The BBC “simply cannot conceive” that intelligent, thoughtful people could disagree with its socially liberal views, a former worker at the Corporation has said.
Edward Lucas does not have a television and said he teases his friends and colleagues by saying that he “would rather have an open sewer running through our kitchen”.
Lucas also said while not having a television may be seen as strange, it is “not as odd as spending the equivalent of ten years of your life staring at a piece of furniture and paying a mandatory fee for the privilege”.
Transsexual character
Next week BBC Two will air Boy Meets Girl, a story about a man living as a woman who falls in love with a younger man.
The transsexual character is played by a transsexual actor, who says the programme is the first in the UK to feature sex scenes between a transsexual and a man.
It follows a competition organised by the BBC and campaign group All About Trans to find a story offering a “positive portrayal of transgender characters”.
Pervasive
In his article for The Times, Lucas says he grew up without a television and now objects to the concept, saying his “sewer” comment is “only half in jest”.
Although he says he would be happy to pay for catch-up TV, he describes the medium as a life-extracting device that “turns us into passive consumers of packaged information, sucking up time, conversation and attention”.
Lucas hits out at the BBC specifically: “The centre-left consensus is stifling: as pervasive as it is invisible to those it afflicts. (I know: I spent many years working there).
“BBC journalists simply cannot conceive that anyone with a brain and a conscience could disagree with their socially liberal, internationalist and anti-business views.”