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“Oh come off it. This is starting to get silly,” writes Boris Johnson in his article this week for The Daily Telegraph.
Starting with the Royal Family, then Gordon Brown and a few ‘celebrities’, the News of the World telephone-hacking scandal has spread, we are told, to hundreds — to the extent that no self-respecting celebrity wants to be thought of as not having been bugged by the ‘gentlemen of the Screws’.
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Sunday blessed the people of London with a lovely Spring morning : bright sunshine, beautiful blossom, more daffodils that you could count, a gentle breeze and everywhere in a certain park the sounds of Spring … and “the gasping sobs of middle-aged men as they tried to retrieve the high-speed cross-court passing shots of their younger, fitter wives”.
Continue reading A hard task — spreading gloom in the sunshine
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In his article this week, Boris derides Labour’s ‘alternative’ to bringing the British economy back to a state of fiscal sanity : attacks on Fortnum’s and the Ritz and the setting of bonfires, all to be controlled — as best they can — by 4,500 policemen at tax-payers’ expense. Having paid close attention to Ed Miliband’s speech, he concludes that the ‘alternative’ amounts to “two-thirds of diddly-squat”.
“The extent to which the audience feels its trust betrayed … bodes ill for the BBC. In the long term the loser will be public-service broadcasting itself ; the winners the revengists of ‘old’ New Labour.”
BBC Trust Chairman Sir Michael Lyons has recently revealed he will not seek to be re-appointed in the role when his four-year term ends next May.
A few weeks ago, in a letter to Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, Sir Michael said the Trust was robust, workable and effective … with much remaining to be done. So what of the background that led to the formation of the BBC Trust and its future ?
The BBC Trust replaced the BBC’s Board of Governors in January 2007. The Government said it was intended to ensure an “unprecedented obligation to openness and transparency”. But one of its first announcements was that the BBC Trust would review the corporation’s UK news coverage, which, whilst seeming even-handed to some, was seen by others as an insidious first step to totalitarianism : more like a politburo’s flexing its muscles.
Back in the time of Sir John Birt, BBC Director-General (DG) from 1992 to 2000 (now Lord Birt and blue-sky thinker), decisions were made to shift ultimate editorial control from managing editors to the DG. In retrospect one can only conjecture whether there was pressure from the Government at that time. Yet, despite a bitter strike by journalists, the transfer of editorial control went ahead.
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Boris Johnson rails against the centralization of power that has caused the cost of government to rise like a rocket, saying the sensible way forward is to simplify and devolve.
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In an article in The Daily Telegraph Boris Johnson admits — despite the economic rigours the population generally is suffering — to going ski-ing. He does claim in mitigation that it was a cut-price affair with, as he puts it, “home-made sandwiches for lunch, washed down with eau de robinet”.
It is not, he says, just that he loves ski-ing and is addicted to hurling himself down the slopes and that his children are quite keen. A collateral purpose drove him to take this vacation : journalistic research.
Continue reading Ski helmets have a lesson for us … on ‘localism’
… ending 25th. September 2010
As he accepted the leadership of the British Labour Party at its annual conference Ed Miliband said —
“I get it and I understand the need to change. I need to unify the party and I will.”