Saw this on Guido originally and thought exactly the same as the Telegraph fella….but thought nah!…must be more to this bloke Davie than that…….
A rude, swaggering barrow boy. Meet the Beeb’s new (acting) DG – worse than the old one
Seems not.
Only blessing is there’s only one of him…Not Davies!
Straight out of the Andy Burnham school of Div 2 football manager soundalikes.
Still, I bet his editorial judgement on ‘climate change’ is impeccable.
I heard him on R4 news. Clearly, he took elocution lessons from Blairite cabinet favourites and majored in the glottal stop.
Oh, and the complete lack of charm, too. Mustn’t forget that.
He looked like he was presenting the Pepsi sales figures for The Isle of Mull and the Scottish Islands sales rep asked him a question that wasn’t on his FAQ crib.
So lets totally denigrate someone we don’t know, know nothing about and be insulting as possible.
Where is all your insider info then? Not one original story about the BBC but rehashes of everyone else’s blogs as usual. Who is the guy, what has he done?
No, its easier to insult.
How sad.
Good performance in your book, then, Prole?
Where do you work – UAF Head Office?
SWP, more likely. Every hour they spend trolling on on the blogs / message boards of groups they hate is deducted from the length of their compulsory stints of selling Socialist Worker at bus and tube stations.
socialist workers party
now there’s an oxymoron if ever i heard one
most of that shower of wasters wouldn’t know a day’s work if it jumped up and bit them
You have a point insofar as it goes Prole.
Far too easy to have a go at someone because of their accent.
However, that aside, he seems as astoundingly unimpressive as George Entwistle.
He seems to be the product of a self selecting group of apparatchiks and the gene pool has become steadily diminished until it provides to likes of Entwistle and Davie.
One can well understand why David Dimbleby is calling for an outsider and ‘restructuring’.
What you have now, I would hazard a guess, is the product of self-perpetuating lefties, spouting the right jargon and the ‘correct thoughts’ to advance their careers, at the expense of people with genuine talent and integrity.
If there are two things that say all that need to be said about how utterly degraded the BBC as an institution has become, its ‘Department of Vision’ & ‘Head of Vision’.
A Neill or D Dimbleby for DG.
If either of these come in – or anyone! – and changes ‘Human Resources’ to ‘Personnel’, make them Prime Minister!
So lets totally denigrate someone we don’t know, know nothing about and be insulting as possible
I know! And we can’t even use the viewing figures for Strictly Come Dancing to justify doing it!
Bit silly prole isn`t it?
Listen to “Feedback” on Sunday.
Davie was saying how “passionate” he was about radio-and local radio in particular as i recall.
He was spouting like a geezer too about digital coverage…as if paying a few hundred extra quid for a radio that won`t receive the Asian network is somehow a “great opportunity” for we saps who threw our tellies away, because we had to…for digital.
Funnily enough, no worries about the environmental land fill and criminal waste of perfectly good tellies…green crap eh?
Prole-Davie will clearly be passionate about whatever job spec he has that day-a marketing no mark, bizarrely “in charge” of the BBC.
We need an Alex Ferguson-we get a Wilf McGuinness!
Bishop Hill has just hammered another nail into the BBC’s rotten coffin.
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2012/11/12/bbc-climate-28-revealed.html
Maurizio Morabito has unearthed the list of 28 “experts” who set the Corporations lying policy on AGW.
Forget Prole – he’s dead in the (intellectual) water. The BBC’s ‘journalistic integrity’ is now the very definition of a busted flush.
What on earth was the BBC head of comedy doing there?
And how much did it cost them (us) to try and keep that quiet? I hope that is publicly added to the list of “trustworthy” activities that the BBC indulge in – it knocks Savile and McAlpine into a cocked hat…
The elephant in the room in all this “trust the BBC” nonsense is it’s unashamed left wing bias, which I noticed on Toady this morning, someone had twigged and mentioned, to much spluttering from the other interviewee. Maybe they think the current furore will cloud the true issues at stake.
