Polly Toynbee on the iniquity of turning the current tax based system of financing the BBC into something voluntary like a subscription:

The latest anti-BBC argument is that with binge-watching Netflix, Amazon and the rest, who needs an outdated national broadcaster? The answer is: because most people want British-produced programming.

If this is true, if there is this appetite, hunger, for British made programmes for British people, then the British will, in their droves, pay the subscription fee, make the donations, watch the advertisements, whatever the funding system is that replaces the taxation.

The very insistence being made is the proof that the new system would work.

The only argument in favour of tax funding, this legal insistence that everyone has to cough up at pain of jail time, is that people won’t voluntarily pay up. But if people won’t pay voluntarily then that’s proof perfect that there isn’t that hunger for those British programmes for British people.

Even if we accept that most people do want such then the answer is that most people should pay for it, rather than all having to.

Logic is a terrible thing which is presumably why Polly has spent so many decades avoiding it.