Robert Peston hints that the BBC Trust should and might be split….its power to regulate the BBC removed:

Here are a couple of mildly interesting tidbits about my own shop, the BBC.

First (and there is nothing terribly revelatory about this) Lord Coe is a virtual shoo-in to be Lord Patten’s successor as chairman of the BBC Trust.

Of course his appointment is not 100%, because there is a formal and slightly cumbersome appointments process.

That process includes interviewing and vetting by a Department of Culture, Media and Sports appointments committee, a recommendation of a preferred candidate by government – after all the “appointable” candidates have been interrogated by the culture secretary, Sajid Javid – then pre-appointment scrutiny by MPs on the DCMS select committee and then formal appointment.

Phew.

But for the government, which for this sort of thing really means the prime minister and chancellor, Lord Coe is the outstanding candidate.

So presumably they will find a way to get him over these many hurdles.

Why do they rate him so highly?

Well they know him well (George Osborne and Coe once shared an office, I think), and they regard him as an impressive leader, with a remarkable record of success off the track (leading London’s Olympics bid, chairing the organising committee for the games, and so on).

One senior government source complained that among the chattering classes Lord Coe is widely and snootily under-rated “as that bloke who won some gold medals”.

Oh, and he is a Tory, which is de rigueur (other candidates take note).

Also Lord Coe is reckoned to be broadly positive about the BBC, which matters to Cameron and Osborne because – unlike perhaps the majority of Tory MPs – they are supporters of and believers in the BBC.

Which is not to say they are blindly uncritical.

But they place value on how the BBC wins important friends for Britain overseas – the role it plays in reinforcing the country’s “soft power” – and what they would see as its largely standard-raising role in the ecology of UK news, arts and media businesses.

That does not mean the review of the BBC’s charter – which the government said when advertising for the post of Trust chairman will now not start till after the general election – would be easy for the BBC, if the Tories form the next government.

The BBC would doubtless face challenges on the scope of what it does and could not expect any increase in the licence fee out of line with austerity in the rest of the public sector.

But it does suggest the charter review would not be about dismantling the BBC; it would not be a choice between life and death.

That said, the review is likely to be rather more existentially challenging to the BBC Trust itself, the body that has the often uncomfortable task of reconciling sometimes conflicting responsibilities – those of regulator, representative of licence-fee payers (who for these purposes can be seen as the owners) and occasional human shield when the Director General lands in a spot of bother.

As I understand it, Osborne and Cameron have never quite understood why the regulation of the BBC could not be done in a cleaner and more ostensibly impartial way by Ofcom.

If the Trust’s regulatory functions were removed, it would resemble something like the old governing board or even possibly a public company board, concentrating on oversight of senior executive appointments, money, risk and efficiency. There would be clarity that its ultimate duty of care would be to licence-fee payers.

With these more focussed duties, the BBC Trust chairman could step into the fray and shield the DG from heat in a crisis, without that compromising the chairman’s perceived impartiality as regulator (a constant tension under the existing system).

All of which adds up to my second tidbit, which is that there may have been a misinterpretation of the fact that the advert for the Trust chair job says he or she will serve a four-year term.

This was seen as somehow evidence that radical reform of the Trust is off the agenda.

That, I am reliably told, is wrong: if the BBC is not dismantled, the Trust may be.

Capitalists can obviously go up stairs.

Top Gear, Doctor Who and Strictly Come Dancing face being privatised under ‘competition revolution’ at the BBC

Top BBC shows like Doctor Who, Top Gear and Strictly Come Dancing face being privatised under new cost-cutting plans at the corporation.

Hundreds of millions of pounds’ worth of TV programmes currently produced by the BBC will no longer be protected from outside competition under reforms announced by director general Tony Hall today.

In return, Lord Hall wants the BBC’s in-house production company to be free to make shows directly for other broadcasters, particularly in America, in a bid to generate millions of pounds.

Here is a taste of things to come with an early tender for the Dr Who franchise:

Israel launched a terror alert as BBC journo assumed to be Hamas terrorist…how could that ever happen?

Patten’s hardly out the door when:

BBC’s Nicky Campbell launches scathing attack on Lord Patten over female broadcasters debate

Campbell launched a blistering attack on the BBC Trust Chairman, who has stepped down following major heart surgery.

“He’s just so ignorant,” Campbell told Radio Times. “It drives us mad at 5 Live because we’ve got some of the greatest female broadcasters in the country and he only listens to Radio 4 and 3.”

Campbell added: “If I was Chairman of the BBC, I would have made it my task to find out what was on the BBC, wouldn’t you?”

