SOLOMON HUGHES asks whether Labour ‘engaging with decision-makers’ with scandalous records of fleecing the public is really in our interests

ITV has rightly been taking a victory lap over the success of Mr Bates and The Post Office, the miniseries depicting the Horizon scandal and the Javert-like persecution of subpostmasters.
Reportedly, ITV wasn’t sure the show would find an audience, although it is now claiming to possess super-strategic scheduling skills… in retrospect.
Mr Bates and The Post Office has gone some way to whitewash its pre-Christmas £1.5 million hiring of Nigel Farage for I’m a Celebrity, but its boasting about the drama’s effect should be balanced with knowledge of the network’s own relatively recent troubles (within the time frame of the Post Office affair) regarding the TV phone-in scams that fleeced the public.

While Spode quit politics after inheriting an earldom, Farage combines MP duties with selling columns, gin, and even video messages — proving reality produces more shameless characters than PG Wodehouse imagined, writes STEPHEN ARNELL

The fallout from the Kneecap and Bob Vylan performances at Glastonbury raises questions about the suitability of senior BBC management for their roles, says STEPHEN ARNELL

With the news of massive pay rises for senior management while content spend dives STEPHEN ARNELL wonders when will someone call out the greed of these ‘public service’ executives

As Trump targets universities while Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem redefines habeas corpus as presidential deportation power, STEPHEN ARNELL traces how John Scopes’s optimism about academic freedom’s triumph now seems tragically premature