𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Can it really only be me who’s getting heartily bored of being tolerant, reasonable, compassionate and diverse? When what we really need to be is strong, decisive, inventive, and uncompromising? Those first four adjectives were the key words in Keir Starmer’s toe-curlingly dreadful mea-culpa yesterday after he happily hired the pal of the world’s most sickeningly disgusting paedophile as a representative of the British Government. Now then.

Don’t get me wrong, being tolerant, reasonable, compassionate and diverse is brilliant and it’s at the very heart of what it means to be British. We take as we find, we shrug and get on with things and when the going gets tough we take the Mick mercilessly. But this is just a brilliantly happy spin-off of being nice people in a still-nice country. Just about. It is not, and never should be, public policy.

Being tolerant doesn’t build cars, or ships, or aeroplanes. Being reasonable doesn’t build a strong military. Being compassionate does not bring murdering people-trafficking scum to justice. And being diverse does not make for a state TV service which is any way fit for purpose.

Which of course brings me neatly to the BBC.

With the suicidal predictability of a lemming leaping off a cliff the BBC told us today the TV licence fee will rise by £5.50 to £180 a year.

The BBC said this was to “help keep the BBC on a stable financial footing”.

Ever the contrarian, Reform MP Lee Anderson said it was an organisation “with a death-wish”.

Much of the anger in political circles was directed at the BBC’s institutional left-wing bias.

And there is so much overwhelming evidence for this it’s not even a debate anymore. Indeed in some quarters the Beeb seems rather proud of it.

But I have a much simpler reason not to pay your newly-hiked BBC TV licence… it’s just crap. Rubbish. Appalling.

Take away Strictly for the mums and Match of the Day for the dads (you know it’s true…) and what have you got left?

Literally nothing you could put a name to.

Achingly unfunny comedy, cheap cookery shows, and repeats of programs you didn’t watch the first time around.

Be honest, when you get home from work and splodge in front of the telly with a cup of tea and the biscuit tin, which button do you click?

It’s Netflix isn’t it? Or Prime. Or YouTube.

What it isn’t, is the BBC.

The BBC is the televisual equivalent of the Javan Rhino – once fantastically popular now facing near certain extinction (yeah, I Googled).

There is a slim chance of survival though, but only if drastic measures are taken.

For example, if the BBC wants to keep on a “stable financial footing” it might want to look at trimming the mass of fat it has managed to accumulate.

(My mate at the Beeb earned a few quid short of £300,000. I have no idea what he did and I’m not 100% sure he ever did either.)

Like the EU the Beeb’s mission creep has been as extensive as it has been idiotic.

Like the EU the Beeb was a good initial idea spoiled by arrogance, over-reach and second rate people.

(Oh and perverts. Cheap shot I know, but there doesn’t seem to be anywhere near as many pervs and paedophiles at rival broadcasters does there?)

Departments like BBC Africa Eye and BBC Arabic Investigations…really? Are these genuinely vital to the operations of a British state broadcaster?

And can the BBC explain it to a pensioner too terrified to put the heating on?

The only sliver of silver lining to this cloud is the timing of the announcement – slap bang as Starmer is desperately trying to shift the political narrative from Mandelson to tackling the cost of living.

And they say the BBC hasn’t got a sense of humour anymore.