Even in Manchester, the BBC’s culture is purely and achingly London

An American woman started a website called ‘People I Want to Punch in the Throat’, in which she listed the people she wanted to punch in the throat. It was enormously successful and spawned a book called People I Want to Punch in the Throat, which sold very well. This is the heartening thing about the internet; the level of visceral loathing harboured by all of us for other people, which otherwise would remain hidden. I have thought about getting in on the action by starting a website called ‘People I Want to Stab to Death with a Bradawl’, or perhaps ‘People I Want to Dissolve in a Vat of Acid’.

Very high up on my list for the bradawl treatment would be the BBC executive who decided that corporation staff would not be allowed to eat meat on Mondays. This facile overpaid halfwit said in an internal communication that chefs would be preparing wonderful vegetarian alternatives for ‘carnivores’. There was then a magnificently condescending and arrogant explanation for this dictatorial idiocy: ‘Why are we doing this? Well, to put it simply, it’s good for the environment. Skipping meat on the menu just for one day a week can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, water use and land use.’ Lecture for six-year-olds over for the day, then. Needless to say staff have been tweeting their displeasure at this high-handed and patronising diktat, as well they might.

Listen, you fatuous, arrogant jackass. The point of the staff canteen is to provide meals which your employees would like to eat, full stop. It is not a conduit for your infantile politics or for fascistic corporate virtue-signalling. It is for the individual to decide if he or she wants to eat meat or not.