Should we pay 2% of BBC licence fee?

DEAR Editor, Current evidence would seem to confirm that recent attempts to draw greater media attention to our region and increase its woefully inadequate national profile have conspicuously failed.

Largely ignored by ITV, totally abandoned by the BBC and frankly insulted by Channel 4, the latest statistics would appear to suggest that despite years of campaigning for a fairer deal, these organisations continue to view Birmingham and the wider Midlands as irrelevant. If anything, the insultingly derisory levels of investment in our region have decreased even further.

Having boasted that it is continuing to relocate more of its operations out of London, I must presume the BBC is stupid enough to think we won’t notice if almost all them go straight to Greater Manchester. This is now creating an imbalance that is every bit as unjust as the London-centric excesses of the past.

I gather the BBC is looking to move its Concert Orchestra away from London. If the

Corporation were remotely interested in justice, it would move to our region – by far the largest to have no BBC orchestra. It won’t, of course.

There has been much tub-thumping from local politicians about the Corporation’s persistent refusal to address the scandalous underfunding of our region. This has so far achieved precisely nothing.

Perhaps the BBC bosses would have to shake the sand out of their hair if we in the Midlands – its largest and most populous region – elected to pay just 2% of the licence fee. This would still represent more than the pitiful investment we currently receive in return.

Tony Millinger, by email