University Admissions Should Be a Matter of Discrimination – Spectator Blogs

Cristina Odone begins her latest oh-woe-is-Britain post most amusingly:

Around the world, people have long envied Britain’s two institutions: the BBC and Oxbridge. Britons, however, (or some of them) are determined to destroy both. They are going about it in a brutal and obvious way, by lowering standards for both Auntie and the great universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The BBC abroad was a byword for beautifully written and brilliantly produced programmes such as “The World at War” and “Upstairs Downstairs”. But in its obsession with “diversity”, the Beeb has allowed standards to slip: comedies that aren’t funny (but don’t sound middle class) and reality shows that teach nothing but how temporal celebrity is, have taken over the schedule. Soon the BBC brand will be synonymous with Simon Cowell rather than David Attenborough, Laurence Friedman and literary classics. It will, in other words, be a joke.

I say this is amusing because, of the many programmes one might cite to praise the BBC, it’s droll to choose two that were made for ITV.