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Public services face cuts
29 JulFrom BBC News
Chairman of the Independent Budget Review, Crawford Beveridge, speaks to BBC Scotland's Business Editor Douglas Fraser about his report. -
Clegg explains spending cuts U-turn
29 JulThe Guardian World News
Lib Dem leader says he was in favour of a faster programme of deficit reduction before the general election – even though he did not publicly back the idea
Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader and deputy prime minister, has admitted that he changed his mind about the timing of spending cuts prior to the general election, despite publicly telling the electorate weeks before the poll that early deep cuts would be <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/mar/14/lib-dems-refuse-support-tories" title=""economic masochism".">"economic masochism".
In what was seen as the biggest policy reversal of the coalition negotiations, the Lib Dems abandoned their policy of maintaining the government's economic stimulus through this financial year and backed a tougher Tory plan instead.
Clegg cited calls with Mervyn King, the Bank of England governor, as critical to this decision to back the package of cuts announced by the coalition government after taking office.
In an Observer interview on 6 June, Clegg described his conversation with King on 15 May. "He couldn't have been more emphatic. He said, 'If you don't do this, then because of the deterioration of market conditions it will be even more painful to do it later.'"
But Clegg has now admitted that he had changed his views on the timing of cuts before the general election had even taken place.
The revelations are made in a BBC2 documentary "Five Days that changed Britain", due to be broadcast tonight, which outlines the dramatic five days following the inconclusive result of the 6 May general election and the frenzied negotiations over the formation of a new government.
Asked by BBC political editor, Nick Robinson, if he had changed his mind about cuts this year during the five days of negotiations, Clegg said: "I changed my mind earlier than that... firstly remember between March and the actual general election ...a financial earthquake occurred in on our European doorstep."
Pressed on why he failed to convey this to the electorate prior to them casting their votes, Clegg said: "... to be fair we were all ... reacting to very, very fast-moving economic events."
The deputy premier's admission dovetails with comments made by King yesterday to the Treasury select committee, in which he told MPs that he gave no fresh information to Clegg in a call on 15 May that could have led to him to call for a faster deficit reduction programme than the one outlined by his party during the election campaign.
He said he spoke to Clegg at the request of the new government, five days after the Lib Dem leader announced he was forming a coalition government with David Cameron in which a faster programme of deficit reduction was agreed.
Tonight's programme also reveals details of the behind-the-scenes manoeuvres after the general election results were announced on Friday.
This includes Cameron's admission that he was resigned to carrying on as leader of the opposition just 24 hours before he walked into Downing Street.
He told his wife, Samantha, that he was "depressed" that he had not led the Conservatives to a general election victory.
Cameron tells the programme: "I remember going home I think on Monday evening and I think Sam and I had supper in the kitchen and I remember saying you know it's not going to happen, I'm going to be leader of the opposition and I remember saying I want to go on being leader of the opposition."
The programme also reveals how Gus O'Donnell, the head of the civil service, urged Cameron and Clegg to hurry up and form government to avoid a bad reaction from the markets.
O'Donnell tells the programme that he advised Conservative and Liberal Democrat negotiators in their first meeting with the cabinet office that "the more comprehensive the agreement" between the two parties, the more it would reassure the markets.
The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats finally sealed the deal on 11 May – four days after the election results – and published an initial coalition document outlining the agreement on key areas of policy differences.
This included a referendum on switching the voting system to AV – a key Lib Dem demand.
But tonight's programme suggests that Clegg may have bluffed Cameron into offering the Lib Dems a referendum on a change to the voting system as part of the coalition talks.
Rumours have frequently circulated in Tory circles that Clegg, in highly pressurised coalition talks after the election, managed to outmanoeuvre the Tory party leader by intimating he had been offered more by Labour in parallel post-election talks than was actually the case.
Cameron was asked by Robinson whether he misled his MPs by saying Labour would give the Lib Dems voting reform without a referendum. Cameron said no, because he was "absolutely certain" that the case.
Clegg is then asked whether it is inaccurate to say he told Cameron he could get the alternative vote without a referendum from Labour.
He said: "The perception, which I think was accurate, was discussions are out, and it might have been an offer that might had been made and might have been considered. In answer to your direct question – was it ever formally made to me? – no, it wasn't formally made to me."
Tonight's programme also reveals that Cameron had 45-minute chance encounter with Clegg before the election, which helped him to form a view of the man who would later become his deputy prime minister.
"We'd spoken, funnily enough I think by accident when the government opened the supreme court. I think because the prime minister, then Gordon Brown, and the Queen were both there they didn't really know what to do with the opposition politicians they left Nick and me alone in this room together for about 45 minutes. We didn't talk about ... hung parliaments or anything like that; we just talked about politics and things, and I think that helped, so I knew that he was a reasonable person – in politics for the right reasons like me."
