Baffled

A tired looking DG faced the Culture Select Committee this morning. Chief interrogator Julian Knight MP, bringing all the savagery he learned in the BBC's Business Unit to bear in a fusillade of clever-dick questions, didn't lay a finger on him.

70 minutes in, they took a comfort break. There was very little new stuff, apart from a hint of a 'rebalancing' to come in BBC England regional and local radio coverage, suggesting changes that reflect less on historical and physical geography, and more on social clusters and class proximity. Lord Hall said when you're in West Dorset, Southampton and Winchester feel a long way away. (Lord Hall has a holiday home in Whitchurch Canonicorum. A former, expensive DDG, Mark Byford lives in Winchester.) Frankly, it baffles me.