TIM BLAIR: BBC turns CCP.

By its own admission, the BBC has been deleting entire sketches from comedy series that are 50, 60, or 70 years old, many of which can be heard only with the BBC’s permission. Are we simply to assume that the public supports this development? And, if so, are we permitted to wonder why the BBC was not open about it?

And what about the poor bastards at the BBC dutifully combing through the archives to remove ancient wrongthink? They’re real-life Winston Smiths:

The “process of continuous alteration” in which Smith was engaged, Orwell wrote in 1984, “applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs – to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance,” such that “day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date.”

What better description could one find of what the BBC is now doing to its canon?

As a well-known BBC comic duo asked in a sketch (that’s still online, at least for now) about a titanic battle between national and international socialists, “Are we the baddies?”