IT'S GOOD to see that the BBC has got its come-uppance at last. Created as an inspired institution 80 years ago and its purpose defined as " to inform, educate and entertain", the BBC has fallen so far from that original excellence as to become little more than a left-wing pressure group with the sole ambition to perpetually harass conservatism in all its forms.

True, there are occasional programmes and even whole series of wonderful quality - the sort of programming you find nowhere else on earth - but the daily run of BBC output is depressingly predictable in its purveying of left-wing bias and political correctness.

Listen to the Today Programme, or The World at One or PM; turn on the telly and watch Newsnight or any other news programme and you will soon see that the BBC has its own opinion on everything from the war on terrorism to the smoking of cannabis.

Is the subject Israel? The BBC is against Israel and vastly sympathetic to savage, undemocratic Arab dictatorships. America? The BBC is anti-American - except in the case of American trash such as the doings of movie stars and the Oscars, which it follows with slavish adulation. Fox-hunting? Against. Any loony idea by the likes of Bob Geldof for solving the problem of famine in Africa? In favour, of course. Christianity? Only in favour of the social-gospellers. Not at all keen on the miracle stories of the Bible and always ready to make a cheap joke at the expense of ordinary Christian believers. But when it comes to other religions - especially Islam - the tone is always excessively reverent.

The BBC will always prefer the "environmentalist" over the motorway-builder. It will always offer three cheers for homosexuals and the one parent family and only two cheers (at the most) for marriage. It will give its blessing to tax and spend policies and deplore any criticism of the NHS. Public schools? Against. State education, no matter that it is a failure and a shambles, is another BBC sacred cow.

In other words, the BBC has a political agenda. I have been going in and out of the BBC for longer than Mr Blair has been going in and out of Islington restaurants and I have observed this agenda, this BBC culture, at first hand for 30 years and more. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying the BBC staff are bad people. Many of them are very good people. They are simply so steeped in their way of looking at the world that they don't realise they have a bias. They think that their opinions are what any decent, tolerant person would think.

When trainees join the BBC they adopt this agenda as it were by osmosis. There's none so blind as will not see. So sure is the BBC of its righteousness that it has become self-righteous and dangerously intolerant. During the recent row with the Government, I heard it said many times on air - even by Michael Howard - that the purpose of the BBC is to challenge the Government. It isn't. The purpose of the BBC news programmes is to report the facts.

Let's get one thing straight: there is nothing wrong with having an agenda, opinions or even prejudices - if you are, say, The Guardian, The Telegraph or The Northern Echo. These newspapers earn their keep by a cover charge and advertising revenue. If you don't like them, you don't have to buy them. The BBC, on the other hand, has its agenda paid for by a compulsory tax known as the licence fee.

There is a gross national injustice in the present state of affairs in public broadcasting - namely that we are forced to pay to finance a whole set of prejudices with which we may not agree.