Anyone for dessert?

Like most revolutionaries I am a big fan of 'Just a minute' and 'Test match Special'. But are my guilty bourgeois pleasures under threat? Enjoy guest

 blogger 'Mr X' and his view from inside the BBC... 

An old BBC hack once advised that the Corporation should be thought of as a large jelly, the type one sees on documentary television during a demonstration of what Edward VII thought acceptable for his elevenses. A large, ornate, establishment jelly. The learned hack continued to explain that every so often someone comes along with a new-fangled idea and gives the jelly a really good shake. The jelly then wobbles vigorously on its moorings; the odd goblet may fly off in an unexpected direction, but, after some time has passed, the wobbling subsides, life carries on and one is left with a jelly virtually unchanged.

The hack in question is long dead, but I wonder how he would view the very significant wobbles at the BBC of recent years?

We’ve been shocked by Russell Brand, Jonathan Ross and Carol Thatcher. Miriam O'Reilly is taking action after being dropped from Countryfile and the NUJ have been on strike over pensions. But perhaps the most astonishing, and seemingly little noticed event of recent weeks is the TV licence fee settlement. Frozen for the next six years at £145.50 the licence fee will now also fund the BBC World Service and BBC Monitoring (both previously funded through direct taxation), whilst contributing more to Welsh language TV group S4C. So in practical terms what is the upshot of this deal? A 16% budget cut in real terms for Auntie and a £340m saving for the Exchequer over six years.

A little further analysis indicates that some very big changes are on the way. The BBC has been selling bits of its self for years, a privatisation of publicly owned assets worth over £1billion that has also gone largely unnoticed. Obviously all those bits and pieces that have been sold off did actually serve a purpose. The BBC does need to have access to some transmitters; it does need some computers, people to run studios, outside broadcast trucks, satellite dishes, buildings, security guards and cleaners. To this end the BBC has entered into various long term, fixed cost, service contracts that tie up over 30% of the BBC’s expenditure for years to come. Suddenly a 16% cut in income becomes a 23% cut as all the savings must be made from only 70% of expenditure.

Apart from cutting the website expenditure even further – welcomed almost universally – the current settlement probably means the end of one or more domestic service and the BBC World Service ceasing to be anything more than a brand with the consequent loss of several thousand jobs. The big bad Tory chancellor jumped the Director General, Mark Thompson and somehow left him feeling relieved that he didn’t have to fund TV licences for the over 75s or have his income top-sliced for C4.

Greg Dyke resigns over Kelly Affair

But why were the Tories so bold and the BBC so timid? The answer to this question lies back in the heady days of 2003 under Tony Blair’s administration - namely the Hutton Enquiry. In fact almost all the ills that have befallen the BBC in past years stem from that deeply flawed analysis of the BBC’s role in the death of David Kelly and the ensuing hours of madness that afflicted the then Board of Governors. The sudden decapitation of Chairman and DG has so traumatised the BBC management that they have lost all confidence to take the right decisions. Like an out of form batsman they have the knack of playing at all the wrong balls and, to mix my metaphors the poor old jelly just keeps on wobbling.