Gary Lineker posted a picture of a rat when talking about Jews and then later claimed he had no idea this was a vile antisemitic trope. If that’s true then he’s as thick as mince; if false he should be prosecuted for race crimes. Either way he should never have been allowed to run riot by the BBC and thank goodness he’s going. Good riddance to bad rubbish. But he is far from being alone. Lineker, below, might be an extreme example, but he sums up every- thing that’s wrong about the corporation.
It has a world view at odds with most of the rest of the country, arrogant and complacent presenters who think that anyone who doesn’t agree with them is, frankly, a little bit backward, and a pious, holier-than-thou stance on everything from the Middle East to Brexit. It also has absolutely no idea who its audience is any more. Leave London or the big cities and you are going to find a very, very different society from anything you could imagine in Beebland.
I grew up in the States, with its myriad TV channels broadcasting advertising-laden junk; my parents told me in tones of near reverence about the BBC.
In the 1980s I visited Czechoslovakia as it then was; I was told by the locals that they had managed to get the truth out to the West about the Communist regime and they had done so with the help of the BBC.
When I left university, some of my cleverest counterparts went to work for Auntie, but –and it’s a big but – it was not a well-paid option. Much like becoming a public servant, they did it for the prestige.
Well, look at it now.
The producers and back room boys and girls might not be paid a fortune, but just consider the obscene amounts of money the taxpayer has been throwing at paedophiles and child abusers courtesy of the BBC.
Far, far worse than the Linekers of this world though (the likes of Jimmy Savile, Rolf Harris and Huw Edwards) have been indulged to a grotesque degree. The BBC is no longer fit for purpose; it needs to be cleared out and rethought down to the basics.
One last thought: more than 75% of people prosecuted for not paying the licence fee are women, with all the trauma and domestic upheaval that entails, and you can bet your bottom dollar they’re not on Gary Lineker-sized salaries. They say you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. Well, what we have now is a stinking mess.