Pollarding

I may have got close to the judge, but didn't spot Nick Pollard coming.

The Pollard investigation needs to get its head round this, which many MPs, including John Whittingdale, don't - when was anybody in Newsnight convinced they had new evidence that would probably have convicted Jimmy Savile of committing a serious sexual offence with children, and what did they do with that information ?

TV programmes and investigations into this sort of subject are carefully put together and "lawyered" more than once; at the BBC you have the added advice available from Editorial Policy, and "referring up". George Entwistle may have been informed that there was an investigation, but unless he was told "and we've got him bang to rights, and we're ready to run", he couldn't have possibly pulled the Christmas tributes. What would have been his announcement  - "This programme has been dropped because we're not sure about one or two things about Jimmy Savile, and we'll let you know" ? Laughable.

Editor Peter Rippon has made it clear that he was looking for evidence of institutional failure - i.e. that either the social services, police or approved school system failed over time to protect children.  Some in Newsnight and many outside see this as a wrong-headed position, and in hindsight it was. To prove institutional failure, you need to evidence the offences they failed to act on; if you had strong evidence that Jimmy Savile was a paedophile, you had a story by any standards. It may have not fitted with the Editor's vision of a Newsnight investigation - tabloid and grubby - but the BBC has many other outlets. So the BBC's actions after January 2012 become as interesting as the six week investigation before Christmas. Was the investigation "paused" or "stopped" ? Because by October 2012, we have one of the biggest stories of widespread institutional failure most people can remember.