Verbal

Oh, and Johnny, on money/mouth matters, I'm interviewing James Heath on Friday - he heads up strategy for BBC news and sport. If you - or anyone - can formulate the bias question reasonably, I'll ask it and let you know what he says.

No, I'm not trying to make anything left v right (as my point about Brown should really have made clear). I have no interest in that whatsoever. What I find desperate - and it's fairly commonplace right now - is the philistine shoulder-shrugging stuff that dismisses intelligent, expert opinion as more or less equivalent to the ideologically driven 'analysis' offered up by Osborne et al.

That did make me laugh.

Well then that's your problem. If you really trust Osborne over Nobel laureates, I despair. In any case the bright young things you're so proud of in the Treasury were also there when Brown was in power. And by the way, if no one can predict, how come at least one of the Nobel laureates - Krugman - actually did predict the financial crisis in 2008? He was banging on about it relentlessly. There is some notion out there that somehow, government finances are this huge state secret, and that only the privileged few can see them. This is far from the truth and always has been. Economists really don't have to be inside the government to produce compelling models of how government finances, or indeed the British economy, work.

No, Johnny, the significance that the BBC places on all its bureaucratic activities, above that of programme-making, is that it is a bureaucracy, much like any other in the civil service - and like anywhere else in the civil service, it brings with it a natural conservatism (with a small c). Have you ever read George Orwell's 1984? His commentary on the accommodations of the BBC in relation to those in power (whomever it may be) is still valid today. You could certainly absorb all the cuts imposed on the BBC by radically rethinking its bureaucratic structure - making it more C4-like. But that won't happen. The axe will fall instead on programmes. As someone who is currently talking to (almost) the highest level, with the BBC on a regional issue in the North of England, I can see all too clearly what continues to grab managers' attention - and it isn't programmes. In 1979, the focus of criticism of the BBC, after five years of thoroughly exhausted Labour government, was that it was too RIGHT wing! Thompson is not to be trusted in his opinion on this. He may have been there, but he seems to have a very selective memory, and wouldn't have said this were it not agenda-driven - for example to try and deflect the very criticism that you and others make.. The criticisms in the 70s were led by what at the time was the hugely influential Glasgow Media Group, whose book, Bad News, framed the whole debate about right wing bias in the BBC and ITV from the mid to late 70s. As for advertising in the Guardian, the BBC places almost NO programme making jobs there. I challenge you to show me one advert for a television producer of a networked programme. A liberal outlook? Look who leads. Thompson is by no means a Labour apparatchik, and his predecessor, Greg Dyke is essentially a Tory (and advised the Tories this and last year on media policy). At least one channel controller has always openly (and gleefully) said he's a Tory. The nature of BBC politics is much more complex and nuanced than you suggest. Back on topic, I see that about 10% of the lost jobs in Osborne's cuts will be teachers. This is an exact parallel of what will happen at the Beeb - it's the essential frontline people who get the chop first, not the pen pushers who maintain the power to cut in the bureaucracy. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/oct/20/schools-money-budgets-staff-cuts

But he was right.

I can't tell whether you've been misled or are deliberately being misrepresentative. The New Statesman article refers not to the 'former' DG of the BBC, but the present one, Mark Thompson. And he's not talking about 'left-wing bias' now - but more than 30 years ago, in 1979! The Independent and Standard articles are quoting John Bridcut's report, which is really a narrow public opinion piece that mixes two issues - the well known fact that support for the BBC declines the further North you go (hence Greg Dyke's decision to build Salford Quays), and arguments about political bias. The equation you make between the BBC as 'public service' and any political leaning is false, in my very direct experience. The BBC is, above all, a branch of the civil service in mentality, and consequently is prone, among management certainly, to be too obeisant to authority. (I can quote chapter and verse on this from personal experience, but I think it'll be wasted on you.) I do not want to be cast in the role of defending the BBC. There is an awful lot wrong with it - mostly to do with that civil service mentality and the appalling ways in which it reduces programme making to the status of also-ran, behind the more important functions of HR, faciltiies management, etc., and the way it casually imposes its rather authoritarian management style on a largely casualised workforce among programme makers. But left wing bias? I wish!

Actually not one Nobel laureate but two. Who would you tend to believe? Them or Osborne?

And here's Christopher P i s s arides (damn the swear filter!), the LSE economist who won the Nobel last week: Britain's new Nobel Prize winning economist, Professor Christopher P is s arides, has warned that the Government was taking "unnecessary risks" at a time when the economy remained weak. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/feedarticle/9326948

Interesting opinion from a Nobel-winning economist: What happens now? Maybe Britain will get lucky, and something will come along to rescue the economy. But the best guess is that Britain in 2011 will look like Britain in 1931, or the United States in 1937, or Japan in 1997. That is, premature fiscal austerity will lead to a renewed economic slump. As always, those who refuse to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/22/opinion/22krugman.html?_r=2&ref=paulkrugman So all those waving the bunting at the cuts and job losses, you're like turkeys voting for Christmas. You will be thrown out of employment, or your company wrecked, too. (And just to add, since one of the neanderthals will no doubt object: Klugman is NOT saying there is no need for spending cuts.)

The likely effect of the coalition's attitude to universities is that they will happily make the 40% cuts in the teaching budget (already announced in the CSR - and that is on top of £1bn cuts already made in university budgets), but then blink when it comes to approving the fees increase for students. This will leave even the best universities struggling badly. All at a time when our competitors are actually increasing investment in their university systems, to emerge stronger from the slump. If anyone is in any doubt about the impending damage, just look up the Nobel winners from Manchester, what they won it for, the huge future benefits their discovery entails, and how they have said clearly that they wouldn't have been able to do it in the present climate (and may not even have been allowed to be here to do it!).

Have you got the slightest piece of evidence that this is true? As someone who's worked inside the BBC many times, I just don't see it. Accusations like this tend to be the product of an over-fertile conspiratorial mindset.

S_C, you need to develop a mod's lofty sigh of resignation rather than engage. Otherwise you'll always get the Saintsweb very own First Amendment thrown at you. ^^

But I think if we score two goals and they only get one, that counts as a win.

You never even saw your coat.

No, sadly not. They were specifically cheering the job losses. They loved it - and its been the subject of a huge amount of comment in the press.

Different to the movie.

Set your satnav to postcode PO4 8RA. Wear the red and white.

Yes. Without the common sense of women crew members, it's inevitable, surely.

Yes. Without the common sense of women crew members, it's inevitable, surely.

Isn't this what subs are supposed to do?

Isn't this what subs are supposed to do?

If it's in Humberside, those are the only kinds of guests you're going to get. Where is this going exactly?

If it's in Humberside, those are the only kinds of guests you're going to get. Where is this going exactly?

How edifying was the spectacle of Tory backbenchers cheering manically at the prospect of 500,000 people being sacked. I give the Lib Dems six months before they lose the stomach for being in any way associated with such obnoxious cretins - assuming Lib Dems have a conscience. (About which I am no longer certain, after Clegg's intemperate - and guilt-ridden? - assault on the respected IFS.)