License fee latest

I've been a bit remiss in keeping up with BBC news lately, but here's a quick update on the BBC's attempts to secure a license fee increase.

• "MPs find fee rise hard to swallow" and "In danger of a backlash": Although it looks like the BBC will finally get its license fee increase - seven years of annual inflation increases plus 2.3%, "to £150.50 per annum by 2013" - but the size of the increase has raised hackles among MPs and industry types. Although "this is to allow the BBC to fulfil the vision laid out for it in the government's green paper on the organisation's future - as a leading force in the much-vaunted switch to digital" it still rubs some people up the wrong way.
  
• "BBC goes to the City for digital cash": Although the BBC got its licence fee okayed, they're still looking for more cash - by going into the "money markets to raise a substantial bond in order to pay for the additional costs of digital switchover, targeting help for vulnerable, older and disabled people." These over-75's will need BBC help in making the transition by the 2012 deadline, and the beeb needs to find the cash to do it.