It is a truth universally acknowledged that exam season is the most stressful time of the academic year. One thing which has not contributed to my stress was a new letter from Capita (who enforce TV Licensing), informing me that an investigation has been opened against the house where I live. Why was I so unbothered?

Well, it seems that the wind is in the sails of the anti-licence argument, the fleet is soon to arrive in the Carthage of BBC defenders, and rumour of its approach has begun to echo in the Agora and the corridors of power. In a rare insight into reality, the Labour culture minister Lisa Nandy said recently that the current payment model is unsustainable, and that the 2027 charter review may be the point at which the government considers a new way of raising funds for the BBC. That it has taken so long for the ruling class to realise this state of affairs, is perhaps indicative of the disconnect between the Westminster elite and the rest of us.

Yet it is undeniably a step in the right direction. But I suspect a top to bottom re-structuring of the BBC will be less easy than some of us would like for reasons I wish to explore

I wrote on the subject of BBC licensing in the edition 1201 of Gair Rhydd, and laid out my broad moral objections to the license fee. Thus, I will not discuss them further than to say that the licence fee is a woeful anachronism in a digital society, and one whose legal protection can no longer be justified.

Alas the reaction was predictably mixed, many people at the time commented that they found my argument reasonable and balanced, others were, however, offended. For instance, someone I knew at the time was incensed that I had criticised the BBC and took the fact that I had written on the subject as evidence of my poor character, I say “the fact” because he refused to read the article. Likewise, a member of staff at The School of Journalism called my article “naïve” and “misguided”.

Both kneejerk reactions speak to the deeper controversy around the licence which go beyond discussions of any cost-benefit relationship. In both responses there was explicit or implicit ad hominem, I was merely arguing this because I was one of those “misguided” people, without the refinement to understand the necessity of the Tele Tax. There is a particular type of middle class person with a kind of zombified loyalty to institutions.

Up until the 1990s these would have included, The Royal Family, The Church of England, the Police and yes, The BBC. And it is the BBC alone which has retained at least some respectability among a certain die-hard crowd. I am fortunately not part of this crowd, and from a far of vantage point one can see how the outdated licence fee is defended by a crowd steeped in equally antiquated notions of respectability.

From its founding in the 1920s until relatively recently, the BBC was a well-spoken institution of RP Accents, far removed from the vulgar “commercial television”, like ITV, which many middle class people refused to watch out of principle. The BBC was a service that if listened to, offered a rare chance of social improvement in the class ridden society of yester year. I suspect this legacy, and the contingency of some people’s subconscious identity upon it, fuels the vociferous defences which will be made of the Licence Fee if any whiff of reform is detected.

Defending the BBC composes a strange component in a kind of superiority which some people feel, but criticising the BBC does not make one a bad person, anti-British, nor does it align a person to the admittedly more feverish elements of the anti-BBC movement, centred figures like Tommy Robison. I hope Lisa Nandy can overlook this vocal minority in the coming months as she steers a new path for the BBC, and hopefully one which firmly relegates Capita to the history books. If only to prevent the colossal waste of paper which must be a consequence of them mailing nearly every house in Cathays.