I suppose I should be more worried about what’s happening out there in the world – I’m still wedded to lockdown – now that most children are back at school, the virus is still with us and Nichola Sturgeon is bleating on again about the independence referendum she wants to get underway for Scotland. She should take up gardening, a great occupation for clearing the mind and thinking about serious things like growing snowdrops.
I know lots of other people are glued to their screens these days, contacting friends, placing online orders or reading the news stories on Google, the latter obsessed by what’s going on within the royal family. I’m not a strong royalist but the daily onslaught on what they’re getting up to is mind boggling. Current flavour of the month, according to a nameless journalist for Google, is Sophie Wessex, wife of Prince Edward. I’m mesmerised by the regurgitated stories of her – going back as far as the loss of her first pregnancy. The world has moved on since then. Google needs to take note.
We all need to pay more attention to what is happening around us, particularly what politicians are getting up to whilst Covid-19 races back, obviously imagining that it didn’t hit us hard enough the first time and now we need to be taught a lesson. We have a young generation which couldn’t care less about Covid and are perfectly happy not to be going back to work once furlough dries up, because ‘the social cheque’ will thereafter pop through the letterbox. Social distancing? No interest.
The Chancellor Rishi Sunak believes he must ‘raise £44bn to avoid spending cuts’ and taxing those in work and pensioners like me is about the only way he can fill the coffers. The television licence – I don’t qualify yet for a free one – has become a bone of contention. Writing in the News Letter this week Sammy Wilson, DUP MP for East Antrim, writes about ‘the ruthless way in which the corporation is pursuing vulnerable pensioners who refuse to pay their licence fee’.
Astonishingly, he reveals, the BBC will be paying private company Capita an extra £38m this year to collect the fee, a company, he alleges has already been criticised for their aggressive tactics in pursuing non-payers. This, he say includes door to door on-the-spot fines and bonuses for employees who reach certain targets.
What I find remarkable about the BBC is the huge six figure salaries they pay to their presenters and others. This, whilst the quality of many of their programmes is declining, not to mention their threat to remove the patriotic songs famously sung on the Last Night of the Proms at the Albert Hall. No wonder people regard the company as pandering to the woke generation.
Around the world a pandemic is doing its worst, putting the fear of God into most of us in this terrible year. Yet the BBC thinks only of adding to its coffers by its plan to add an estimated three million over-75s to their list of funders. Only those over 75s who receive pension credit will continue to get a free licence. The Government wants the organisation to change course but I won’t be putting any money on that likelihood.
Somehow or other, the Government has to deal with the debts brought on by the pandemic.
Upwards of £50bn will have to be raised through increased national insurance, income tax or VAT if the Chancellor wants to avoid spending cuts. None of us will be exempt so I’m planning to splash the cash on more snowdrops before the Government takes it off me.