Hello again

Sir Robbie Gibb will have made his application to join the BBC Board back in November; he was assessed for the job by a panel led by Robert Specterman-Green, from the DCMS, and including Sir David Clementi (departing chair leaves ticking time bomb ?) and Dr Samir Shah CBE, former Beeboid and purveyor of indie current affairs, now aligned with Government thinking on racism.  Sir Robbie and Dr Shah shared Executive Producer duties for Andrew Neil's This Week, and they are both members of Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden's Public Service Broadcasting Advisory Panel. 

Sir Robbie will be Member for England, requiring up to two days a week of his time. The member for England was a late sop to having Members for Scotland and Wales. The member for Northern Ireland has so far not been filled, caught up in the Stormont shut-down. 

I think the first 'Member for England' was in the days of the BBC Trust, held by Mark Florman, an investment banker. He was appointed by London Mayor Boris Johnson to run The Legacy List charity just ahead of the Olympics; in 2019, he donated £2,500 to Mr Johnson.

More recently, Ashley Steel has been the Member for England, chairing the England sub-committee.  In the current lax BBC way on late transparency reporting (cf The PM) the most recent minutes we have from that group are from a year ago, in which the BBC side reports various triumphs in coping with "the Corvid-19 pandemic" [sic].