Let us consider today – introducing a Scrooge-like concern with economy amid the festive fun – the matter of money extracted from some of the nation’s poorest people to lavish on the pleasures of the rich.

My eye is on the BBC and the Royal Opera House, both of them run in swift succession by Tony Hall, ‘Head Prefect’ to a generation of Private Eye readers and now with his snout in the trough as a member of the House of Lords.

Mention of ‘Head Prefect’ reminds me that it is some time since I have seen the epithet used in the Eye, or indeed anything approaching Beeb-bashing in the publication. Perhaps this reflects the fact that its editor, Ian Hislop, derives a substantial part of his income from the corporation.

Of the House of Lords – that ongoing political disgrace – it may be noted that Nicky Morgan is going there to continue as Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. In this role she takes ultimate responsibility for funding matters at both the Royal Opera House and the BBC.

She stepped down from the Commons before the election, you might remember, to devote more time to family life and had also said she would not serve under Boris Johnson. Here’s a woman true to her word!

The steady stocking-up of the Lords by all the main political parties is a long-standing scandal.

Tories promoted this year include Nicola Blackwood – rejected by the voters of Oxford West and Abingdon – and Stephen Parkinson, a former advisor to Theresa May. At 40 and 36 respectively, they can look forward to decades of luxury living on the £313 a day (and ever-rising) attendance allowance.

Now Boris’s pal Zak Goldsmith, another Tory who lost his seat, is being made a lord as well.

The Liberal Democrats’ former leader Jo Swinson is rumoured to be heading for the red benches too. Said the interim party co-leader Sir Ed Davey: “Jo was a friend and a colleague, and I want her back in parliament as soon as possible.” That’s all right then.

And as for Labour, well Jeremy Corbyn said there would be no nominations from him, before promptly ennobling Shami Chakrabarti immediately after her highly convenient exoneration of the party in her report on anti-Semitism. “Whitewash for peerages,” said Board of Deputies Vice President Marie van der Zyl.

But back to ‘Baroness Morgan’. As a fan, apparently, of Classic FM, and therefore clearly not a serious lover of music, one of her first priorities should be to end the £24m annual subsidy to the ROH.

This is stratospherically higher than what is given by Arts Council England to any other organisation, including the Royal National Theatre with its three stages.

Opera is an enthusiasm of the rich – observably so at Covent Garden with the popping of champagne corks and the gorging on lobsters – and the rich should pay for every penny of their fun. Glyndebourne gets no grant, no more do those other opera company ‘Gs’ of Garsington, Grange Park and the Grange Festival.

It was interesting to note in The Times’s report of the recent assault in the ROH auditorium during Richard Wagner’s Siegfried that the assailant’s front row seats cost a thumping (the mot juste) £1,200.

The seat behind from which the interloper (and victim) advanced to secure a better view cost a mere £356. While one can’t condone Matthew Feargreave’s actions, I can see where he was coming from. If Ulrich Engler wanted a front row seat he should have paid for it.

The ROH used to have strict rules (like airlines and train companies) about people ‘upgrading’. Are these now being waived?

My beef with the BBC – besides an objection to Radio 4 Extra’s ongoing celebration of self-confessed child molester John Peel – is over its relentless political correctness, so out of tune with many of those paying the annual tax that is the television licence.

This was seen in spades in the recent BBC1 six-part (six hour!) thriller Gold Digger, about a 60-year-old woman’s proposed marriage to a man of 30.

In real life, we know how such a union is likely to end – suicide in a burned-out car on the Ridgeway in the case of one old lady I knew.

You can guess how it ended here.

The creation of scriptwriter Marnie Dickens, the serial was weapons-grade tosh, with stilted dialogue, unlikely action and lousy acting. The sight of Julia Ormond ranging the rocks of a Cornish beach in her wedding dress, blood dripping from her mouth, after a brutal encounter with her former husband, had all the emotional heft of a Benny Hill sketch.

The scale of the disaster prompted me to wonder about Ms Dickens. A trawl of the internet revealed only a catalogue of her work, mostly on feminist themes, and the fact that she was brought up in the Chilterns and Oxford-educated (though not at which college). This smells to me of a cover-up, which in turn leads me to suspect her ascent in the world of television has not been unassisted.