I’m usually only half a block away from falling into another bout of depression. I mean, the Black Dog is always there – in fact, he was there for much of last night, consistently waking me up with a whole series of completely mad doom and gloom anxiety dreams – but I am managing to bear up under the General Election strain.
As per usual, I am dreading the result, knowing that if I am right in my guesswork the country will re-elect Boris Johnson and his fellow cranks to government, probably with a big majority, and the sheer bloody misery of Brexit will then drag on for a decade or probably much longer. I should be reaching for the strychnine.
Even Johnson’s cleverly planted threat this afternoon to scrap the BBC licence fee once he is returned to government did not send me over the edge, although when it actually happens, it almost certainly will.
It could be an age thing. I am far nearer to my death than I am from my birth so perhaps I am thanking my lucky stars that I was able to live my life when public service broadcasting mattered, when people in their millions watched a TV show and actually talked about it in work the next day. The next generation, I suspect, won’t have that pleasure.
It is probably the radio I will miss most. 6 Music will be one of the first stations to go, as will inevitably all local BBC radio. Perhaps a commercialised version of Radios 1 and 2 might survive but for the spoken word, I expect it will be diet of LBC and Talk Radio. There will be literally nowhere to hear new music.
I’ll miss the telly, too. Everything from Attenborough through to Michael Portillo’s brilliant railway journeys. And Luther, Strictly and Match of the Day. Perhaps some of the commercial stations might pick them up, I don’t know.
It was obvious Johnson would come after the BBC. It stands against everything he believes in, always assuming he believes in anything at all. He has already referred to the licence fee as being a tax and in Johnson’s post Brexit vision of Britain, a low tax, small state, deregulated country, the BBC obviously does not fit.
I’m resigned to the loss of the BBC, just like I am resigned to all the other grim things that are going to happen in the coming years, as the poor get poorer and the rich get richer, while in post-truth Britain the inevitable decline of our social structures sets in. I think it’s that grim.
I’m beginning to feel there’s nothing we can do about the scrapping of the BBC and the dismantling over the next five years of the NHS. We have no power at all beyond a five-yearly election where we put into government an elected dictatorship.
I’m not very depressed at the moment. Friday could change all that, of course, and the next five years might finish me off altogether. Remember that when you put your cross next to the Tory candidate’s name this week.
