BBC must not enter into the ratings war
Widdecombe
STRICTLY Come Dancing is a natural Saturday night prime-time programme. It is enjoyed by all generations and that is the most likely day for all the family to be together in the evening. It would be a pity to change it. That much said, I have commented in this column on more than one occasion that the silly ratings war between it and The X Factor is not in keeping with the ethos we should expect from the BBC. It is different for the commercial stations which need the ratings to attract the major advertisers but the BBC is a public service channel funded by you and me. It is right that it should produce some big, popular programmes of an outstanding character and Strictly richly fulfils that description but the ratings are irrelevant and the BBC is funded by licence so that it can afford to ignore them. As it is, the BBC produces too much twaddle by way of soaps, foul-mouthed comedians and repeats while relying on BBC Four and the World Service to offer the quality programmes which it should be producing. SOUTH Yorkshire Police, which is in such deep trouble over Hillsborough, is the same force that enabled BBC coverage of the search of the star’s home in the Cliff Richard case. I use the word “case” loosely because nearly two years later there doesn’t appear to be much case or surely by now there would have been at least an arrest. Perhaps now the Chief Constable has been suspended a new broom could sweep this inquiry clean.
IHAVE lost count of the number of times when pitching ideas for documentaries to programme commissioners, I have been told “that might appeal to BBC Two”. Why not the main channel? “Oh, it wouldn’t get the audience.”
That is what John Whittingdale is now trying to tackle: the silly obsession with viewing figures rather than with quality. It would be a pity if Strictly were to become a casualty but if it does the BBC should blame itself not the minister. A CORRESPONDENT to my website bemoans the absence of cards celebrating St George’s day. She says she was in Windsor and scoured all the shops but the only ones she could find were on the net and produced in America. Well, if she couldn’t find them in Windsor in the week of the monarch’s birthday, I doubt if she would find them anywhere else.
I share her view that it is a pity we have forgotten the patron saint of England. Perhaps we should take a lesson from the Irish who certainly know how to celebrate St Patrick’s day. PERFIDIOUS Albion. There is simply no other phrase which comes anywhere near describing the vile way in which this country has behaved towards the Afghan interpreters. These men put their lives on the line for us and indeed were sometimes seriously wounded. We have now abandoned them to the untender mercies of the Taliban who have no hesitation shooting those who were friends to us and threatening their families.
I am used to horror in the news: cruel oppression, civil wars, the barbarous beheadings and crucifixions of Islamic State, the nastiness of some carers who ill-treat and thieve from the vulnerable, plagues and famines. Yet I found myself shaking with outrage when I read of the suicide of an Afghan interpreter whom we were proposing to deport.
This is a brutal betrayal not on the part of an individual but on the part of the state itself and not on the THIS week is Hedgehog Awareness Week. When I was a child there were 36 million of these charming little creatures roaming our woods and gardens. By the time I was 50 there were but two million and today there are fewer than one million.
At that rate of decline they will become as rare as the giant panda in my lifetime or even as extinct as the dodo. As usual man is to blame not only for roadkill but also for the density of human dwellings, each fenced off from its neighbour.
Hedgehogs need to be able to travel surprisingly large distances to find sufficient natural food. So please spare the time to cut a hole in your fence and allow the prickly ones to forage. They won’t eat your flowers but they will feast upon your worms and slugs.
UNGRATEFUL BRITAIN IS SHAMED BY ITS TREATMENT OF AFGHAN INTERPRETERS
part of any old state but one that holds itself up as a model of civilisation.
Rotten, blatant cruelty. Rotten, treacherous Government. Rotten, ungrateful country. Why would anybody want to help us in the future? And how can Cameron look at himself in a mirror?