Dear Auntie

The BBC is problematic. I swing between thanking the lord for it and wishing it abolished. These are the six public purposes identified in its royal charter and the Beeb's own thumbnail sketches of how they deliver

Sustaining citizenship and civil society

The BBC provides high-quality news, current affairs and factual programming to engage its viewers, listeners and users in important current and political issues.

Promoting education and learning

The support of formal education in schools and colleges and informal knowledge and skills building.

Stimulating creativity and cultural excellence

Encouraging interest, engagement and participation in cultural, creative and sporting activities across the UK.

Representing the UK, its nations, regions and communities

BBC viewers, listeners and users can rely on the BBC to reflect the many communities that exist in the UK.

Bringing the UK to the world and the world to the UK

The BBC will build a global understanding of international issues and broaden UK audiences' experience of different cultures.

Delivering to the public the benefit of emerging communications technologies and services

Assisting UK residents to get the best out of emerging media technologies now and in the future.

 

This list contains a predictable dose of blather but rather as with motherhood and apple pie it would be churlish to condemn its sentiments. So I won't - not today anyway. I reserve the right to churlishness at a later date. The £3.885 billion question is whether a mandatory licence fee (and about £270 million of other government funding - a mere bagatelle my boy) is the way to achieve these vague aims. Here's a few pros and cons.

Credit (Debit): Count Arthur Strong's Radio Show (any repeat of the Clitheroe Kid); Kirsty Wark (Jeremy Paxman); Jim Naughtie (John Humphrys); Clare Balding (Willy Carson). Please don't start me on Jo Whiley. I mean really there's no excuse.

So that's it - a not even vaguely in-depth analysis of public broadcasting.

Ponder this: the BBC failed to spot what most bar room philosophers had guessed years ago, that Jimmy Savile was a nonce. In their proper guilt at this oversight they next rushed to condemn a politician who had never been to Wrexham much less gone there regularly to bugger schoolboys. They then conducted an onanistic witch-hunt with a view to burning one of themselves at the stake and having got their scapegoat felt so convinced of their rectitude that they paid him compensation but decided to burn him anyway. This we are told is the behaviour of an organisation the envy of the world. Masters are you mad?