“BBC head of comedy”
They have one?
“So far, 6 seminars have taken place. They have had a significant impact on the BBC’s
output”
Oh dear oh dear….
There are some questions being asked about Ms. Boaden’s reliability.
I am wondering if her confidence in an early return from gardening leave may yet prove premature.
We are also now seeing the link between the BBC and government (the US?) and our judiciary being called into question.
House of cards springs to mind.
Comedy Gold, I liked the reflection in the glass of his BBC handler telling him what to say.
Only one person can save the BBC, step forward Diane Abbott, she fits all the tick box requirements.
1. Black
2. Feminist
3. Socialist / Marxist
Davie has been installed by BBC Trust to revive public confidence in the Corp. The public are the BBC’s shareholders. Sites like this are the equivalent of an extraordinary general meeting as they are the one place to get a fair hearing, unfiltered by a moderator.
So Prole, if you have shares in a company that is failing and a new CEO is put in place by the board and he/she performed at the EGM like Davie did I believe you would question the wisdom of his appointment. He might have amazing talents, as we are told George did, but he is the public face of this £5BN corporation and he has sent the share price of the BBC further down the pan today.
The comments may offend your sensibilities but that is the way of this medium. You choose to join in it too.
And it is legally a private organisation now after the Newbery FOI failure, so it has to bide by the same rules.
“legally a private organisation now after the Newbery FOI failure” and financed by tax money.
A “rude, swaggering barrow boy” he indeed is – perhaps they teach them to try and pass off as working class at Whitgift public school in Croydon to give them more street cred when applying for public sector parasite jobs.
Besides, the metros like a bit of rough, hence the move to Salford (and then back home again to Hampstead).
By private charter flight, on expenses and screw the carbon footprint, that ecobullshit is for all the little people who we extract the licence fee from.
Besides we have the list of 28 “experts” who gave the BBC the unbiased, scientific proof they needed to justify coming down on the alarmist side of the climate change argument.
Funny how I cannot find anyone in that list I would consider an impartial expert, or even an expert for that matter.
Paxman and Kirsty Squawk as I predicted ran away, hid and didn’t present Mondays edition of Newsnight .
They got some sock puppet instead.
Stage Performer Maitlis has been doing Newnsight for a while now. Not a new person rushed in to cover.
Maybe she was unaware of the current controversy by only reading ‘Heat’ magazine’s ‘Back to our roots’ special?
Choice, or restricted versions of it, seem to define market rate deeds and subsequent excuses.
Beeboid ‘Acting’ D.G., Mr DAVIE is an English graduate, and spent much of his adult life as a marketing man selling Pepsi Cola to Africans/Europeans.
During his recent stint in charge of BBC Radio, he did not exactly act decisively, but backtracked instead of making ‘cuts’:-
‘Wikipedia’-
“In early 2010 Tim Davie was responsible for the decision to close the specialist music station, BBC Radio 6 Music and BBC Asian Network.The decision about 6 Music led to an unprecedented campaign generating over 60,000 petition signatures, 50,000 complaints to the BBC trust and over 2.5 million visits to the website dedicated to saving 6Music at love6music.com. There were two protests at BBC Broadcasting House in March 2010 and the following May.
“Following the announcement of closure, the publicity generated by the ‘Save 6Music’ campaigners resulted in a huge surge in listener numbers at a pace that the BBC had been unable to achieve before. By the end on March 2010, listener numbers had risen from about 700,000 to around 1 million. By the time that the BBC Trust announced that they had listened to the campaigners and were rejecting the closure proposals of the executive board in July 2010, listener numbers were at almost 1.4 million – almost double that at the start of the campaign. It was later announced that BBC Asian Network would also continue to broadcast.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Davie
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, the grumpy old buffers who inhabit this site are upset because the acting DG doesn’t sound like Alvar Liddell with a broomstick up his backside. Shame so many of the traditionalists here can’t traditionally spell or punctuate properly. Only surprised nobody has yet drawn attention to the fact that the chap wasn’t wearing a tie………still, never mind, you can all masturbate over the exciting news of the care home closure in Stoke, can’t you?
