Balance sheet

Peter Oborne in The Telegraph assesses the current state of the BBC, and Lord Patten. Good politician, bad chair of the BBC Trust, he says. He's largely wrong about the second bit - very much of the "bad" stuff was there, under the surface, before he set foot in 180 Great Portland Street. Savile, Hall (S), management size and remuneration, consultancy culture, pay-offs, 'unconscious' discrimination, and even DMI preceded his office.

But he's sharp on the BBC and why it's a "good thing". A paragraph here that encapsulates things better than any Charter renewal tome..

As David Cameron pointed out so eloquently shortly after becoming Tory leader, there are great areas of British life that are outside the realm of the market, and this is a matter for celebration. One of these is the BBC. Like the monarchy, the NHS and the Armed Forces, it is part of our common public domain. It is exactly the kind of tried, familiar and deeply loved institution which Conservatives are bound to defend. Anybody who doubts this should try watching television in the United States, a repulsive and degrading experience. 

But all large organisations, however admirable, are capable of going wrong. In many ways, the BBC bears comparison with the Co-op Bank, another public enterprise inspired by much higher considerations than sordid matters of profit and loss. The senior management of both institutions displayed a hideous caricature of free-market principles. They turned their backs on the foundation values of the institutions they worked for, and betrayed the people they supposedly served. In a reversal of John F Kennedy’s famous aphorism, senior management did not ask how they could serve the BBC, but instead how the BBC could serve them.