Time, Gentlemen, please

With all the fuss about the bbc - 'stars' boycotting it (should decrease their apparent market value anyway making them cheaper when they come crawling back), and being attacked from all sides of the DEC ad debate - surely the time has come to realise that there is no longer any place for the BBC.

Break it up! Spin off its commercial arm, open up its spectrums, flog its commercial formats such as East Enders Street, Snooks and Dr Why, close down its 24 hr rolling 'news' channel, terminate its expensive, ego-maniacal personalities from Ross to Paxman via Humphreys. Let them go out and start afresh - on channels where if people want to hear what Michael Crick believes will help the Labour Party get elected / the mad right wing ravings of um, er - well there must be one on the BBC - then they will pay for it.

This modest proposal would remove the artificial inflation in wages, remove the artificial focus on funding around BBC offices, smash the stranglehold that the BBC has on small production companies, destroy a monopoly, and add another layer to the bonfire of placemen, quangos, self-appointed establishment and bien-pensant half wits who have fed off this country these last 10 years and for whom the reckoning is coming...