Daily Mail And Tax Payers’ Alliance Attacks BBC Over Its Free Trees For A Better Planet
THE Daily Mail is no fan of the BBC and free trees. The BBC is full of guff - only this morning it gave us two climate change stories:
1. “BBC2, 7pm Wed 25 Nov: Can Obama Save the Planet?“, presented by Justin Rowlatt.
2. A story in which we learnt - with no facts - that Australian bush fires are arriving earlier than ever and are more intense, and that Australia is sometimes called - get this - “the Saudi Arabia of coal“.
MacGuffin notices that its “latest pathetic assault on the BBC comes in a story about trees”. He has more:
BBC under fire for Autumnwatch tree giveaway costing licence fee payers £150,000 reveals:
The Beeb is handing out 300,000 free trees at a thousand different garden centres, nurseries and DIY stores nationwide.
Each sapling has cost the corporation 32 pence - £96,000 in total
Yes, that’s £96,000 on trees, not the £150,000 claimed in the headline. But the story adds:
This summer, it spent £57,500 on giving away 250,000 packets of vegetable seeds at 23 pence per pack as part of its ‘Dig In’ campaign.
So in tree-planting and ‘grow your own veg’ campaigns linked to the nature series Autumnwatch, the BBC has spent £153,500 on seeds and saplings.
This is an excellent idea and - refreshingly - several of the comments on the Mail story think so too. (Just to annoy the TPA and Mail: If you want to join the campaign and plant a tree on 5 December, the Autumnwatch website has all the details)
Of course, when you see the words ‘under fire’ you know this is the work of some publicity-hungry, rent-a-quote group who want to see their name in the paper:
The Taxpayers’ Alliance has accused [the BBC] of misusing licence fees as if it were a ‘charity with a bottomless pit of cash’.
Yes, predictably, it’s them. Susie Squire from the TPA adds:
‘It is totally misguided for the BBC to blow huge amounts of licence-payers’ cash on trees and vegetable seeds when there are numerous worthy bodies working on these causes’.
‘Huge amounts of licence-payers’ cash’? Really?
If you take the overall BBC income for 2009 as a starting point - which is £4.6billion - then £153,000 amounts to 0.0033%.
Even if you are feeling generous and work out the percentage from the licence fee and government grants (so excluding sales) then £153,000 equals 0.004%.
It’s 0.0034% of the BBC’s £4,491.7 billion 2009 expenditure.
It’s 1,073 licence fees.
It’s a non-story.
But we now know this: the TPA thinks 0.003% is ‘huge’.
Posted: 23rd, November 2009 | In: Media Comments (5) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
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December 31st, 2009 at 10:51 am
Just a little observation:
The licence fee costs £142.50 per year (http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/licencefee/). Divided by 52 weeks, that works out at £2.74 approx. per week.
As we know, the Daily Mail is a newspaper that seems to have quite an anti-licence fee stance. But how much does their service cost?
The Daily Mail costs 50p Monday to Friday, 80p on Saturday, and £1.50 for the Mail on Sunday. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/apr/21/dailymail.associatednewspapers)
So, whilst a week of the entire BBC corporation costs just £2.72, a week of reading the Daily Mail costs almost twice as much, at £4.80! Even then you’re not really getting a full week of media as reading a newspaper only lasts an hour or two at the most.
A year of buying the Daily Mail and sister papers would set you back roughly £244.80, over a hundred pounds more than a licence fee! And unlike the BBC you don’t get their service on Christmas Day!
November 24th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
But they are planning to film all the trees in seven years time as part of a documentary. A bit like an arboreal ‘Seven Up’. You should read the full article. The trees will feature regularly in the news on slow days and a seven week documentary every seven years is a wise investment. Cheaper than paying people to let them film you though the quotes won’t be as interesting. Certainly cheaper than ‘Top Gear’. Perhaps in 21 years if Clarkson is still going they will let him crash into one in Dacia. An Oak perhaps.
November 24th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
You are missing the point!
If I was one of those 1073 people - and there is no reason to think I’m not - I was forced to pay the BBC £135 (or whatever a licence now costs) and they spent the money on buying some trees - rather than on Top Gear which is the only thing I watch on BBC!!
Not only that, but they did the same for all the people living in my village …
are you getting the point yet?
Its not about the percentage of money being spent, its that the money isn’t being spent on anything related to making TV programmes - yet we are all forced to pay for all we watch on TV!!!
Sorry, can’t do more ranting, just hope you now get the point!!
November 24th, 2009 at 9:04 am
By George! I think he’s got it
November 24th, 2009 at 12:23 am
I think you’re missing the point here. On one hand you rightly castigate the BBC for the endless coverage of global warming and yet dismiss the spending of license payers money on buying trees which in an obtuse way push the BBC’s green/global warming agenda. It’s the principle and not the money. I suspect you have an axe to grind with the tax payers alliance and combining the two issues simply confuse the point you are trying to make on other subjects.