The programme will be broadcast tonight on BBC2 at 9pm.
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The BBC's new film trailer may have a hidden message
29 Julwww.guardian.co.uk
Is the corporation trying to tell Jeremy Hunt something?
Trailers promoting forthcoming BBC programmes are traditionally controversial, as are promotional films extolling the virtues of the corporation. The biggest single complaint on viewer feedback shows is that some programmes are so enthusiastically previewed that the audience eventually tunes in with a sense of deja vu. Others object on ideological grounds: if the BBC's charter excuses it from carrying adverts for commercial products made by other people, how can it so relentlessly huckster its own?
Few pieces of between-programme filler, though, have been as pointed and potentially contentious as one broadcast to viewers waiting for Tuesday night's That Mitchell and Webb Look on BBC2. A blizzard of clips of famous actors – Michael Sheen in The Damned United, Emma Thompson in An Education – was cut together at a rate of faces only generally seen in the opening moments of the Bafta film awards.
This compilation was advertising the specific achievements of BBC Films. Under various headings (Names You Know, Those You Don't – Yet, Award-Winning Writing) the super-trailer praised the efforts of public service TV in bringing movies to the public.
The timing was explosive: only the day before, the government had announced the closure of the UK Film Council, the body that invests lottery money in cinema projects, and which had co-produced many of the films included in the BBC's self-congratulatory package.
Perhaps this celebration of the BBC's cinematic clout was always intended to run on that day, at that time. In the context of the recent killing of a major source of revenue for small or quirky British films, it felt aimed at culture secretary Jeremy Hunt, who has warned in interviews that the corporation should be ready for cuts in its funding.
In fact, the message to Hunt seemed clear: any move against the BBC would be a strike not just on television but a second hit on cinema. Seen in this light, what could have been just another boring promotional trailer had the import of a campaign commercial.
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Will Gompertz loves the arts – shame the story has to be cuts
28 Julwww.guardian.co.uk
The BBC's arts editor really gets culture, so it's too bad the axe is poised to fall on it
Coverage of the arts on the main terrestrial news channels can mean awkward segments of celeb-puffery (ITV – we mean you) or a shallow excuse for jeering at those silly arty people and their pickled sharks.
But long gone are the days of Rosie Millard, and her fluffy, aerated reports from the Oscars – the BBC has an excellent arts editor in the form of Will Gompertz. This knowledgeable, wry and engaging reporter is comfortable with culture in its infinite glory. The tragedy is that he's doomed to report on cuts, cuts and nothing but cuts.
Gompertz (who was appointed last year over arts correspondent Razia Iqbal) looks like a mad professor, and so fits in no matter where he goes – be it unveiling the new breed of writers at the Royal Court, or mooching around Glastonbury. The BBC has a noble history of finding eccentric reporters who become cults: take windmill-armed Andrew Marr, or business editor and word-mangler Robert Peston.
Gompertz, formerly of Tate Media (and an occasional contributor to the Guardian) is demonstrably comfortable with all aspects of the arts – he recently delivered a down-to-earth piece on the growing popularity of street dance, at ease where lesser reporters display a prickly, visible discomfort worthy of Prince Charles.
But why is Gompertz so good? Mainly because he conveys a knowledge borne of experience, gained by attending opera, theatre and galleries of his own free will. The same was true of Channel 4 News' former arts correspondent, the Breton-shirt-clad Nicholas Glass (recently replaced by South Bank Show's former executive producer Matthew Cain).
Now there is a palpable sense of foreboding, as regional arts councils are assuming the position for a major financial chainsaw disaster, making it vital that arts news is reported with clarity and understanding. On Gompertz's BBC blog, funding-being-scythed stories already feature. But how sad it is that committed arts editors everywhere are currently clutching a dog-eared, tearstained thesaurus seeking fresh words for "cut" (hack/slash?) so as to avoid repetition in their bulletins. No matter who's reporting, the story is no longer about UK arts in all their glorious variety. Now it's a tale of death by a thousand cuts.
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BBC Proms: Doctor Who, Royal Albert Hall, London
27 JulThe Independent - Arts & Entertainment
While the queues for Sunday morning's Doctor Who Prom snaked, as usual, past the Royal Albert Hall, once inside it was clear that this was no ordinary Prom audience. There were tweed jackets and velvet bowties galore, and the arena was filled with children clutching cardboard cut-outs of Daleks and pointing at the Tardis, which had somehow landed on stage next to the old bust of Henry Wood.
