Given that John Whittingdale once described the licence fee as ‘worse than the poll tax’, the BBC were reported to be less than thrilled when David Cameron appointed the Tory MP as Culture Secretary ahead of the corporation’s charter renewal next year.
However, should the BBC be concerned about the impending decision, culture minister Ed Vaizey has at least offered an early pointer about the type of programmes the corporation ought to be commissioning. Vaizey took to Twitter to praise his old chum Andrew Roberts on his Napoleon documentary for the BBC.
He says that it is ‘just the kind of programme’ the BBC ‘should be making’:
Furthermore, the ‘great review’ he links to is written by none other than Vaizey’s mother, Marina. After all, we’re all in this together.
However, one man who may be keen to listen to Vaizey is Jeremy Vine. Nick Robinson reveals in his election diaries what the presenter said off air on election night after the exit poll predicted the Tories would take power:
Jeremy quips: ‘So Scotland will go independent and the BBC will be shut down.’
Almost a decade ago the Irish academic Liam Kennedy published a tremendous book with the title Unhappy the Land: the Most Oppressed People Ever, the Irish? It is a dissection of one of the most curious pathologies in the world: the desire to have been oppressed; a glorying in being repressed. Kennedy, like a few
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