The kerfuffle over the Ross/Brand affair was enough to make me positively nostalgic for the old days when there was a Chairman of the BBC Governors
Somebody who could face the press (don’t any of the present high ups get media training?) to say it was unacceptable, those involved had been suspended pending enquiries, but that one disgraceful incident on a late night radio show, from which most listeners would know what to expect, did not threaten the very foundations of the BBC – don’t be so ridiculous, Boy!
Instead we have more regulation bureaucracy which hamstrings everybody while they work out who should do what
And the amendments to the rules which eventually emerge will just leave everybody confused over what they can or cannot do
And the staff will, like the staff in my bank now talk of their employer, start referring to the BBC as ‘They’, not ‘We’
Let us hope that Offcom will be able to decide in its wisdom that it is unnecessary to add insult to injury by fining the BBC. Licence payers will not take it kindly that yet more of their money has to go to pay for a transgression by somebody who gets too much already