I’m quite amazed you’ve been able to write a comment in between smoking a joint and listening to Bob Dylan CD’s
What year is it in your world , 1972 ?
Ps. Are you wearing a Che Guevara Tshirt ?
“still, never mind, you can all masturbate over the exciting news of the care home closure in Stoke, can’t you?”
think the one who would have been doing that over a care home would have been BBC EMPLOYEE JIMMY SAVILLE
And several other BBC employees. There are about 30 of them being investigated at the moment apparently.
This has nothing whatsoever to do with his accent which he has grown up with. We all have one. It is his choice of appearance, his presentation and his obvious intolerance to questioning by outsiders.
Having witnessed one DG crash and burn and the Chairman initially snub Sky on Sunday, then give a tetchy response slating Murdoch, I expected a much better and more courteous appearance by Davie and he was poor to say the least. I would hope he finds the criticism of value and he works on his presentation. That is all.
“can’t traditionally spell”
So why did a BBC News headline only a few days ago say “patten” instead of “pattern”? Not an isolated case.
Why are so many BBC interviewers incapable of phrasing a question concisely and grammatically?
Going quite well Stephen until the ad hominem at the end.
Now why should it be that so many Tory hating far leftists are so keen to defend the BBC?
“you can all masturbate over the exciting news …”
Do I detect some in-house BBC irony here. Wasn’t it the BBCs Jonathon Ross who suggested on BBC radio to Russelll Brand that they would do that to Andrew Sachs?
Stephen, Ross’ humour is from the gutter, that he could air such things on BBC radio, says a lot about the moral crisis at the BBC before Savile.
I feel ashamed, I admit. I’ve almost burst my sides laughing at the BBC’s Keystone cops routine today yet I know that beneath it are very serious issues -of child abuse and deliberate slander. But such is the level of ineptitude, I really cannot help myself. I suspect this is all a carefully scripted Chris Morris comedy, and will be revealed as such by Terry Wogan on Friday. Perhaps this is the most well planned and skilfully executed stunt in Children in Need history?
Surely Patten could not be so idiotic as to lead one incompetent buffoon out via the front door only to bring in another one via the back? Both of these men were handpicked for the top by Patten, a man whose duty is to serve the license payer, although everyone now (even David Dimbleby) agrees that Entwistle was not up to the job, it was a nice little earner for him.
“A nice little earner, my son!” is exactly what I expect Delboy, I mean Tim Davie, said when Patten found him wandering aimlessly around the corridors of Broadcasting house and offered him the Director-generalship, “lubberly jubberly”!
Maybe Patten is really a very rightwing Tory sleeper programmed by Thatcher to destroy the BBC. Only that can explain his suicidal behaviour. All these years of wet leftist bien pensant europhillia have just been a front.
The approved BBC narrative is developing.
Pepsi bloke says….
It was all the fault of some mysterious layer of middle management, guv!
But wasn’t it down to a coincidence of very poor journalism combined with a desperate wish to get a hit on a Thatcher Era Tory?
Listening to 5 Live this morning I really wouldn’t really be able to tell the difference between the news and current affairs content and a Labour Party political broadcast.
The BBC: It’s a lost cause.
” It was Twitter wot done it, they stitched up Newsnight.”
That’s the script / excuse.
Oh look, Labour spin doctor Alistair Campbell is the go-to guy for Nikky Campbell on 5 Live.
Just the man to tell us licence payers what we should think about the BBC crisis.
They really are circling the wagons and who do the “impartial BBC” turn to in a crisis?
LABOUR spin doctors.
Who did the BBC lash out and attack without sufficient evidence, in this crisis, so as to attempt to distract everyone from their own perverted history?
TORIES!
That alone tells you that the BBC IS an institutionally biased, institutionally corrupt, untrustworthy child abusing organisation and it is NOT fit to hold a broadcast licence.