“Though in a way it’s quite good that this man at the heart of the British Establishment, a life in ermine, doesn’t really know about 5 Live because we’re a little bit of a cuckoo in the nest at the BBC.

Good to know that the man in charge of editorial standards and complaints didn’t actually know what was going on at the corporation.

John Lloyd being ridiculous:

The writer and TV producer John Lloyd has said it “makes his blood run cold” to look back on a comedy sketch from 1980 that shows young children being abducted and put in a BBC van bound for a children’s TV show hosted by Rolf Harris.

He told The Independent: “It is extraordinary how spooky it is, it’s almost prophetic.

“It makes the blood run cold to watch it now thinking about what he had done.”

Interesting to see what the BBC has been doing with some money it receives from the EU: (H/T  Bishop Hill)

Funding revolution it seems.  All interesting countries to be ‘developing’ the Media in….Iran and Syria especially.

It is interesting how the BBC frames the debate on immigration.  The Migration Advisory Committee has released a report into the impact of new entrants to the EU in regard to immigration to the UK.

The BBC’s first thought is for the immigrants:

Low-skilled, vulnerable workers are at risk of exploitation because of lax labour checks, a report has warned.

But that is the whole point of importing this labour….it’s cheap and undercuts British workers who would expect a decent wage.  But that is an argument the BBC refuses to acknowledge.

The report itself states:

Demand for migrant labour is strongly influenced by institutions and public policies not directly related to immigration. These include, for example, labour market regulation, investment in education and training, and pay levels in some publicly funded low wage jobs. The trade-offs between immigration levels and greater or lower investment in these areas is worthy of fuller discussion.

In other words immigrants get the jobs because government and employers can’t be bothered to invest in British labour.

The BBC goes on:

The MAC report found that, nationally, such migrants had “not had a major impact” on pay, jobs, crime or public services and the wider UK economy over the last 20 years.

I think you copuld dipute all those findings…..the prisons are packed with immigrants and public services are under massive pressure….as the report in fact states and even the BBC alludes to:

But it warned that – at a local level – in areas where migrants in low-skilled jobs were concentrated, authorities had been left “struggling to cope”.

But the BBC doesn’t bother to expand on that as it did with the ‘positives’.  The report tells us that:

There needs to be greater recognition of, and support for, the local impact of immigration. The non-UK born population of England and Wales grew by 2.9 million between 2001 and 2011. Three quarters of this rise was in just a quarter of local authorities. Although we show that, nationally, the economic impact of immigration on GDP per head, productivity and prices is very modest, the economic and social impact on particular local authorities is much stronger.  This includes pressure on education and health services and on the housing market and potential problems around cohesion, integration and wellbeing

Serious problems no?

Who benefits from immigration?

• Benefits owners of capital
• The biggest gains go to the migrants themselves.
• May complement UK-born skilled workers and some unskilled local workers, enabling them to specialise in more highly paid jobs.
• Migrants are more mobile and flexible than UK-borne.  Prepared to change location, live at the workplace and do shift work. This helps grease the wheels of our flexible labour market.

The costs of immigration:

• Causes overall population to rise and the composition of many local area populations to alter rapidly. This may have implications for cohesion and wellbeing but such a possibility needs further investigation.
• Congestion –pressure on health (e.g. maternity services), education (e.g. churning during school year) and transport services.
• Impact on housing market: puts pressure on private rented market; locally problems with houses of multiple occupation; modestly reduces the probability of a native getting social housing –but the main problem here is not more migrants, rather a smaller stock of social housing.
• Small negative impact on the wages of the low paid. This raises issues around compliance and enforcement of e.g. the national minimum wage. Inspection regimes are insufficiently robust and penalties too feeble. An employer can expect a visit from HMRC once every 250 years and a prosecution once in a million years

Note the BBC uses the phrase ‘”not had a major impact” on pay’  whilst the report states that there is a negative, if small impact on wages…a subtle but important difference in emphasis and meaning……’not had a major impact on pay’ is the BBC trying to dodge the issue.

What the report doesn’t tell us is anything of all those immigrants working in the Black market under the radar for even less money but still using the services provided by the State.

Can we trust the MAC?  It tells us it relied on desk based research plus some contacts with local authorities and ‘corporate partners’ whatever they are.

It also said they had advise from one Tommaso Frattini...the same Tommaso Frattini who we looked at here along with his work mate Prof Christian Dustmann who advised Labour on its immigration policy….also connected to the BBC’s Mark Easton…..can we expect Frattini to be entirely impartial when he works for the pro-immigration Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration?  No.

