Repeats

I am bemused to read that a Mr Foster, who speaks on culture for our great party, is exercised by the phenomenon of entertainment "repeats". Mr Foster, it seems, thinks it is wrong that the public should be required to watch anything but new entertainments on Christmas Day. "People are fed up with Christmas because of repeats," he is reported to have stated.

I have endeavoured to build understanding and appreciation of this phenomenon called television over the last few weeks. It contains much to amuse and much to distract and I have cause to wonder how a population that continues to work to earn a wage can possibly embrace all it has to offer. It has expanded considerably in recent years, I understand, so it is now within the bounds of possibility to choose to view a continuous selection of "repeats".

It has been my experience that great stories always bear repeated consideration. I think in particular of the epic stories of Homer and Virgil. To take a more recent example, Mr Dickens released his stories in instalments but then bound them in books so we could peruse them at leisure.

I am bemused therefore why Mr Foster thinks the masses are so starved of entertainment that they will not appreciate a fresh viewing of modern classics, if indeed they are classics, at a time when they have the leisure to imbibe them whilst in the bosom of the family. Indeed at the centre of the festivities is a story that has been repeated many thousand times since it first occurred and I would hope that all Christian families would take time during the day to consider this most wonderful of all stories.