Yesterday the BBC top Brass were saying that they would regain trust because they are the best broadcaster in the world. Utter arrogant out-of-touch CRAP!!!
The best broadcaster in the world? No, the sickest? Definitely!
Nicky ” I did not know Jimmy Savile ” Campbell has just said to Conservative MP Peter Oborne ” Are you in favour of torture ? ”
Huh ?
Correction, Peter Bone.
I worked for the BBC for over ten years (primarily on music research and data for jazz and classical music). I first came across this site a few years back and was surprised at the vitriol regularly hurled at the organisation. I was and still am proud to have worked there on things like the Proms etc etc. The BBC prides itself (notionally at any rate) on impartiality but what I read here has at least made me think a bit once I’d stopped laughing.. I think a lot of the comments here are way off beam, but there’s some truth in that some stories seem a little unbalanced, particularly with regard to which contributors are chosen. But this works both ways – David Starkey, Peter Hitchens and so on seem to get a lot of airtime (maybe not as much as Billy Bragg perhaps). It’s worth remembering that the last DG to resign suddenly did so after the BBC had upset a ‘Labour’ government (a government I personally found to be way more dishonest and two-faced than any other I’ve experienced. At least Thatcher was honest).
The Newsnight thing stinks, but if it was an attempt to discredit Thatcher-era tories it seems like a peculiarly stupid way to go about it even when you think about it for more than a few seconds. And I can’t think of another national broadcaster anywhere whose DG would be subjected to the kind of grilling George Entwistle got on the Today programme. As I’m writing The World At One is running a story on Margaret Moran’s case. Is that bias?
The big problem the BBC has is that the landscape has changed and that it’s trying to compete in a market it doesn’t understand and is funded in an outmoded way. I think it needs slimming down massively. The recent comments from Paxman and Danny Baker about the prevalence of middle management and the increasing bureacracy around compliance ring true to me at any rate and make it doubly puzzling that something like the Newsnight cockup could happen.
Sorry I’ve been rather unfocussed on this. Standing by for ad hominem attacks…:)
If its ad hominem you want, you’ve come to the right place! (Well, with some of B-BBC’s over enthusiatic comentariat).
“I was and still am proud to have worked there on things like the Proms etc etc.”
And so you should be, James Naughtie’s grating involvement withstanding.
“The Newsnight thing stinks, but if it was an attempt to discredit Thatcher-era tories it seems like a peculiarly stupid way to go about it even when you think about it for more than a few seconds.”
OK, I’ve thought about it for a few seconds, nay a couple of minutes even, and I’m still just as utterly bewildered as when I first read it.
Would you care to suggest what a ‘few seconds thought’ is expected to come up with?
As Lord Tebbo has indicated (see other thread), Newsnight was (partly) so keen to sieze upon child sex abuse allegations against Lord McAlpine because ‘Senior Thatcher Tory Paedophile’ was just to hard to resist for this BBC bastion of left-wing la-la land. What else do you think would have so clouded the judgement of otherwise first class investigative journalists that it never occurred to even one of them to show Mr Messham period photos of Lord McAlpine for a positive ID? A few seconds thought I warrant you would be an unneccessary luxury.
‘a peculiarly stupid way to go about it’
Actually a work of genius as the latest seppuku thrust is self-delivered, this time (subject to confirmation) by the genetically perfect Martin Plaut, BBC World Service Africa editor
thanks for the welcome. my point was that the truth on the McAlpine debacle was bound to come out, so if the BBC was going to stitch someone up, they’d do it properly, surely. Even someone working on a student rag in the 60s would have done more research and cross-checking than Newsnight seemed to manage. I think you may have a point (to an extent) about left wing bias in some coverage (even I am picking it up on occasion), but I reckon this is just a cock up. As was Gilligab’s allegedly. And we lost a DG then too, thanks to Blair.
‘thanks for the welcome.’
You are most.. welcome.
