Nadine Dorries, in her opinion piece for the Mail on Sunday, said that Channel 4s 'salad days are in the past.'
Opinion pieces in billionaire-owned newspapers are a great way for people with power and access to blast the rest of us for being wrong (in their opinion.)
Isn't it handy we have social media?!
'Salad days' - do you know the phrase? It means the days of 'carefree innocence, idealism, risk and pleasure associated with youth.'
Sounds good doesn't it? Sounds like they're worth protecting? Especially living in these days of jaded cynicism and greed, where Profit and Power are increasingly gods.
If there was ever a time to protect hope, idealism, a space for dreaming - a space for imagining better alternatives - then 2022 has to be it.
The world is in turmoil.
Look where the shameless pursuit of profit, greed and power has got us. What a mess. The Amazon burning, bushfires in Australia, melting glaciers, war, economic hardship, turbulence, uncertainty and through-the-roof mental health problems for our young people.
Our young people need us, for once, to look after their salad days - to enable them to hope, to enable them to create, to enable them to dream, to give them a chance to speak and be heard, to value what they have to offer.
Young people need to not constantly be told that they are green, inexperienced, and unrealistic.
Young people need to not constantly be told they are naive, foolish and plain wrong.
Young people need to not constantly be told that they are not allowed to stand up for what they believe in.
Young people need to not constantly be told that what they have to offer won't find an audience, a market, a buyer - that it won't be Profitable.
Let's keep signing and sharing. Let's keep the salad days rolling, because Channel 4 offers opportunities for idealism, hope and dreaming.
Let's keep on trying to protect what we believe in from those who do not even recognise its value.
Isn't that what culture is for, Culture Secretary? A place to dream..
'Derry Girls put us on the map'