So there we were, me and Lila, discussing the finer points of worker’s entitlement, the democratic rights of the proletariat, the dissolution of the imperial ruling classes as proposed by Castro, Che Guevara, Karl Marx and Diane Abbott, when she fell asleep. In the water. The pool gently splashing her little body and then in a puff, she’s asleep. Lila, that is, not Diane Abbott, who I’d happily have let drown.

But its all down to the heat. Its hot here in Malta. Hot as Hades. Hot as an oven. Which is why I thought me and Che would spend a little quality time on Lila’s political enlightenment before her parents turn her into a mini-Maggie for the post-millenial’s post-millenials. Generation… Y? Generation… Why? No idea what we’ll call them but we’ll think of something.

And I must confess, I’m all newsed-out. I read the Times this morning, as I do every morning, and it said: “bleuhh, bleuhh, bleuhh, bleuhh”. Don’t know why, just nothing exiting, nothing new, nothing other than yet more BBC bollocks. So let’s put that to bed once and for all.

Superstars paid too much? Money wasted on ‘celebrity’ show-biz-bollocks shows quite at odds with the somewhat hi-brow international image that’s taken 70 years to attain? Dumbing down?

The BBC has to compete, I feel. It doesn’t need to, it gets its money whether 8 million viewers enjoy Celebrity Come Dancing or whether just 17 watch ‘The plight of the slug’s mother’. Yet to justify its very existence it has to prove, in viewing figures, that ‘Britain’ is watching it. And to do that it needs to put shows on right across the intellectual board. And to do that you have to pay market driven salaries. No other way.

So you either want the BBC to stay, pretty much as it is, or you don’t, in which case it must just go. And we’ll all save 175 quid a year. Personally, I get more satisfaction than the license money costs me, every time I watch Wimbledon and there’s no adverts.

So that’s it. Done with the Beeb, done with the news, tomorrow Mel & I leave Malta ‘proper’ (and alas Lila too) for a few days on the nearby island of Gozo. Now that’s exiting.

Happy Friday/Shabbat shalom

A xxxx