by George Galloway
Part 1
Part 1
Whoever replaces outgoing BBC Director General Tony Hall, be sure that establishment interests will be in safe hands. But multiple scandals the broadcaster has been involved in damaged it quite possibly beyond repair.
The next director general of the BBC will be formally appointed by Sir David Clementi, educated at Winchester, Oxford and Harvard, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England, chair of insurance giant Prudential, a former director of Rio Tinto Zinc, chair of Virgin Money and CEO of Kleinwort Benson. His grandfather was the governor of Hong Kong.
Be sure then that the interests of the establishment are in safe hands.
But in truth, the new DG will be picked by another public-school Eton-and-Oxford blue-blood, Boris Johnson.
For the BBC is a “state broadcaster,” just as much as the other “state broadcasters” in the world at whom they like to look down their noses.
The government of the day appoints the guiding hands at the BBC who naturally pick PLU’s (People Like Us) to staff its upper-reaches.
The next director general of the BBC will be formally appointed by Sir David Clementi, educated at Winchester, Oxford and Harvard, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England, chair of insurance giant Prudential, a former director of Rio Tinto Zinc, chair of Virgin Money and CEO of Kleinwort Benson. His grandfather was the governor of Hong Kong.
Be sure then that the interests of the establishment are in safe hands.
But in truth, the new DG will be picked by another public-school Eton-and-Oxford blue-blood, Boris Johnson.
For the BBC is a “state broadcaster,” just as much as the other “state broadcasters” in the world at whom they like to look down their noses.
The government of the day appoints the guiding hands at the BBC who naturally pick PLU’s (People Like Us) to staff its upper-reaches.
Just in case, until comparatively recently, the Security Services maintained an office in the headquarters – Broadcasting House – in which secret agents secretly vetted staff programs and employees. Just in case. But as there has never been allowed to be a government of the day which actually sought to scrap the status-quo – on the economy, defence and foreign affairs – all of these prophylactics have been, strictly speaking, surplus to requirements.
In former generations, working for the BBC was rather like working for the Foreign Office or the Palace. A suited and booted army of ‘public servants’ whose allegiance to the establishment could be largely taken for granted. One or two mistakes had been made, of course.
The KGB spy Guy Burgess managed to land an important job there, right under the noses of MI5.
In former generations, working for the BBC was rather like working for the Foreign Office or the Palace. A suited and booted army of ‘public servants’ whose allegiance to the establishment could be largely taken for granted. One or two mistakes had been made, of course.
The KGB spy Guy Burgess managed to land an important job there, right under the noses of MI5.
A different kind of mistake was the appointment in 1982 of Sir Alasdair Milne as director general. Born in India in 1930, educated at Winchester and Oxford, Milne was as blue-blooded as the next toff, but he was also serious about public service and journalistic integrity. During his five tumultuous years at the top of the BBC, Margaret Thatcher laid waste to the miners and much of industrial Britain, fought a major war over the Falkland Islands, and established death squads in the north of Ireland and refused to budge as republican hunger strikers starved to death, the prime minister became increasingly apoplectic at Milne’s BBC being inclined to resist her Bonapartist tendencies.
Thatcher dispatched him in 1987 at quite considerable cost to the long-believed fiction that the BBC was in some way ‘independent’ of the government.
Thatcher dispatched him in 1987 at quite considerable cost to the long-believed fiction that the BBC was in some way ‘independent’ of the government.
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