Fresh from claiming the British Empire was the best thing since sliced bread, Mark Smith now attacks public service broadcasting – using the ruse that he gives a toss about poor people ("It's time to make Auntie pay her way', The Herald, July 20).
What is this, the neoconservative, neoliberal column? I have very mixed feelings about the BBC, nonetheless ...
What does he mean by "progressive privatisation of the 1980s"? Progressive in what sense? In the enlightened, forward-looking sense or the encroaching, expanding sense? Hilariously, I think he means the former. In case people hadn't noticed, we've had more than 30 years of fundamentalist privatisation of public services and utilities and it's destroying our country – it has manifestly failed. And Mark Smith wants more of it. If we are to have this bankrupt Thatcherite extremism in the national newspaper on a regular basis, then how about some clued-up Marxism as well?
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