Willie O’Reilly: Tory plan to flog off Channel 4 is indeed cultural vandalism

For decades a jewel in the firmament of British television, Channel 4 is now to be auctioned off to the highest bidder – and a dumbing-down of its programming surely awaits

Channel Four headquarters in London: Channel 4 is run as a not-for-profit organisation, with its earnings ploughed back into programming. It is public service television without the licence fee: the commercial public service, as it were

It can be unsettling when you are confronted with the fact that politics, like much else in life, is more nuanced than you might want to admit. It can be equally difficult to acknowledge that someone whose political views you generally abhor may just be responsible for something that you think is rather good.

And when that person is Margaret Thatcher, the former British prime minister, a bout of indigestion is also possible.

Thatcher was ...