And I hope you are further pleased to find the expected, even predicted ad homs did not appear.
As am I, as I have found they can do so if some feel heat may serve to draw away from the light.
The reason is you have politely made your point and laid out why free of any ‘enhancements’ designed to provoke or pronouncements that do no more than confirm irony-free arrogance.
‘the truth on the McAlpine debacle was bound to come out, so if the BBC was going to stitch someone up, they’d do it properly, surely.
Are you aware of the Peter Principle?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle
‘”employees tend to rise to their level of incompetence.” “
Now, looking at Mess. Patten, Thompson, Entwhistle, Davie, Rippon & Ms. Boaden’s ‘performance’s’ to date, I’d have to say that they do seem to fit the definition to a T..’BBC’, and such ineptitude at market rate level appears credible.
Even someone working on a student rag in the 60s would have done more research and cross-checking than Newsnight seemed to manage.
No argument. Remind me, beyond my student uni fees, how much was I compelled to fund such efforts?
‘I think you may have a point (to an extent) about left wing bias in some coverage’
I’d say the extent is fairly extensive, and as my experience with BBC CECUTT has shown, bias-hunting alone is a fool’s errand in practical terms (the BBC complaints system bins any under that heading at first hurdle, unless from an MP, when they trot out ‘we are impartial because we say so’… and then bin it), and while it needs to be noted/highlighted I focus and am more interested in professional lapses and clear Charter-busting breaches of integrity.
In this we share the horror at the activities of the BBC’s flagship news magazine programme, and I am sure you will come to reflect more critically on how they described a secret meeting held to shape climate policy. Or the initial and ongoing reactions to a member of staff using office hours and facilities to break the law, allegedly, in view of ever more (on record) staff.
‘..but I reckon this is just a cock up.’
Unfortunate word break on my part, but I still have to disagree.
As was Gilligab’s allegedly. And we lost a DG then too, thanks to Blair.
That was a different time, but worth bearing in mind.
I am not tribal politically. Cameron, Clegg, Miliband, Brown, Blair… all cut from the same soiled sheet.
Hence despite the BBC’s best efforts to politicise everything, I cannot support the notion often made in their supposed defence of ‘two wrongs make an excuse’.
It doesn’t. It makes for hypocrisy.
And I am fed up uniquely funding it by compulsion with zero indication it will ever change, or even be offered to public option.
I am sure most people will attack the falsities in what you have written, rather than attack you.
For example…
“As I’m writing The World At One is running a story on Margaret Moran’s case. Is that bias?”
I have not heard the broadcast which you speak of, but in general terms, that depends upon whether they are defending her, or giving the full story?
Are they blaming the 2001 labour government change in policy which changed the allowances system to become so corrupt that she could even attempt what she did, let alone get away with it for so long? Or are they doing their level best to distance her from the labour party which encouraged her actions?
You claim the problem is the size of the middle management. The problem is not just the amount of middle management (and how ironic that BBC stars now complain of bureaucracy in a state funded organisation, but are the first to complain when any of that pen-pushing is cut. The left love to invent bureaucracy, the right love to cut it, that is another clue as to the political leaning of the BBC culture).
But the big problem which has been allowed to develop over decades, is one of culture. The BBC recruits mostly from the same sort of people who think the same sort of things and who have the same ideals. This is a very narrow, politically correct, liberal left worldview. People who do not share that worldview do not last long in the BBC.
For the broadcaster that promotes “diversity” in all things, there is remarkably little diversity of thought or opinion permitted.
Yes, there are occasional and rare exceptions. Occasional and rare criticisms from the right, instead of the left, but they are SO rare, when they should be equal in number to criticisms of policy from those on the left.
The BBC is GROSSLY biased. Just listen to who they are getting to defend them during these latest scandals (from paedophilia to tax avoidance to tory witch-hunts et al). Labour spokespeople all. Look at who they are attacking, tory after tory after tory.
