Barely a day goes by when I do not find a reason to hate the BBC even more. Today there are two.
Sadly in this household it is the staion of (not my) choice and thus I found myself listening to three journalists and a BBC staffer reviewing the papers on Radio 4 this morning with the discussion covering asset manager Baillie Gifford ceasing to sponsor book festivals.
Clearly if you like books this is a bad thing. The cue was folks like halfwit Welsh singer Charlotte Church and the world’s least funny comedian Nish Kumar boycotting the Hay festival because of Baillie Gofford’s links with Israel. One of the panel piped up that those protesting did so with “good intentions like Boycotting and Divesting from Israel.”
Nobody challenged this. And that is the BBC all over. Even a few years ago, if nobody on the panel said anything the host would have piped up to say that, there are, of course, many who disagree with specifically targetting the world’s only Jewish state. But it was just resented as a given for that is now the BBC “house view” although sometimes it pretends otherwise.
Meanwhile Russell T Davies who scripts Dr Who these days, on the rare moments when he is not telling everyody that he is gay ,has given an interview with the BBC discussing the “gaying up” of Dr Who.
The current Doctor is, apparently, gay and even has a male lover on the show which also features a lesbian couple. The world of the Doctor is now rather like Brighton, San Francisco or Ambridge with hardly a straight person in sight. Apparently, according to the BBC article, the Doctor was always gay as back in thedays of Hartnall, Pertwee or Baker he never tried to hit it off with good looking female assistants. You and I might have thought that was because he was a serious minded fellow, intent on saving the world from Daleks but, apparently it was because he was a closet gay.
Well I never. How did we all fail to spot that?
Tom Baker used to be watched by 12 million folks when there were far fewer people in Britain. Even David Tennant managed that number as recently at 2010. The most recent episode of Doctor Who was watched by just 2.11 million.
Why on earth does anyone watch?. The show is no longer one would watch with your kids as it might prompt questions you are not yet ready to answer if they are not at the birds and the bees discussion stage. It has stopped being family entertainment and became a view of how those in Islington want society to look, a chance to educate our kids into thinking what they think should be normal.
The BBC can serve up whatever bilge it wants but to do so with money extracted from taxpayers under threat of jail just cannot be right.