Denis MacShane's plea in mitigation...

Denis MacShane is guilty of expenses fraud, but his lawyer has included in his submission that Denis MacShane is a union man... as if that should be a mitigating factor.

Where's the outrage from the BBC consumer champion programmes?

The BBC has a long history of consumer champion programmes from That's Life to whatever Anne Robinson vehicle is currently running. Will they be looking into the absolute scandal that The Telegraph has discovered:

'The BBC is over-charging millions of people for their licence fees by selling "annual" permits that only last 11 months, it can be disclosed.

The corporation has been making up to £25m a year through the little-known loophole, which has been condemned as "unfair" and a "rip off".

Any viewer buying a TV licence for the first time is charged £145.50 for a year-long permit.

But under current arrangements, the new licence expires 12 months from the first day of the month in which it is purchased. This means that an ‘annual’ licence bought on April 30 2012 will actually run out at midnight on March 31 2013.

Licence fee payers have complained that the payment quirk means they are getting as little as 11 months’ worth of licence when they have paid for a full year.

...

The £145.50 cost of an annual licence breaks down at £12 a month. Around 2.1 million people bought a new licence last year, a BBC spokesman said. This means that the BBC could have profited by up to £25 million last year due to the curtailed length of the ‘annual’ permits it sold.

It is understood that the loophole has been in place since 1991 when the BBC took over the administration of TV licences from the Licensing Authority, but it has only just come to light after a complaint to the BBC Trust.

John Whittingdale, MP for Maldon and chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport select committee, said: “I entirely understand why people think it is unfair. They are having an average of 15 and anything up to 30 days of TV watching - which they think they have paid for - taken away from them.”

“I quite understand why people feel they’re being ripped off.”

The news comes as the BBC is trying to save £670 million a year by 2017 as part of a cost-cutting drive.

The monthly renewal issue affects all people who buy a licence for the first time, either online or through the post. Once they already have one, it is updated annually on the same date.'

The BBC's mealy-mouthed, pathetic excuse:

'A spokesman for the BBC’s TV Licensing division denied that the corporation is short-changing consumers.

The spokesman said that it would cost “hundreds of thousands of pounds” to change the monthly renewal system.

“Setting monthly renewal dates minimises collection costs and means more money is invested in the BBC’s programmes and services. This issue affects a small proportion of payers and only affects them the first time they buy a licence.

“To give each a daily renewal date would cost hundreds of thousands of pounds which is not good value for the majority of licence payers,” the spokesman said. '

Would Esther or Ann or one of their team allow a giant corporation to get away with deploying that feeble excuse for ripping off customers? why should the BBC get away with it now?

Elsewhere on the web

1. Inspector Gadget thinks that the courts may have been a little too lenient:

'CID put a burglar with 80 previous convictions before the court, charged with several shed-breaks. He pleaded guilty.

This offender has 14 offences against police, prisons and courts. This means, in his case, that he as breached the last Community Order he was sentenced to and has been recalled to prison after breaking his licence conditions on three separate occasions. In effect, the last three times he was let out of prison early on licence, he failed to stick to the licence conditions and was returned to prison. On two occasions, this happened within 24 hours of release.

From what we know after speaking to him in interview, and looking at forensic ‘hits’ at crime scenes where we know the dates, he is regularly committing crime during these community order and early release periods.

This man is not a drug addict, not is he especially poor. He is simply a career criminal who enjoys what he does and sees nothing wrong in taking other people’s things. He also likes the reputation he has on his estate for being a bad lad.

Back to the case. He pleaded guilty to the breaks we could prove and took another handful of ‘TIC’s’ to clear his slate. Remember, he has 80 previous convictions and a history of breaching court orders and licence conditions.

He was sentenced to another Community Order.'

2. The BBC slip out a short report that 'Interpol has issued international alerts for 47 Saudi men, some accused by Saudi Arabia of links with al-Qaeda.'


3. Meanwhile the BBC also report that:

'Egypt has recalled its ambassador to the Vatican for consultation after Pope Benedict XVI urged the country to do more to protect its Christian minority.

In an address to ambassadors at the Vatican on Monday, the Pope cited recent attacks on Christians in Egypt and Iraq.

An Egyptian foreign ministry spokesman said the remarks were "unacceptable".'

Unacceptable to require a country to look after a minority community?


4. Weather Action report Piers Corbyn's claims that th Australian floods are nothing to do with global warming but due to the 19yr eclipse cycle.


5. The Mail reports the case of a Somali who claimed to have been gang-raped and witnessed family's murder in Somalia but was exposed as £250k benefit fraudster. This fraudster became a British citizen by fraudulent means but will try and use that citizenship to prevent being deported back to Somalia; how stupid are we in this country?

Government accounting and BBC bias

The BBC have some interesting figures hidden away at the end of this report. These are the interesting sentences:

"Separately, auditors (The National Audit Office) have also questioned the accounts of two other government departments - the Treasury and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

It found the Treasury overspent its authorized budget by £24bn, as a result of money poured into the asset protection scheme set up to support troubled banks during the financial crisis.

Due to the time pressures involved, the additional funding was not sanctioned by Parliament, the auditors found.

The Treasury said the auditor's move was "technical" and no concerns had been raised about the estimated cost of the banking measures given their importance to the economy.

In the case of the DWP, fraud and errors in benefit payments totalling an estimated £2.7bn led the auditors to give the accounts a health warning. "

So the Treasury authorised £24bn of spending without Parliamentary approval, so much for living in a democracy.

So the DWP fraud and errors are so high that their accounts have been given a health warning.

Thanks are due to the BBC highlighting these two stories, how fair-minded of them... Actually no; these facts are right at the end of a long article devoted to how "The Ministry of Defence has been accused of wasting millions of pounds by government auditors.". The figure the MOD have wasted must be huge then; certainly much more than the £2.7bn lost to fraud and error by the DWP. Wrong again, the figure is £155 million.

Now why might the BBC want to concentrate on a relatively small problem at the MOD and ignore the many times larger problems at the DWP and Treasury? Could it be because senior MOD officers have been criticising Government policy in this area and now the Labour/BBC alliance must get revenge?

Better looking than Robert Peston and more intelligible!

Marina Orlova explains what a "Ponzi Scheme" is ...


Thanks to THeo Spark for the spot.