The whole tory paedophile smear campaign is a direct consequence of the BBC’s visceral hatred of the right wing.
The BBC’s output now gives fair, uncritical, even supportive coverage of ANY minority view which can be described as liberal-left in tone.
It is presented as a serious mainstream view, even if only held by a couple of thousand people.
Yet any view of the right, even when held by a clear majority of people, such as wanting to withdraw from the EU, is presented as the view of an insignificant lunatic fringe and is reported with ridicule.
How is that NOT biased?
I am sure most people will attack the falsities in what you have written, rather than attack you.
Prophesies that are designed to be self-fulfilling can often disappoint.
One is sure a false flag and knee jerk offence can still be arranged mind.
“As I’m writing The World At One is running a story on Margaret Moran’s case. Is that bias?”
About 30 minutes ago on News 24 we were informed that (effectively, but due to the technicality that she wasn’t in court) Margaret Moran was found guilty (not of theft) but of “fiddling expenses” according to the report. Then we were shown a couple of minutes of recordings of Moran (before her illness and trial) both at her home and in the Commons denying that she had fiddled expenses. The report ended with a shot of Moran’s shuttered office in her old constituency.
So the BBC report on News 24 comprised:
1. about 10 seconds of the jury ruling (that she submitted false expense claims) theft;
2. about 90 seconds of her pleading her innocence; and
3. about 10 seconds of her old constituency office with a voice-over saying not a lot.
That isn’t “impartiality”; that is quasi-advocacy consisting of the implication that despite the verdict there’s a possibility that she’s innocent after all and, if you don’t believe us, here’s her saying so.
I should add that the online report is more comprehensive and details her crimes. However, as far as the broadcast medium is concerned (and that’s the one most people receive their news from), I doubt that a Conservative MP would be similarly indulged.
But there aren’t any Conservative (or Liberal Democrat) MPs who have fraudulently claimed expenses. The five who have been convicted (will be six when McShane goes down) are all Labour.
True but so what? My point is that had Moran been Conservative it is highly doubtful that a News 24 report on the outcome of her trial would have left the impression that, despite the jury’s findings, she might be innocent.
Not at all Percy!
A good and honourable account, as far as I`m concerned.
I love radio 3 , and at its best, the BBC can be very good.
Trouble is say that…then I wake up to hear Radio $ sneering at Starbucks etc for not paying taxes.
Margaret Hodge as chief prosecutor…and not a peep about HER double dealing hypocrisy in regard of this and her family trust…now had that been a Tory? Imagine!
If the BBC stuck to its brief and was balanced and apolitical, I`d be fine with it…but its continual lefty narrative and tub thumping has angered enough of us to hate their sly slanting of the news…24/7.
We`re all aware of it, and hate being taken for Pyongyang pew fillers begging for Vince and Mandelson to sort out the toffs…their pernicious bias reminds me of a Wimbledon crowd feigning interest and fairness, but hating Ivanisevich with a quiet fury as he beats Henman.
The BBC need to be “knocked off their f***in perch”…to quote Fergie-no fan of the Beeb either(PBUH)
Percy,
Welcome and thanks for braving the Lion’s den with an honest post. I personally think some people here do go over the top in their search for bias sometimes but that is not to say that a huge amount does not exist and even the combined efforts of people here only catch a tiny amount of it.
Sometimes it is subtle. For instance the Margaret Moran story you mentioned. I saw the start of the BBC 6 0’clock news this evening and it was not mentioned. Now down here (in London) after the national news headlines there are the headlines for the local news which follows at 6.30. The Margaret Moran story was mentioned here, but with no mention of her party. The presenter, Rizla Teeth, said “The former mp for luiton South found guilty of fiddling expenses”. That was it.
Here we have a women found to have fiddled the most out of the fiddling expenses and it is not deemed a national headline. Well perhaps we can give the BBC the benefit of the doubt with ABu Qatada dominating the headlines. Perhaps. But at a local level this is a huge story but the BBC are reluctant to say she was a Labour minister?
