Lord Sugar has been out and about seeking publicity for The Apprentice and his autobiography. So barbed remarks are the order of the day - this about the Culture Secretary, in the Daily Mirror.
" I think Jeremy Hunt needs to get off the case of the BBC and mind his own bloody business. Go and learn how to fill out expenses forms, because he made a cock-up of it twice. Once you're forgiven, but twice you think 'are you that clever to be a minister?' People have got a £30-a-month mobile phone bill, a £50-a-month Sky bill, £20-a-month internet, and you are paying £14-a-month for the BBC. It gets you all the radio, four channels of TV, that great website, iPlayer. It's incredible value."
The trouble is that it's not Jeremy Hunt who will determine the next steps for the BBC's finances - it's The Treasury. The licence fee is set (for the time being); it's the "efficiency" targets that matter. And for the last six or seven years the BBC has been expected to match the targets set for Government departments, most recently at 3% per annum. Most planning in the Corporation has been done around 5% per annum for the next three years. But, if there's a range of targets coming from the increasingly-flaky Team Osborne, then the BBC could be pushed higher. The stretch is that all these targets assume that inflation can be absorbed, and like the Government, the BBC is running a deficit (£400m ?) which really ought to be closed by the next licence fee settlement.
" I think Jeremy Hunt needs to get off the case of the BBC and mind his own bloody business. Go and learn how to fill out expenses forms, because he made a cock-up of it twice. Once you're forgiven, but twice you think 'are you that clever to be a minister?' People have got a £30-a-month mobile phone bill, a £50-a-month Sky bill, £20-a-month internet, and you are paying £14-a-month for the BBC. It gets you all the radio, four channels of TV, that great website, iPlayer. It's incredible value."
The trouble is that it's not Jeremy Hunt who will determine the next steps for the BBC's finances - it's The Treasury. The licence fee is set (for the time being); it's the "efficiency" targets that matter. And for the last six or seven years the BBC has been expected to match the targets set for Government departments, most recently at 3% per annum. Most planning in the Corporation has been done around 5% per annum for the next three years. But, if there's a range of targets coming from the increasingly-flaky Team Osborne, then the BBC could be pushed higher. The stretch is that all these targets assume that inflation can be absorbed, and like the Government, the BBC is running a deficit (£400m ?) which really ought to be closed by the next licence fee settlement.
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