Influencing people

The BBC has revealed its annual list of 100 Women for 2016 - selected because they are "inspirational and influential".

Brits should recognise the names of Nadiya Hussain, Jeanette Winterson and Heather Rabbatts. Less widely known, perhaps, is  Liliane Landor, who left the BBC's employment very abruptly in June this year. She'd been leading on plans to spend new Foreign Office money on new language offerings from the World Service. Her brief biog says: "Worked for the BBC for 26 years, latterly as head of languages at the World Service, where she helped put different voices, faces and accents on BBC News."

The anonymous panel of judges may be at odds here with BBC Director of News James Harding. It will probably take the NAO or a Select Committee to work out how much of this new Foreign Office money goes to 'core services' (cf BBC Monitoring).