You know, actually, Swan_Knight, I'm in some senses in agreement - I dislike the woolly liberal bias of the BBC as much as you do, with all its sickly-sweet, unthought-through, thoroughly middle-class ideological presumptions. Coupled with the false pretence, as you often find in middle-class liberal circles, that somehow their set of beliefs are not 'ideological', whereas everyone else's are. Actually, that ideology is every bit as rigid and intolerant as any other. Now, I'm coming at it from another political angle to you, obviously, but find the same problem in the cosying up to New Labourish views of the world (and even more to certain presumptions concerning the Middle East).

However, interviewers do sometimes need to argue from a contrary political position to the interviewee in order to grill them properly (I know this style of interviewing is rather unique to British television, but it's worth it). Asking 'don't you realise the damage this is going to do' or at least 'don't you think this will damage public provision' is fine; asking an advocate of an opposing position whether the high public expenditure they advocate will hurt competition and enterprise is equally important (a decent, principled and intelligent leftist would have an answer to that, including raising the question of whether a society based upon private enterprise is the best one).

I would sooner see a much broader range of opinion on the BBC (from both protagonists and presenters) including hard rightists and hard leftists (though not racist talk on there - that said, I do actually think even [edit: silly party] politicians should be brought onto the programmes and grilled hard), than this sort of inert liberal consensus that dominates the airwaves. Have John Pilger debating with a right-wing Likudist on the situation in the West Bank, say (and some other opinions as well), or bring Alex Callinicos to debate with whoever the current director of the Adam Smith Institute is.

In its time the BBC has been accused,and by intelligent , well-informed people too, of beig hopelessly Royalist-, establishnent-  and C-of-E-bigoted, and 'pansy-pinko-socialist' .This may indicate that they've got it about right.

I think when the BBC says or does something we disagree with politically, we tend to think that they are biased to the other side,as the Prime Minister did during the  Argentine War.

'Liberal' may mean 'left' in America, but in Britaiin t has usually meant centre. I remember my dad used to day the reason so many working-class people in the Manchester are voted Tory was because the employers were often Liberal party  supporters.

'liberals can be the most fanatically intolerant people of all,'

difficult to think of an example. Maybe it's like the 'no true Scotsman ' argumnent. If they are fanatically intolerant,how can they be liberal?

To be fair, did anyone watch the breakfast programme on BBC1 this morning shortly before 8am? They did report that some people were worried about the stock range of attitudes that the BBC seems to promote and they did air people's criticisms. As I said above, these sort of concerns go right back but it does seem to have become worse over the last ten years or so. Labour had to change to become electable and the same thing is now happening with the Conservatives, to the extent that there's very little to choose between the main parties. Then again, do we really want to go back to the entrenched views of the 1970s?

I fully agree that issues need to be debated, rather than personalities. Sadly, the current outfit are concerned with appearance rather than substance and don't agree.

However, the Ken Loach comment is rather typical of this sort of dinosaur who hasn't moved on: the reason we don't hear from the Arthur Scargill's of this world anymore is that they are irrelevant. To an extent, their particular brand of philosophy always was: they purported to speak for a certain large group of people whereas they really only spoke for a certain small group of activists with a particularly unpleasant agenda.

We're fortunate that the Red Robbos and the Scargills have largely disappeared - as have most of the Benn type champagne communists - though, sadly, there are still a few around who rear their heads from time to time, unable to accept that the cause they championed has been shown as hollow.

Real, honest socialists - of the Dennis Skinner type - are still worthy of respect and worth listening to. Their astute views on some of their supposed comrades on the left make interesting hearing...

bws S-S!

I have to admit I only caught bits of it. I was watching another programme, apparently a drama-documentary about Blair, on BBC1 from 19:15 to 20:00.

How very flattering!