I waited with anticipation this morning for the BBC Breakfast news coverage of Mrs Thatcher’s 80th birthday. They promised to explore her legacy - which to me meant we ought to hear about the routing of the trade unions, the defeat of socialism, the end of the Cold War, extended property rights, the diminishing of local democracy and the failure to address escalating social breakdown. Possibly it would mention her devoted husband, her wayward son and her relentless work ethic. It should end with some detail of how she was deposed.

I shouldn’t have bothered waiting.

The BBC’s coverage was a blatant and pathetic attempt to score points against the Conservative Party on account of it not having more female MPs. On were wheeled two female MPs - one Conservative, one Labour - and the Labour MP proceeded to demonstrate just why it is that all-female lists - such a patronising way of selecting by gender - are no good. She - like a number of her New Labour female counterparts - was abysmal.

Of course, the unstated undercurrent of the whole business is that if women don’t represent 50% of Parliament then there’s discrimination taking place (what else could it possibly be?) and that, in the scheme of things the Conservatives - predictably - are the most discriminatory of the lot. Yawn.

I’m not going to go into the whys and wherefores of social engineering parliament so that it has the ‘correct’ number of blacks, Hindus, Muslims, women, gays, one-legged single-parent lesbians…. But I am enraged that, days after the BBC has the nerve to demand more of our cash it then shows us so unashamedly what it is our cash will be spent on.