Sir: Perhaps bias is in the eye of the beholder,
but Ian Hargreaves's assertion that there is no bias in the BBC does not ring true (`Red queens on screens', 29 September).
The bias is subliminal. Topics that favour the Conservative cause (falling un- employment in the last three years for example) are ignored, never analysed. When did you last see a programme on the
• BBC about the people who have benefited from reductions in taxation, or bought their own council houses?
Then the viewer is encouraged to adopt an impossible viewpoint. Constant prog- rammes, interviews and series about how more 'government money' is needed for this or that but never anything about how much it will cost every taxpayer. The assumption is that 'someone else' will pay.
Impartiality is more than just having two (or three) contributors, one on each side. For real impartiality you need a true understanding of what underlies opposing points of view, in order to generate a schedule which is inherently balanced.
This cannot be possible so long as the BBC recruits its staff by advertising mainly in the Guardian and certainly never in the Daily Telegraph.
A. Clive Elliot
Little Firs, Picketts Lane, Salfords, Redhill, Surrey
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