After £220 Lunch Undercover Video, Call to Boycott BBC 'Stealth Tax'

Citizen journalist and street organiser Tommy Robinson has released another undercover recording of top BBC journalist John Sweeney, this time revealing a boozy champagne lunch paid for by the corporation, and which cost more than a single household’s whole annual licence fee spend.

The video was allegedly recorded while top BBC man Sweeney was working on a Panorama documentary under the working title ‘Tommy Takedown’, and reveals one of a series of lunches and meetings in which the journalist worked to recruit a former confidante of Tommy Robinson as a whistleblower for the programme.

In the video, which comprises a series of short clips of Sweeney talking about wines, spirits, and cocktails in an apparent effort to impress his guest, Sweeney can be seen and heard saying: “which is the champagne and the double gin? And then we’re going to have some red wine… here I am on expenses… in a boozer… fuck it, no expense spared… make it £220.”

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The undercover recording is the second time this week that top political show Panorama journalist John Sweeney has been embarrassed by secret recordings. On Monday Robinson released another video where an audio recording alleged to be of Sweeney can be heard comparing white, working-class males to aliens from outer space, and “Amazonian” cannibals. The video also shows clips of Robinson confronting the BBC journalist with the recordings.

British householders are compelled by law to have a ‘television licence’ fee on pain of prosecution, hefty fines, and even imprisonment. Although the tax has to be paid to receive any live television from any source, including from abroad or over the internet, the bulk of the cash actually goes to paying for state broadcaster the BBC. The annual income from the tax is around £3.8 billion.

Robinson said the total bill combined with another lunch the following week came to £360 — over double the new, higher rate of £154.50 that each home receiving live programmes by television, computer, or smartphone is required to pay a year.

After remarking: “When you’re struggling to survive on your state pension, you need to find another £155 a year to pay for the BBC. Let me show you just what all that hard earned money gets spent on by John Sweeney and BBC executives,” Mr Robinson called on followers to boycott the BBC and plugged the campaign to disestablish the BBC.

He said: “If the fact the establishment force you to fund their biased propaganda does not infuriate you enough, then maybe the fact they just piss all your hard earned money up the wall should be enough for people to demand we scrap the licence fee… the BBC should be a subscription service, so all those Islington elites can choose to sign up and fund their lavish restaurant lunches, not us.”

Whether Mr Robinson’s message is heeded or not, record numbers of people are already abandoning the BBC, either giving up television altogether or migrating to more modern streaming services like Netflix and others, which offer a range of content at a lower annual subscription rate. Breitbart London reported in January that more than 860,000 viewers cancelled their television licence in 2017/18 — the equivalent to around 2,300 people a day.

Those dropping away from the corporation are often those the company needs most to sustain its long-term future — young people. The Times reported 44 per cent of males aged 16-34 watch no BBC TV whatsoever in a typical week, and British viewers aged 16-24 spent more time watching just one rival — Netflix — than every BBC platform including TV, radio, and internet combined in 2017.

Oliver JJ Lane is the editor of Breitbart London — Follow him on Twitter and Facebook