There is a terrific irony in the thought of the Daily Mail ’s Quentin Letts being allowed on to the airwaves to wonder about the “point” of various hitherto uncontested areas of our national life. Letts’ targets are quite often state-run, taxpayer-supported institutions, and the suspicion lurks that left to his own devices he could have a high old time demanding what exactly was the point of the BBC.For the moment this particular feeding hand has remained unbitten, and Letts’ first subject in his new four-part series (5-26 August) was the Met Office, an entity that, with its £200 million annual government subvention and its 1,800 staff (“some of them on big money”) seemed ripe to have its principles interrogated and its practice undermined.
06 August 2015, The Tablet
Cold front
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