£180

The latest licence fee increase is a gentle reminder to all those policy wonks in Government and the BBC looking for a sustainable and fully protected way of funding the BBC.  There isn't one - if it is to remain a universal service, then the Government, and particularly the Chancellor, will define broadly how much the BBC gets every year - because the OBR has defined that as a tax.  You can wave all the ten-year charters you want when the next Government comes to the revolving doors of BH and says that's your lot; you can set up Grand Commissions to define and determine investment in public service broadcasting, but if the economy moves forward tits up, their recommendations will be tossed overboard. 

The BBC has been immensely prissy about not being funded from general taxation, yet that's the most progressive, enforceable and cheapest way to do it.  The current Government is prissy about lumping it in with Council Tax; it could so easily be part of a major revaluation process that Labour have put in the 'too difficult' tray.  Lisa Nandy seems frit of the Big Streamers, but a levy on them, or a broadband levy is a sensible mirror of the days when we had limited transmission spectrums. 

Anyway, the BBC, I hope, will come forward with a response to the Green Paper with renewed ambition, new ways of measuring success, new ways of changing and adapting at speed, and some honest looks at how it will determine what to do less of, over the next ten years, in order to fund some groovy new stuff. With a generous risk pot in there, too.