IT’S NOT THE FIRST TIME THE BBC’S APOLOGISED FOR EMILY BUT IT SHOULD BE THE LAST

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HURRAH! Boris says hairdressers might be able reopen soon and as I’m now doing a cracking impression of an old hag with long straggly hair (it hasn’t been cut since Christmas) I will queue overnight if necessary to have my roots done and so many highlights put in you’ll be able to see my bonce from space!

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THE RNLI pleading for beaches to be shut after two people died last weekend is a bit like trying to stuff the genie back inside the bottle. It’s never going to happen. The RNLI say it’s dangerous because lifeguards, who’ve not been working for eight weeks, need special training to cope with the pandemic and as yet the charity hasn’t had time to fully work out how to keep them safe. Well, why not? Couldn’t the time they’ve had off have been used to work out a plan knowing that summer is coming and lockdown was being eased? I’m loath to have a go at the RNLI because they do such fantastic work but it can’t surely expect the Government to close every beach in Britain just as we’re emerging from lockdown because they couldn’t get their act together to train their lifeguards how to stay safe?

NOT for the first time Newsnight host Emily Maitlis has made clear her Left-wing views to a public that’s not just sick of hearing them but is incensed by them.

We pay for the BBC’s supposed impartiality yet Maitlis seems to regularly make a mockery of it.

This week her sneering rant about Dominic Cummings, which resulted in 18,000 complaints, laid bare her own bias when she claimed the PM’s aide had broken the rules – when he actually hadn’t.

Sorry, but Newsnight cannot be a platform for her political fury and however many times her like-minded cronies, who share her views on Brexit, say what a fine journalist she is – they actually insult fine (impartial) journalists.

Because what they imagine passes for good journalism is actually verging on activism. And it has no place in an organisation which is funded by us on the basis that it’s an impartial source of news. And it’s clear the BBC no longer is. This isn’t the first time the BBC has had to apologise for Maitlis but it should very definitely be the last. Because every time she does this, it raises questions about the BBC’s right to our money and to be a public service broadcaster.

Newsnight has become a programme no one with an open mind wants to watch. And as time and again Maitlis has proved she is incapable of being impartial, the question has to be: does the BBC care enough about its own survival to do something about it?