Reader Martin Kelly, of Glasgow, Scotland, writes of a plan to address the problems created by the BBC's notorious political bias, while it enjoys the status of a government monopoly receiving compulsory license fees from all UK television owners., With his permission, we reproduce the letter he wrote us.

Dear Sirs,

Michawl Morris's article is quite a good look at the political bias that surrounds the BBC, even after the Hutton Report. He is perhaps a little unfair on Frank Gardner, who at least has the distinction of being one of the few BBC news staff who can pronounce 'Al Qa'eda' properly. This phrase, the liberal equivalent of 'nucular', is still pronounced phonetically, Al—Qa—e—da, by many in the organisation, so give credit where credit's due.

What's missing from the article is an appreciation of the law governing the BBC and the recent steps the Conservatives have taken to address its future should they regain office.

The BBC is a corporation, holding a Royal Charter. that charter must be reviewed every 10 years, and is next up in 2006. The Conservatives recently commissioned a TV exceutive called David Elstein, whose credentials include 'The World at War', to produce a report on how his former employers should fund themselves in a post—licence fee era.

His conclusion was startlingly simple. In the regime of the recently deposed Greg Dyke, the BBC spent billions developing an output exclusively for digital TV. The BBC has several channels, like BBC3 and BBC4, which analogue licence fee payers like myself fund but cannot watch. The Labour government plans to switch off the analogue signal in 2010 at the very latest. By then, every household will obviously require access to digital, as opposed to the current half. This is not such a daunting prospect, as digital TV was unheard of in the UK as recently as 1998.

Elstein's solution was simple. Post licence fee, the BBC should go all subscription. This would remove the element of illegality in non—possession of a licence fee, while making it easier for non—payers to simply have their digital signal switched off remotely if they do not pay for it.

A brilliantly simple and elegant solution.

The BBC's liberal bias is beyond a joke. Like what I can divine of American broadcast news, it comes from a very narrow metropolitan prism of a few people who live in a few North London postcode areas. However, most of the rest of us aren't so daft as to be taken in.

Best regards,

Martin Kelly

Glasgow