Those campaigning for the BBC licence fee to be scrapped should be careful what they wish for, says Herald writer Kevin McKenna

At present, we’re asked to pay a very modest annual fee to access some of the finest journalism on the planet which comes to us every minute of every day. We can access a treasury of documentaries and investigations that deepen our understanding of the world around us. Hardly a month passes without the BBC’s teams of gifted investigative journalists uncovering a scandal that rich and powerful people have gone to extraordinary lengths to suppress.

We are granted fingertip access to the BBC’s magnificent broadcasting archive. This contains thousands of films across every facet of the human condition which have brought us to this place: culture, history, science, geography, history and religion. It’s an unparalleled national resource that has improved the lives of every person in the UK. That such a sprawling and gargantuan organism has managed to curate this collection while (largely) preventing it from being contaminated by political and cultural bias is almost as wondrous as the broadcasting jewels in its vast repository.

Last week, three programmes on BBC television and radio made my life a little sweeter. They’d emerged unbidden from a desultory flick through the channels. On Sunday night, the mellifluous and gently subversive cadences of Iain Anderson on Radio Scotland introduced a medley of folk, blues, soul and rock 'n' roll. I listen to Mr Anderson’s show far too rarely, yet it always provides an antidote to the decades of heavy industrial rock which have lobotomised my musical tastes.

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