I'm a fairly placid person as those who know me will vouch for. I don't easily get hot under the collar and quite happily let things drift by.

But today I'm afraid I really got steamed up as the copy of the e-mail sent to the BBC tonight demonstrates. My apologies for its length but not for its content.

To the BBC
Dear Sir / Madam

During the course of today I have watched the BBC reporting the state visit to this country of Mr.Bush. I have been apalled at the general tenor of the coverage, the consistent and insistent tendency throughout the day of those reporting it not to lift their myopic minds out of their anti-Bush and anti-American rut and their persistent discourtesy and less than thinly veiled hostility to the whole affair.

One has a right surely to expect the BBC to provide accurate, informed and balanced reporting and comment? Today it has done none of these things. Your presenter outside Buckingham Palace this morning, a Mr Hanrahan, spent virtually the whole time making negative, dubious and condescending comments about Mr. Bush and the visit, emphasising time and time again his perception of the 'smallness of the crowd', (although we were never properly shown its size or whether in fact it could have been larger, given the security measures in force), and holding an off-camera debate with some unknown and rather bemused American, a debate almost solely based on Mr Hanrahan's perception of Mr Bush's supposed unpopularity.

Thankfully we were shown Mr. Bush's speech later in the morning in full, without the same negative commentary, but this evening I read on your website the following report:

'US President George W Bush has carried out his first day of engagements in Britain despite protesters on the streets and a row over royal security.

The president, the first to be afforded a state visit, met the Queen at Buckingham Palace before giving a keynote speech at Banqueting House.

He used this to mount an impassioned defence of the war on Iraq.

Meanwhile an investigation was launched after a journalist posed as a footman in the palace where Mr Bush is staying.'

This is not 'balanced reporting' but clearly written to forward the agenda of hostility so clearly demonstrated throughout the day by your news service, and is neither accurate nor balanced. Mr. Bush carrried out his first day of engagements, not "despite protesters on the streets and a row over royal security" but because not to do so would have been as discourteous to the Queen and the people of this country as apparently the BBC wishes to be towards himself and the country he represents. To lead your report with this biased nonsense lets the BBC down as well as this country.

In the second paragraph, whilst historically accurate, makes deliberate use of the expression 'afforded' which is both condescending and carries the implication that the 'cost' of the visit is an important factor, doubtless one which would remind the reader of the many references made in your reporting over the past few days to the expense associated with the extra security unfortunately necessary.

If the third paragraph is an accurate, balanced and complete description of Mr Bush's speech this morning then I was clearly watching an entirely different speech to whoever wrote this paragraph. I saw and heard a speech which was much more than simply a defence of the war in Iraq, a speech which with clarity and conviction laid out the reasons that America and Britain took action to remove Saddam Hussein, and a speech in which Mr. Bush recognised the contribution this country has, and is making, to the war on terrorism. It was a statesman like speech in which he laid out clearly what is at stake in both Iraq and the Middle East and why this backward region poses the threat it does, both to its own people and to ours.

The fourth paragraph is simply irrelevant. If the BBC wishes to associate itself with the disgusting and distasteful tactics of the gutter press in this matter then it deserves neither its priveleged position nor its reputation.

In summary therefore today has not been a good day for the BBC. It has not in my view lived up to either its reputation nor its Charter.

Yours sincerely
etc.