Compare and contrast this with the Lord McAlpine headlines “Paedophile Conservative Thatcher-era” were heavily used, Can you spot the difference? And one has been a verdict reached in court, while the other was just tittle tattle.
Oh, and I had my doubts about Tim Davie when he took over from Jenny Abramsky (‘barrow boy’ was a term I heard bandied around at the time). But he’s struck me since as an honest sort. He has my sympathy.
Noted, but what do you think of his clip with Dermont Maughnihan?
Might not the point possibly be that as hapless as Mr Entwistle was, at least he took it on the chin, and was honest with his answers.
“I’ve got to go now” and silence, while edging out of the studio does, in my few, do more harm to the gravitas and dignity of the BBC than Mr Entwistle’s poor performances did.
Any ideas on who should be the next DG?
Percy, in a former life, I used to do business with the BBC that was connected to your (former) department. I know first hand that there are a number of reasonable, intelligent, talented people with integrity in many areas. I also witnessed some ridiculous bureaucracy, byzantine accounting, and – most importantly – the folly of fiefdoms. It’s obviously gotten much, much worse.
However, this has nothing to do with the bias in the News and Current Affairs, or the Left-wing bias that creeps into drama and sitcoms and Dr. Who. I have heard blatant Left-wing bias on Radio 3 on at least one occasion, but that’s another story.
You are right to be proud of your work on the Proms, etc., but this just adds support to my claim that the number one obstacle to true, drastic reform at the BBC is that most people cannot separate in their minds that stuff from the biased News department. A criticism of, say, all the Beeboids rushing to speculate without evidence that the Toulouse killer was a white supremacist yet on another occasion warning against speculation that a shooter shouting “Allahu Akbar” might be an Islamist, or of Mark Mardell declaring for three years and running that there is no legitimate opposition to the President’s policies and that the Tea Party movement is driven by crypto-racism, is not criticism of the Composer of the Week series or the “Listen to the Band” series of recordings or of Gergiev’s Mahler series with the LSO (I have other criticisms of the latter :)). This distinction must be made crystal clear.
What we’re complaining about now is that the McAlpine fiasco was ultimately caused by the entrenched ideological Left-wing bias at Newnsight and within management. The kind of “strong leadership” Davie claims the BBC suddenly needs was in place when they spiked the Savile story, and was in place when they ran the McAlpine one. The problem is that the strong leaders were and are crap. Who hired them? Who then promoted them and gave them such power? How did it come to this? The same questions apply to the journalists and producers and on-air talent around the Corporation.
Furthermore, Savile’s peak performance years (so to speak) were during the period at the BBC which Mark Thompson has described as being “massively Left-wing”. That’s not merely a claim of this blog. You will no doubt have heard stories of the period.
We fear that all these inquiries and changes at the top are going to result only in a reshuffling of biased deck chairs. At best, Davie or his successor will simply make changes to the way the bureaucracy looks – different reporting hierarchy, different targets for bosses to meet, a different type of progress report for staff to fill out. That’s what management types do, which may be fine in a vacuum, but it has little to do with the problem which needs solving.
‘byzantine accounting’
Beyond the wisdom of all you write, as 26/1 was reaching up to pull the BBC further over the cliff at whose edge it teeters, I was having an unpleasant meeting.
It was with one of my favourite clients, who heads a small but hugely successful social enterprise/charity.
He has on occasion found funds, but I also help where I can. Thanks to his decisive leadership, what I produce is usually approved un-committeed to death and hence great for the porty.
He was the bearer of bad news. A project I had helped them with, and without pay, had been successful… partly.
They had got the money, but it was from the Lottery I think, who it turns out are ‘advised’ by an NGO of note who appear elsewhere in BBC connections today. Albeit via means that were resisted.
All well and good, but it turns out one condition imposed on the project is that the A&P gets passed through the WWF; no need to worry, they’ll invoice their efforts to the funders separately.
