DONALD TRUMP is threatening to sue the BBC for an edit which, in the light of everything he has done while in office, is similar to the one made to create the seven-inch mix out of the original 12-inch mix of a 1980s Haircut 100 single. There’s a bit taken out, but it doesn’t make a lot of difference to the song. 

Stand up for the BBC. We know it’s far from perfect: I more than most because, in the last of a long line of disagreements with them, Radio 4’s The Last Word refused to broadcast the obituary poem for Bob Crow they commissioned from me 11 years ago because it “wasn’t balanced.” I exploded first at the researcher, then the producer, and I haven’t worked for them since. But in a sea of right-wing billionaire sponsored divisions and lies it is LITERALLY all we’ve got, and our job is to make it better, not join in the calls for its destruction. 

We know why the right attacks it. Those who attack it from the left are doing more of the “unless you agree with 100 per cent of what I say then I’m having nothing to do with you” ideology-based splitty rubbish which we are so good at (cf Your Party) and which benefits nobody apart from Nigel Farage. This is 2025. Fascists are on the march. Unity or oblivion.

The argument that private ownership means a newspaper/radio/TV/internet broadcaster can be as biased as it wants, but public ownership means that even though nearly all the other outlets are right wing, the BBC is not allowed to be a counterbalance, is ludicrous. It’s all part of the right’s “I own this, so I can do what I like with it” billionaire-addled nonsense. 

If you own a car and drive it after nine pints of Stella, you get done. GB News is the equivalent of that and gets away with it. But if the BBC drinks a half of Greene King IPA (rather them than me!!!) the people who have drunk 9 pints of Stella start screaming at them.

That’s not balance, not democracy, not big and not clever. It’s complete bollocks, and everyone with more brain cells than a lobotomised amoeba knows it is. We shouldn’t put up with it — and should call it out at every opportunity.

The Sun, Times, Telegraph, Spectator, Express and Daily Mail — along with many other less-established private news “outlets” — are making it very clear that they won’t stop attacking the BBC until it is run by people with an explicitly right/far-right agenda, and the last major broadcasting bastion which still attempts fairness in a sea of bias, selective reporting and outright lies has been silenced. 

It is absolutely mind-boggling that in a country where right-wing moneymen control the print and social media to a degree where it is well-nigh impossible to read a balanced report about anything, it is considered a valid argument to attack the publicly owned BBC by accusing it of being biased to the left. I don’t think it is at all, and the accusations are testimony to just how far the Overton window has moved to the right. It doesn’t help when people on the left sneer at it as well. 

The vast imbalance in our media compared to literally anywhere else in western Europe is an insult to human intelligence and the basic reason that we are in the impoverished, divided state we are in now.

Back on the road this weekend. Tonight I am in Bridgwater, reuniting with the legendary Brian “Red Smed” Smedley (leader of Bridgwater Town Council) and his Hot Trot Smash the System Boogie Band for the first time in decades. Tomorrow I’m at Axe Vale Arts in Axbridge and tomorrow, at 2pm, a matinee at Planet Sounds in Southampton with loads more coming up. Details at facebook.com/attilathestockbroker.

Cheers, one and all.