Britannia Radio

DAILY MAIL    7.2.09
  The BBC is a floundering giant with no moral sense

Adrift and too vast to control, the BBC is a floundering giant that 
has lost its moral compass. 

Hardly a week goes by without another 
controversy engulfing it.

Chris Moyles's sick joke about Polish women making good 
prostitutes. . . 

Frankie Boyle's grotesquely obscene reference to the 
Queen's private parts . . 

a blunt refusal to give airtime to a 
humanitarian appeal for Gaza. . .

Now Carol Thatcher's dismissal from the One Show offers yet more 
evidence of the yawning gap between the politically correct elite 
running the BBC and the great mass of the British people.

Compare Miss Thatcher's treatment with that of Jonathan Ross to see 
how the corporation is fumbling in a vacuum, its principles and 
purpose long forgotten.

In Ross's case, it took days (and a public outcry) before it even 
crossed the BBC's mind that there might be something offensive about 
taunting an elderly actor with jibes about his granddaughter's sex 
life  -  and then broadcasting the stunt.

Even then, Ross was allowed to return to his £6million a year job, 
after a token suspension and a facetious apology  -  only to carry on 
exactly as before.

There's no such mercy for Miss Thatcher, whose very surname, of 
course, is enough to damn her in many BBC eyes.

On the word of an informant, she is summarily dismissed for a remark 
she made in private whose context and tone we cannot judge.

Unlike Ross's apology for an apology, the BBC rejects hers, demanding 
that she must publicly humiliate herself.

But then in the warped world of the BBC  -  in which terrorists are 
'freedom fighters', 

love of country is 'bias' and truth lies  permanently to the Left of centre  -  

there is no crime more evil  than saying anything that might be interpreted 

as a slur on a racial  or sexual minority.

Otherwise, anything goes. Ross, Jo Brand, Adrian Chiles and the rest 
can joke to their smug, PC hearts' content about bodily functions, 
the Christian church or the elderly.

Meanwhile, every under-75 TV owner in the land is obliged to pay for 
their filth, on pain of imprisonment.

Of course, there's a temptation to lay all the blame for the BBC's 
degeneration on the top man, Director-General Mark Thompson. But that 
would be unfair.

In truth, the corporation  -  with its 28,500 employees, its 
monstrous bureaucracy, and its host of TV and radio stations, 
websites and publications  -  has become far too large for anyone to 
control.

That must be put right. In this digital, multi-channel age, shouldn't 
we be thinking seriously of preserving the best of the BBC  -  Radio 
4, the World Service and the two main TV stations [One station would 
be quite enough -cs]   -  and selling the rest to the highest bidders?

Wouldn't that be the surest way of slashing the licence fee, 
restoring the corporation to its place in the nation's hearts  -  and 
increasing the plurality of opinion in the British media?
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 RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Isn't it time the Golliwog Squad finally grew up?
 
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