This said the presenter showed the days of the fee were over

This, said the presenter, showed the days of the fee were over. Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World had carried a survey which showed that more than half the respondents didn’t want the licence fee. But this is a free country, so I am free to cut off your tongue if I don’t like it.”And at this perilous moment in our democracy with the government acting so perfidiously, how does the BBC react? With never-ending penitence and bloodletting; with such pusillanimity that it is disabling those of us who want to defend the institution with vigour.Even yesterday, when popular opinion and most of the press were coming out against the report, on the World at One (Radio 4) the BBC was inviting criticism of its news coverage and asking if the corporation deserved its licence fee and special status. This reminds me of what Idi Amin once told a journalist: “Yes you have freedom to say what you want, my friend. Hutton has taken us back to the dangerous old days when judges like Lord Denning and Lord Widgery carried out inquiries which ensured the establishment was always protected.Tony Blair and Tessa Jowell want an “independent” BBC which is as “independent” as they allow. This Scottish judge, no race expert, changed our landscape by exposing the racial inequality that still prevails in too many British institutions. Hutton has become a guard dog and used his bark and bite to warn off any future sorties into the fortified enclosures which protect our manipulative political masters.He could have emulated his betters.

But this Nestor, however wise (she would not have accepted the word) and respected, had no grey beard, but was a rather small figure whose face was regular, beautiful and pleasing, and who radiated good sense, practicality of mind and – above all – human sympathy. Theodor Fontaine was Germany’s greatest 19th-century novelist; he has been compared to Jane Austen for the humour of his dialogue, and to Trollope for his amiability. It is no accident that Charlotte Jolles (Emeritus Professor of German at London University and Honorary President of the Theodor Fontane Society in Germany), was the doyenne, or as the Germans also say, the Nestorin, of Fontane studies. Charlotte Alice Bertha Eva Jolles, German scholar: born Berlin 5 October 1909; Junior Lecturer, then Senior Lecturer, then Reader in German, Birkbeck College, London 1955-74, Professor of German 1974-77 (Emeritus); died London 31 December 2003.

The Government and intelligence services are declared spotless Dr Kelly is criticised and the BBC is wholly damned. This is why I have only limited interest in this inquiry and why I am exploding with frustration.”That frustration – shared now by millions of British citizens – has grown and grown and grown this past week as the incredible conclusions of the Hutton report were being ingested and thrown up, smelling foul. Something is rotten again in the state of Britain and this time it is a Labour Prime Minister, the willing inheritor of Margaret Thatcher, who is responsible. As the Hutton inquiry began, I wrote that the investigation would help to keep Tony Blair in power.