Cruel cuts

You might be forgiven for thinking that the cuts to broadcasting have already been implemented, with nothing but Mozart on Radio 3 and the Bible on Radio 4 on Sunday. Meanwhile, we’ve discovered that the actor who played the unfortunate Nigel Pargetter in The Archers, Graham Seed, has lost 75 per cent of his income, with only a few weeks’ warning — is he another silent victim of the national overspend?

Switch over to the BBC’s World Service and the New Year diet becomes even more stringent. No drama for at least a month, so that between the briefings on world news and sport there are instead endless repeats of The Strand, Crossing Continents or The Forum with just one or two new half-hour documentaries per week. We should be asking questions. The international play-writing competitions sponsored by the World Service have just about survived — but for how much longer? We need more drama, and more short stories, on public-service radio, not less, and especially if libraries are given the chop as recession-hit local authorities have threatened.