He was… frustrated… to be cut out of the loop to a not insignificant aspect of his project, but also was coming to the view that these were businesses less concerned with doing good and more with maximising revenue.
There appears to be a lot of it about.
I was more referring to the confusing deal with the way Worldwide and the Mothership made payments to each other, but yeah, there’s plenty of desire for more revenue. That was what Thompson was best at, and why he got the NY Times job.
“You are right to be proud of your work on the Proms, etc.,”
Agree entirely.
I’d like to add, however, that we see relatively little of the BBC’s commitment to serious music on TV at other times of the year, or in its TV news coverage. It simply isn’t considered important. This is hard to excuse in an organisation which has five orchestras on its payroll. (I think I’m right in saying that BBC orchestra members are salaried.)
Skimming through the BBC’s recent documentary on Sir Georg Solti (haven’t had time to watch it yet), it doesn’t appear to include the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which is astonishing when you consider the number of BBC staff thrown at some events. Not much “commitment” there, as far as I can see.
But how many do they send to Glastonbury? The John Peel tradition just rolls on like a Juggernaut. Perhaps we will see that it was originally the many heads of the BBC “pop culture” that actually gave birth to and sustained this paedophile monster (King, Savile, etc.)That would be very ironic as the Light Programme was no hijacked and forced to accommodate new world Peelish sensitivities, such as world music.
And what a world of difference (mountains and mole hills) between a figure such as Percy Howard Newby(1918-1997) and Tim Davie, the acting DG. What sort of BBC is it that can put somebody like that in charge of radio?
And inevitably, the BBC (discredited) and its John Peel (discredited) Lecture 2012 by Billy Bragg (BBC’s omnipresent ‘champagne socialist’)-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/events/e9rxn3/acts/a3p6v2
I’m surprised they went ahead with it. Do they think that he is an untouchable within the paedophile ranks of the BBC? This was exactly the problem with Savile. Bragg in his latest facebook comment attacks the Old Etonians “who are taking over again”. Murky business this class war.
I entirely agree with you. With a few exceptions I think the music policy has become significantly more lazy and unadventurous over the last few years. Dumbed down, to use a popular phrase, and certainly more influenced by the major record companies and a small coterie of PR firms.The patterns are not hard to discern. And the BBC shouldn’t be sending anyone to Glastonbury to cover the very same bands they cover the rest of the year. In my humble opinion of course.
Typical R3 approach shown in their discussion of the Jimmy Savile case on R3s Nightwaves back in October, in which a criminologist puts the Beeb’s turning a blind eye to his activities for years down to a problem in the hermeneutics of seeing. Dodd had actually once interviewed Savile in his own flat and had been aware of rumours about him.
Nightwaves 22 Oct 12 (you have to download – discussion starts at 13m40s in)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/r3arts/all
“hermeneutics of seeing”
In other words, turning an blind eye to in house kiddie fiddling
It was actually Universal Giles who spun that load of academic flannel. Okay, we know what he meant, but making it all abstract softens the act of tolerating and abetting sexual abuse. One can hear blame being gently nudged away.
But he gets ten points for saying “groupthink” in a discussion about problems at the BBC! It was the criminologist who really starts shoveling it out. He’s actually castigating the public for wanting to spread the blame around. Don’t all institutions look the other way to survive, asks Dodd. Reply, “Oh, yes!” “We tacitly allow the gap between the rich and the poor to have got wider”, “tacitly allow” racism, and so on, just because leaders need to keep the boat afloat. So don’t start casting aspersions on an institution like the BBC. The problem is that the BBC just doesn’t know how to keep a lid on it anymore.
Then Fraser starts whining that this will now stigmatize all “weirdos”. Savilee was a weirdo, he says, ergo the peasants will start thinking all women with red hair are witches. Or words to that effect. I’d say this would only stigmatize people who openly bragged about having 14 year-old girls.
It’s all down hill from there, really.Don’t anybody listen to this near sharp objects or anything breakable.
Graceless, charmless, fake-accented … M is for mediocre.