Wow, what an outburst on Panorama last evening! (BBC1, 8.30, 4th July)

Quite clearly the BBC believes that Direct Mail is the scourge of the world. There was me thinking that the BBC used to be balanced and objective. Has it so seriously lost the Monday evening ratings that they have to produce such a partisan near-soap? (Perhaps they needed to sustain the momentum after Eastenders.)

Was presenter Tom Heap really on top of his game or was he just hell bent on venting his spleen on his personal view of direct ‘junk’ mail? Producer Andy Bell must have said, ‘Tom, m’boy, go out there, you hate direct mail. Kick arse and damn the consequences’.

The facts were badly presented; only Cornwall’s figures seemed to count in the programme. 700k pieces of ‘junk mail’ – over what periods and who counts them? They didn’t say. 3% of the overall rubbish is direct mail. (Not that bad, then.) It costs c. £119 per ton to recycle then it’s burned as fuel, they said.

On the other hand, DM drives £16billion in sales. £5.4 b is the total revenue from letters, £1.3b from advertising mail. The comment was made that without the latter, we wouldn’t have a sustainable postal service. All this was dismissed by the presenters.

The other really quirky bit of reporting came from the delivery of fast food offers, etc. They labelled this as junk mail, too. Hey, BBC, it may land on the same doormat but that’s called ‘door drops’. Hardly down to the Royal Mail.

The piece on ‘Scam Mail’ was presented as if the elderly are prey to scams at the design of the Royal Mail. You have already won £18,500 – sure, shameful exploitation of the elderly and vulnerable but the Police are on to it. Also, responses to scam mail can be habit forming, or ‘gambler’s fallacy’ as the resident psychiatrist called it. Let’s not forget that most competitions are quite legitimate. Clearly, Mr Bell thinks the Royal Mail should show some social responsibility.

The Royal Mail cannot open mail neither is it there to vet for authenticity or potential fraud, surely? One of the presenters put it that ‘the Royal Mail delivers coach loads of criminals to the elderly’. How can that comment be deemed objective?

The Direct Marketing Association taught me that if it’s relevant it’s not junk, if it’s junk, it’s not relevant. Simple. But should the Royal Mail make that call?