A wicked old witch

"It is characteristic of all committee discussions and decisions that every member has a vivid recollection of them, and that every member's recollection of them differs violently from every other member's recollection; consequently we accept the convention that the official decisions are those and only those which have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials; from which it emerges with elegant inevitability, that any decision which has been officially reached would have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials, and any decisions which is not recorded in the minutes by the officials has not been officially reached, even if one or more members believe they can recollect it; so in this particular case, if the decision would have been officially reached, it would have been recorded in the minutes by the officials and it isn't so it wasn't."

As Sir Humphrey said of government minutes, so the honest historian will say of the wider historical record. So Goebbels said of the zeitgeist and the national myth.

British contemporary history, the most egregious example being that of the 1980s, is 'minuted' and thus mediated to the overwhelming majority through the BBC's NUT-approved Guardianista prism. No alternative worldview is allowed oxygen, save to encourage the hurling of rotten fruit (comedy is the most effective ballista) and the occasional execution of a heretic or two in an auto da fé.

One can hardly be surprised at the increasingly, uniformly unbalanced and naive political opinions of the young when their political 'information' comes from a single, powerful and powerfully supported monopoly.

Liberty of thought and choice are sine qua non for a healthy polis and a free people. The de facto monopoly of the BBC over the contemporaneous account, the popular memory of news and public affairs, and consequently the collective myth, must be abolished.

Auntie loves children

Auntie Beeb is no longer the cuddly national treasure whom we are lucky to have, bless her. She has aged, badly, into a warty, wizened, wicked old witch who cackles horribly effective imprecations at any who so much as raise an eyebrow at her dangerous practices.


She has great power now, acquired over decades of receiving unwonted tributes from rulers, both craven and cynical, who rob the poor to buy her golden cauldrons and expensive potions with which to make her poisons.

'A nice juicy apple, my dear? Or perhaps a little gingerbread?'

With her evil spells she paralyses, kills and eats her enemies, cursing those who try to heal the wounds she inflicts. Defy Auntie if you dare.

The wicked witch is poisoning our wells. She must be surrounded, smoked out and smashed.

But of course, like all tyrants, the witch has powerful friends...