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The end of the century of relationship between the national broadcaster and the national weather service could not be more symbolic of the sad decline of our price-of-everything-value-of-nothing dumbed-down Britain.

The BBC has ended its contract with the Met Office because the BBC is obliged to undergo a competitive tender process. Decades of loyalty, of public service, of an intimate place in our national culture, of an idea of an important national information service provided free to all, decades of that brought to an end because some free market apparatchik can see a way to saving a couple of million.

To what end? On what will the Beeb spend the riches?

A rise in the salary of Chris Evans? Well, if somebody like Judi Dench is a National Treasure, then Chris Evans is beyond the tiniest shadow of doubt a National Twat. Can so little talent ever have won so much reward?

Talking of which, perhaps the money will go on another judge for The Voice, in which ability as gossamer-thin as Boy George’s – one-hit one-trick clothes-horse look-at-me-me-MEEEEEEE! Boy George – has the staggering arrogance to think it’s qualified to sit in judgment on others.

Or will the BBC go for an extra episode of EastEnders, or more baking, or soccer, in which more people than you would have thought possible are paid more money than you would have believed existed to say exactly the same things but in a slightly different order every single week about a game with as much going on inside it as goes on inside Wayne Rooney’s head.

Maybe the money can pay for another couple of those appalling big-budget trailers the Beeb endlessly screens, slapping them down in front of its Tory masters like a big sign saying: ‘Go on, watch us abusing our public service monopoly, go on, watch this – we can show you how to waste a licence fee, we can help you justify turning the once-great BBC into a cross between ITV and Dante’s seventh layer of hell.’

Or will the Beeb use the pittance it has saved by sacking the Met Office to find new ways to insult the ghost of Logie Baird with programmes made by morons for morons.

Most of the BBC today is a puddle of brightly-coloured vomit sheening the nation’s gutter, rainbow hues of sick reflecting the bright, cheap, crass neon lights of our soul right back in our face. This latest decision shows just how low the Beeb will stoop, and how little it deserves our support.

Of its great history and public service remit – inform, educate, entertain – only Radio 4 (sometimes), Radio 3, Radio 6 Music, BBC4 and bits of BBC2 remain.

When they go – as they will, under this government that cares nothing for the things of the intellect, the conscience or the soul in a climate that wishes only next week’s quick profit at any expense – this country will have lost a chunk of its history, but more than that, will have lost something that once brought us all together, a repository of our dreams and laughter and tears and life as a nation, the place where our triumphs, tragedies and memories lived, our place.

But we will have a cheap weather forecast, perfectly in tune with our cheap BBC.

Meanwhile, the sneers about Jeremy Corbyn dragging us into the past continue. I see 41 economists signed a letter to the press on Sunday saying that his approach – active state intervention to stimulate a controlled economy in which essential services are organised for the benefit of the users, not the owners, to ensure stability for all – are far from a return to the past. In fact, said the group, his is the very approach suggested by the International Monetary Fund, for one example, and the IMF is hardly an outpost of socialism.

As Corbyn himself has pointed out, it’s the free market that’s endlessly dragging us back into the past, via Cameron and his 1979 rhetoric of controlling the unions and reds under the bed and get-rich-quick privatisations.

Indeed, the free market seems set on dragging us into the past again this week, as the world once again fails to realise its fortunes should not be left in the hands of clueless greed-mongers snuffling in the stockmarket trough for a quick buck when what we need is a system that ensures a long-term future where the needs of more are met. Just as in 2008-9 and all those times before, recession looms.

When will we ever learn? When will people ever remember the world they abuse with their share deals and privatisations actually got rich through socialist public ownership and state economic intervention after World War Two?

But that’s not the past of which the right wing cares to remind us.

Meanwhile, Peter Mandelson, Tony Blair, Alastair Campbell and their acolytres, the very souls of power before principle, are saying Corbyn represents the Labour Party’s past, not its future. Well, if they’re the future, give me the Dark Ages any time. They got power. And then they created Public Finance Initiatives which enriched the market at the cost of the taxpayer, invaded Iraq in an illegal war that killed thousands, and handed victory back to their Tory cousins after failing to protect the NHS, failing to protect the poor, disabled and elderly from being treated as cash cows by the public services. What right have they to discuss the Labour Party? How dare they?

Corbyn s the bogeyman to them, to the media, to the establishment. And the public – well, the over-60s certainly believe all the dumbed-down rubbish peddled to them, because it suits what remains of their consciences to believe they could not have so cataclysmically betrayed their legacy of opportunity and social justice.

Anybody younger knows the world cannot go on as it is, and dares to believe that Corbyn is just a symbol of the shape of things to come, rather than a ghost of the past.

And finally on the subject this week, I have to say I can’t sum up the issue of the Labour Party’s relationship with Jeremy Corbyn any better than in Simon Parker’s superb piece in last Saturday’s Western Morning News, in which he wrote:

‘My dad and mum are part of the Labour family; it’s in their DNA. So when the likes of Blair, Brown, Campbell and Mandelson now challenge the authenticity of people like them for supporting the movement being led by Jeremy Corbyn, it’s nothing short of a personal affront. Now in their eighties, my parents are faithful, traditional Labour Party supporters, part of the generation that ensured victory in 1945 and ushered in a brave new world of fairness and tolerance for a Britain scarred by years of war and deprivation. They were young, idealistic, and ready to campaign for what they believed was right. Sound familiar? This isn’t a history lesson; the ideals so eloquently espoused by the likes of Nye Bevan are as relevant today as they were back then – yet we are being led to believe that anyone in 2015 who supports a publicly-funded NHS, nationalised utilities and railways, and higher taxes for the rich is in some way “extreme”.

‘Far from looking backwards, this movement – and it is a “movement” not a personality cult – led by Jeremy Corbyn is progressive and moderate. Yes, moderate. To me, and to the tens of thousands supporting Corbyn’s election as leader, the “extremists” in the Labour Party are those who refuse to condemn the Tories’ welfare cuts and who refuse to condemn austerity economics. To us, the extremists in the Labour Party are those who introduced market forces to the NHS, who brought in university tuition fees, and who led us into an illegal war which fomented such unrest in the Middle East that they, and we, are likely to suffer the terrifying repercussions for years to come.’