It was the fact that it was approaching £400 each (equivalent to £600 to £800 each in today’s terms) that really did for it.

On the licence fee people do argue that the BBC should be funded by an income-based levy, i.e. income tax. Every time it is discussed that argument is had.

Unless they can turn it into a cash cow for themselves. See, for example, the Murdoch executives idea of having a system by which the BBC gives its best products to commercial broadcasters (i.e. public money is used to develop products which are then exploited for private gain). Or the recent hollowing out of the BBC, outsourcing its programme production to commercial organisations, which has a knock on effect in terms of quality (full-time researchers and archivists, for example, are an ‘unaffordable’ luxury in the private sector) if these private interests are to make a profit. Well, either that or wages and conditions are squeezed to make the profit, or perhaps the price of programmes rises – perhaps all three.

Matthew hasn’t provided a link, but, since the post is about the "headline sequence", I assumed that it was referring either to the story snippet that goes on the front page or the bit that’s in bold at the top of the report. Both of those are supposed to contain a fair summing-up of the story. If it’s just the first few lines of each report that BBC are discussing, then they’re talking bollocks.

You are right about the difference between the License Fee and the Poll Tax, but, since that difference applies just as much to the new Council Tax and the old Rates and neither of them led to riots or widespread civil disobedience, I don’t think that was the protestors’ problem with it. All I mean is that, in amongst the fierce defense of the License Fee, I never see anyone say "The BBC should be publicy funded, but with a fair income-based tax," which I think is odd.

Not sure your point about whodunnit works, either – note that the B-BBCer quoted only the first two lines of the Beeb report, and the first two lines from CNN also didn’t mention who the attackers were.

The crucial difference between the license fee and the poll tax is that you can very easily and legally avoid the former without majorly impairing your life (ie by watching DVDs, reading books, going out, etc), whereas you can’t really opt out of living somewhere without that having a significant knock-on impact on your life…

I don’t think one’s hysterical. I do think that CCN’s mentions who did the bombing while the BBC’s presents an ambiguous report which could be misconstrued as meaning that the US were attacking the Red Cross. I also think that that kind of mistake is forgivable once, but that the BBC do it rather a lot. (Note for Larry: I am not saying here that the BBC regularly accuse the US of attacking the Red Cross. The pronoun "it" in the last sentence before the brackets refers to "that kind of mistake".)

Funny thing about the License Fee: when the same scheme was introduced for collecting council tax, left-wingers rioted against it. At no point did they claim that local councils weren’t biased or that local councils provided crap services that the rioters didn’t want to use. Both of those arguments would have been regarded, had anyone made them, as entirely irrelevent. (Note to Larry: I am not saying here that I supported Thatcher, which I didn’t, or the Poll Tax, which I didn’t.)