Header Image Credit: News Vectors by Vecteezy

Hello, and thanks for checking the project out.

The way news is done in the UK right now is broken.

From recent admissions by Emily Maitlis in her MacTaggart lecture that the BBC was compromised by the government; to the onslaught of government ministers using GB News to try to pretend that their voting record had nothing to do with sewage discharges into the UK waterways; to the launch of Rupert Murdoch's TalkTV news service: news is under attack in the UK.

Yet, a healthy democracy can only exist in a country that supports and nurtures decent, honest, straightforward factual reporting. An informed society is a democratic society, with power held to account, and the electorate part of the conversation, not just passive observers.

But talk is cheap, what's the proposal?

To launch a news service in the UK in the traditional broadcast space, like the BBC, GB News, TalkTV and others, as well as online, to counter biased rhetoric with facts.

No, not just left-leaning facts (that would be to add to the problem, not solve it), but honest reporting, not being frightened to mention Brexit, or government sleaze, or to offer honest appraisal, not just provide an ego rub for government to assure access.

We need to be willing to discuss devolution, and independence, neither supporting or being against, but allow communities to speak, openly, without fear of being censored.

But that alone won't do it, so it's a little more than that.

We want to help bring that news service to the people in their communities.

Nothing quite brings people to the table like local delivery, across communities across the UK. We might be united by most things in life, more than we are divided, but we also have unique things about us based not just on who we are, but also where we live.

Not better or worse than anyone else, but in order for news to be helpful it has to be relevant, directed at each community it tries to serve.

This is why we propose to create a sixth UK TV network, on the finest granularity of any other network, to deliver an audience for our main news output via local delivery.

We want to go back to the BBC's original purpose: to inform, educate and entertain, within the context of news and current affairs, but also day-to-day useful output such as how to grow things, fix things, build things and help manage diminishing budgets, as well as nurture local and national employment by building the network from the ground up to be about and for those local communities.

The country needs a lot of that right now, and most of all the country needs to be better informed that current services are providing.

We can fix that, but we need your help to do it, and together we believe we can make a difference. Strengthening democracy, not hindering it, helping to forge community again, rather than divide it.

We propose to do this using the absolute minimum of resources from you, our supporters, as possible, and, when we've finished, we'll donate the money raised on to another project (we have one in mind to do with EU citizenship being immutable, but you'll get the chance to influence that position later), because we plan to use the money raised to hire specialists to pre-sell our sponsorship opportunities, allowing us to fund a bond issue to set up the service and create the network.

We aim to raise £40,000 in total, which may not seem a lot for all that is proposed, but it will be sufficient to start the process and see it through to completion.

At £12,000 we'll have enough to engage professionals.

At £25,000 we'll have enough to start selling sponsorship.

At £40,000 we'll have sufficient to deliver what we have promised here.

And, when we've completed the sponsorship raise, we'll donate the amount we raised here onto another project, so your money goes beyond this and continues helping more and more people.

We believe, with your help, that we can improve and strengthen the UK's precarious democracy, and, along the way help inform, educate and entertain the way public service broadcasting was always supposed to.

We'd be very grateful for your help, in whatever form that takes.

You can either buy us a coffee as a one off (each coffee is £5 in value), buy us multiple coffees, or, better yet, if you can afford it (and we know most can't), you could buy a recurring monthly membership from just £10 per month until we've raised enough to launch.

As soon as we've got enough, all memberships will be cancelled (we don't need extra from you, this is not for us to create profit, but for us to launch).

Whatever you choose to do, thanks for considering supporting us, and, hopefully, we look forward to making this work, together.