Sensitive

As we head towards the last appearance of the BBC Big Band Special on Radio 2 tonight, the Tory MP for Reading East, and Daily-Mail-go-to-guy-for-outrage. Rob Wilson has appeared on the scene.

He wrote to Radio 2's Lewis Carnie, asking how much money was involved, axing the show after 34 years. Lewis, perhaps unwisely, wrote back thus "Due to the sensitive commercial nature of our budgets, I’m afraid I am unable to go in to detail about the exact monetary cuts and savings that will be made."

Rob duly froths "I am surprised to learn that the BBC considers that the budget for the Big Band’s activities to be commercially sensitive. The BBC is not a commercial organisation, it is a public one. Given recent revelations about the misuse of significant amounts of money involving some of those at the top of the Corporation, details about the exact monetary cuts to the budget for the BBC Big Band’s recording sessions may be embarrassing and rather awkward for the BBC, but that is not the same thing as being either sensitive, or commercial, or both. If the musicians of the BBC Big Band are indeed freelancers, then there is no contractual reason either why the overall cut to budget cannot be disclosed.

I do appreciate that you have difficult budgetary decisions to make, but I would suggest that a failure to be transparent over the reasons behind a decision to cut back on original, creative output is unlikely to inspire confidence in the BBC among licence fee payers and audiences."