The BBC, Still Selling Us A Lie On Immigration

Good to hear on the BBC (2 mins) that  ‘Israel continues to bomb Gaza in defiance of the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas who has called for an end to Israeli airstrikes.’

Nicky Campbell talking to an Israeli military spokesman earlier in the day (09:41) was busy making equivalence between the Israeli government and the terrorist organisation Hamas.

After asking if the Israeli airstrikes might be described as a ‘barrage of aggression’ he suggested ‘some people might think‘ that as well as Israelis living in fear perhaps Palestinian children are also living in fear at the moment because of those airstrikes asking ‘What would you say to those families?’.

He went on to say there is a [fair] comparison between civilian deaths.

But there isn’t.  You cannot separate out the intentions of the various State actors.  Hamas deliberately targets Israeli civilians whilst Israel does everything it can to avoid civilian casualties.

Campbell seems to think that Israel should not defend itself and should sit back and shrug off any amount of bombardment….philosophising that violence only begets more violence.

All very easy when sat in the comfort of a radio station in the safety of the UK.

The relative safety of the UK I should say…because Nicky Campbell has been traumatised by violence here…..as reported by the Mail today.

‘I was spat on because I tackled litter yobs’, says Five Live host Nicky Campbell

Nicky Campbell has revealed how he was left ‘extremely upset’ when  litter louts spat on him  outside his home.

The Radio 5 Live Breakfast host was verbally abused and ‘showered’ with spit when he confronted the gang of yobs for ripping open bin bags and kicking rubbish all over his street.

Speaking for the first time about the emotional impact of the attack in Clapham, south London, he said he had to be comforted afterwards by his wife Tina.

‘I asked them very politely to put [the litter] in a bin and they covered me in spittle all over my hair,’ he told this week’s Radio Times.

‘I walked back home and then I went upstairs and had a shower and lay on the bed.

‘I called Tina and she came up and I talked to her about it and I was extremely upset.

Although the incident occurred in 2011, it appears from Mr Campbell’s comments that it has had a lasting impact and remains in the forefront of his mind.

The shocking encounter happened just weeks after the father of four found himself having to chase a burglar from his property.

After being alerted by the family’s golden Labrador, Maxwell, he jumped out of bed naked at 5am to confront the thief who was trying to steal his £600 bike from the garden.

At the time Mr Campbell said: ‘I ran downstairs, opened the back door and flew out with Maxwell beside me.

‘My body parts were dangling in the wind. I just wanted to get him. I was pumping with adrenaline.’

However the burglar fled the property empty-handed. ‘If I’d caught him I don’t know what I’d have done – probably hit him,’ Mr Campbell added.

‘Or maybe I would have tried to sit on him naked until the police arrived – that would have traumatised him for life.

‘Something primordial took over…’

Interesting how a bit of abusive language and being spat at can have a lasting impact on the traumatised Campbell…and how he just wanted to hit a burglar.

Guess Campbell applies a different standard for Israelis who have been under attack by Muslims for over 60 years, living under the threat, once again, of annihilation.

Bishop Hill links to various green/BBC stuff:

The BBC’s internal contradictions

Is it ‘cos he’s a green?

And this via GWPF and originally the Times:

The BBC Has Lost Its Balance Over Climate Change

Victoria Derbyshire wants to know what Ramadan means for you. (11:50)

Remarkably the BBC didn’t find anyone who said Ramadan was a pain in the backside, you starve, you get irritated and angry, you get thirsty and for what?  It’s so stupid.

Instead we had the ‘wonders’ of Ramadan…it makes you more empathetic towards the less fortunate, the poor and starving, it cleanses your soul, detoxes your body, makes you closer to God, makes you more spiritual, less materialistic.

It must be good, the fellow from the BBC’s Asian Network (ghetto radio) told us ‘I highly recommend it for everyone!’

Nothing like a bit of propaganda to fill the airwaves.

Speaking of which just before that Derbyshire had on a woman from the Muslim Women’s Network speaking about the ‘boys’, and girls, heading off for a bit of Jihad.

She of course was totally against them going…..but said, after claiming it was Western society’s fault that they were ‘disengaged and disenfranchised‘, that if the belief is there and they have the courage of their convictions ‘you will go’…and that ‘there is a lot of glory attached to being a martyr or a shahid.’

Another speaker spoke of them ‘fighting for truth and justice’…..curiously mixed messages…don’t go, but…….seemed more weighted in favour of going than not.

Still, I’m sure the BBC knows exactly what it is doing and the message it is broadcasting.