Vocal Voices

The BBC is to lose 1,000 staff because of a £150m shortfall in its finances. This is apparently because over a million households now claim to not watch live TV. As time goes by and as more people become aware of ways to avid the licence tax the number will grow and grow. The irony is that the BBC has one of the most popular catch-up services: iPlayer. Hoist by its own petard?

So the first thing is to cut staff and merge some services. I feel sorry for the staff, but the BBC has its sticky fingers in too many costly pies; it needs slimming down. Next will be a drop in the quality of its output with little original drama and more cheap game shows and reality offerings.

We can also expect the BBC, and its lackeys in the BBC Trust, to lobby for a change in the Charter and the way the BBC is funded. One proposal to get round the live TV opt-out is for every household, regardless of whether a TV is there, to be charged an annual fee.

Nowhere do I find any suggestions from media types for the BBC to be more accountable to its funders, us licence fee payers. The Trust, supposedly our representatives and guardians, are too close to BBC management to allow that to happen.

I'm not celebrating, my niece's job is on the line amongst that lot. She works very long hours and bloody hard too

I said I felt sorry for the staff, but this is what happens with a badly managed behemoth and empires within empires.

The report admits that there is duplication of roles and overstaffing in professional and support areas. What will probably happen, and this is where your niece might get caught up, Kaz, is that the cuts will be last in-first out and not a cutting out of the dead wood. It's a shame, but is the way these things often work.

Or course, you realise, that due to diversity, 99% of the losses will be in the white ethnic employees and it will make the balance of employees even more unbalanced to the non ethnic....

25 years ago I would have said you would be crazy to get rid of the BBC. Today I believe that it's crazy to not, at the very least, threaten it.

Scrap the liscence fee
Charge for individual sections like sky
And BBC are good for news and sport
To many repeats
And executive expenses

Suff wrote:Or course, you realise, that due to diversity, 99% of the losses will be in the white ethnic employees and it will make the balance of employees even more unbalanced to the non ethnic....

Hannah is mixed race, so hedging her bets

Frank, I know (((((x)))))

Kaz,

Sadly it's little to do with the people themselves and much to do with political correctness.....

My relationship at work with the ethnic minorities is very good. They are very concerned about the thought of me leaving. My relationship with people who think race is a game to be played is extremely bad.....

I can't speak for Kaz, but Hanna's multi-ethnic background should have nothing to do with anything. It should be those who are duplicating work and are the worst of the two, or more, who should go, but that tends not to happen.

The RAF had a clear out in 1974 and those who knew they could cut it in civvy street were the ones who left. The time-servers, with few skills, stayed on and dead-men's-shoes became the route to promotion..... and the time-servers refused to die.

In certain posts in the BBC it will be who you know which will decide your fate, for the rest it will be pot-luck.

Workingman wrote:I can't speak for Kaz, but Hanna's multi-ethnic background should have nothing to do with anything. It should be those who are duplicating work and are the worst of the two, or more, who should go, but that tends not to happen.

Absolutely how it should be. But you just need to read the BBC mission statement to know that will not happen.

It's like a police force setting a target of 20% multi ethnic when 85% of the population and 95% of the applicants are white ethnic. The target is both unrealistic and "racist" apart from being totally unattainable...