bought for £4 million after leaving office, is close to Chequers. It has been suggested that the rivalry between Mr Blair and Gordon Brown continues through this means, with the former prime minister creating a more glittering country salon than his successor. This would seem to be confirmed by a rumour which has reached me that two members of the Chequers domestic staff have been lured away by the Blairs.
It is now exactly two years since this column first began to draw attention to the strange behaviour of TV Licensing, the body which collects television licence fees for the BBC. Readers will remember that my original point was that if — like me in my London flat — you do not have a television, you get a stream of threatening letters from TV Licensing, accusing you of cheating, and threatening you with prosecution unless you buy a television licence. Since then, I have received countless examples of this abuse from helpful readers. It is now the subject of red-hot items on the letters page of the Daily Telegraph. A Mr Geoffrey Pope even wrote to say that his 97-year-old mother was accused of cheating by the authority (even though no one over the age of 75 has to pay for a television licence), and its last nasty letter was found open on the floor beside the chair in which she died.
The knowledge I have picked up over these past two years emboldens me in my new scheme. In Sussex, where we have a television and a television licence, I have (see Notes, 8 November) decided to keep the former, dispense with the latter, and pay the £139.50 to Help the Aged instead, unless the BBC sacks the foul-mouthed Jonathan Ross. On the Today programme last week, a BBC spokesman admonished me to obey the law. I suspect a case of motes and beams. The TV Licensing information I have accumulated strongly suggests that the BBC breaks the law systematically in the methods of collection it uses. For example, it libels people by suggesting dishonesty with no evidence. It also harasses people, which is a crime. And, according to another correspondent in the Telegraph, it breaks section 40 of the 1970 Administration of Justice Act which makes it a criminal offence to pursue people for debts for which they are not liable. TV Licensing probably also infringes the right to privacy enshrined in the Human Rights Act. I wonder if there is a clever lawyer who would be willing to take up some of these cases on a pro bono basis.
Iam not seeking such a lawyer for my own case, however, because I am not trying to win a legal battle, but to make a point about what is — to use a favourite BBC word — unacceptable. No one who listens to the calls made by Ross and Russell Brand to the 78-year-old Andrew Sachs, later broadcast on Radio 2, could possibly imagine that either man should work for a publicly funded broadcaster. Brand has gone, but Ross will be back at the end of January, still on £6 million a year. This fact, and the amount of money paid to this repulsive man, are in absolute opposition to the Public Purposes set out in the BBC Charter. The BBC is breaking its moral contract with viewers, so I feel released from my duty to pay it a fee. From the point of view of its own interest, by the way, it is mad not to repudiate the Ross contract. The £6 million for Ross is an extreme boom folly, like RBS paying far too much for ABN Amro. He would be lucky to get a tenth of that from the commercial sector if he went back on the market today. Besides, since he will presumably be banned from throwing obscenities at embarrassed guests when he is back on air, what will he do instead? Where will his act go? If Ross is having a mid-life crisis, brought on by all that money, the thing to do is to disappear for a year or two, become relatively poor and happy, and then return with a new haircut as the presenter of Songs of Praise.
In what may be the offer of an olive branch, Mark Thompson, the Director-General of the BBC, has invited me to lunch at his office. I have gratefully accepted. What is the correct etiquette though? It is normal on these occasions to have a courteous exchange of views, but the example of Jonathan Ross shows that one gets further by ‘pushing the boundaries’. If I ring Mr Thompson on his answering machine with a series of lewd suggestions about members of his family, or ask him whether he masturbates about octogenarians, perhaps he will acknowledge my comic genius and offer me £6 million a year.
‘Doing nothing is not an option’ is aphrase one hears very frequently in the media, delivered by people advocating something or other, usually involving legislation and more government spending. Is it ever actually true? If it is, how sad.
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