Denationalise the BBC; abolish the TV licence.
Suggested by freedom91 and tagged bbc, tv licensing. Comment.
The big idea
The BBC should be denationalised, with shares being offered to the public. The licence fee, a regressive tax that hits the poor the hardest, can then be abolished. Privatisation would also reduce the budget deficit somewhat.
Why does this matter?
The BBC is often accused of political bias. The quality of programming is dubious, both news programming and entertainment programming having been dumbed down over successive decades. Like all publicly-owned institutions, the BBC also likes to waste money. We are a democratic nation; we are also a nation that boasts a fairly large number of private broadcasters, none of which comes across as less professional than the BBC. The TV licence is as unfair and as out of place as an Internet licence, for example, would be. That we should have to pay the BBC in order to watch ITV is ridiculous.