I was sat watching the news on BBC television at lunchtime today (normally it would be RTE news, but they were showing live coverage of an Ireland-Australia Gaelic/Aussie rules football match). It being 21^st October and it being the bicentenary of the Battle of Trafalgar, there was much coverage of the events marking the battle in 1805.

At one point in the news report, there was footage of a large sailing ship cutting through the water.At the corner of the screen it said, “Reconstruction”. What else would it be? Are they seriously suggesting that, had they not put the caption on the screen, someone might imagine this was original news footage from Cape Trafalgar?

(Can you imagine the event if the media covered it now? “Breaking news: We are going over to our reporter on the deck of HMS Victory to see if we can get any final word from Lord Nelson)

The BBC is wonderful; it is unrivalled as a broadcaster on the world stage, but why assume that people are ignorant? Why dumb everything down?

If people are so daft as to think there was live television coverage of the Battle of Trafalgar, it doesn’t seem likely that they would be watching the BBC lunchtime news, which included items such as the Tory leadership campaign

I haven’t felt so exasperated since I opened a box of Weetabix and discovered that the flap inside the box had instructions on how to open the cellophane packets.

Saint Paul writing to the Christians at Philippi said, “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things”.

Paul’s advice would make a good benchmark for broadcasters; perhaps they would stop treating us as stupid.