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Our leaders shouldn't threaten the BBC. Let it sort itself out
26 JulGuardian.co.uk - Media News
The government's radical ideas and cuts should not diminish a cherished institution
Many British people feel profound affection for the BBC; very few (outside of rival media organisations) feel passionate dislike of it; most are indifferent or vaguely appreciative. So it is peculiar how much political energy governments spend fretting about the corporation.
Last week, culture secretary Jeremy Hunt criticised the BBC for "extraordinary and outrageous" waste, adding that the licence fee might be cut in an effort to enforce austerity. Mr Hunt is entitled to take that view, not least because there is definitely waste in the BBC, some of it worthy of outrage.
But the BBC is undertaking cost-cutting measures. Meanwhile, the licence fee is not up for renegotiation until next year and there is no great public clamour that might necessitate an intervention by the secretary of state. In other words, Mr Hunt was firing a shot across the bows of the corporation.
The BBC is not without failings. It suffers from a certain bureaucratic complacency and lapses in self-awareness, forgetting how its privileges look from the outside and how its vastness squeezes out smaller players in the media market.
But these are problems to be addressed by reform and negotiation, not political confrontation. They do not diminish the fact that, at £2.80 per week, BBC services are tremendous value for money. The government is clearly in a radical mood, with an appetite for shaking up old structures. In just a few months it has launched a revolution in schools and healthcare, slashed budgets and ripped up welfare settlements. That feels, for many in the public sector, like a settling of old ideological scores.
That might be a little paranoid. But the BBC, often a target of Conservative scorn, is entitled to feel nervous. The coalition has proved that it is not afraid to cut. It needs to show also that it can refrain from butchering public institutions when, on balance, they work quite well.
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Mark Damazer has some advice for his successor as controller of BBC Radio 4
26 JulGuardian.co.uk - Media News
Enjoy yourself and don't be afraid of change, he tells Gwyneth Williams
When Gwyneth Williams was appointed as Radio 4 controller, the station's outgoing boss Mark Damazer wrote on his blog that it was in "terrific hands". But what should Williams, who began her BBC career in 1976 and was responsible for the World Service's international radio, expect now she holds the reins?
Change should be gradual and subtle but it should happen, even if some of R4's 10 million weekly listeners object, says Damazer. "There is a misapprehension that R4 ennobles the idea that you can't change or don't have to change but you do need to change. Audiences change and tastes change." His own changes – bringing in Kirsty Young on Desert Island Discs,Evan Davis on Today and controversially replacing Edward Stourton with Justin Webb on the same programme – had a mixed reception.
The station has already felt the impact of budget cuts – its direct programme spend of about £80m (of which about £30m goes on news) has been reduced by about 12% in real terms since 2004, Damazer reckons. This led to the much-criticised decision to axe the Friday Play. Had he not been offered the post of head of St Peter's College, Oxford, Damazer says he would have tried to work both a philosophy and a sports programme into the schedule. His advice for his successor is simple: enjoy yourself. "The job needs to be done at maximum throttle and not as a means to an end. It means you do the job without thinking it leads to another job. When you do it you need to be convinced that you never need to apply for another job in broadcasting."
Just like him in fact.
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Stick up for the BBC. It's the last bulwark against rule by the mob
26 JulGuardian.co.uk - Media News
Having a go at the corporation is a favourite pursuit of politicians. But we ignore its worth to the nation at our peril
Ministers under political pressure and their spin doctors usually find it hard to resist a jibe at media interviewers, especially if they are from the BBC. To ask hard questions, they reason, is to betray an anti-government bias. Alastair Campbell became obsessed during his attempts to defend the actions of his boss, Tony Blair. The BBC was on an anti-New Labour crusade because its interviewers and reporters dared to be intelligently critical of so much Labour policy – the Iraq war in particular.
But education secretary's Michael Gove's interview on Radio 4's Today programme last Monday went to new, surreal heights. He was offered 11 minutes to defend his decisions to allow just two days to debate the academy schools legislation, along with his summary and clumsy winding- up of the building schools for the future (BSF) programme – and managed to attack the BBC and impugn the interviewer Sarah Montague no fewer than half a dozen times.
Only the BBC could be concerned with the "processology" of how much time there was for parliamentary debate, he declared; only the BBC could devote so little time to the merits of academies; the BBC failed to report the bureaucracy and expense of BSF; Sarah Montague had revealed her "mindset" that only local government could run schools – and so on.
Gove is an articulate exponent of his position – I write as a sympathiser with the idea of academy schools – but by the end of the interview I had become seriously alarmed. It is not as though Gove is a stranger to the BBC and its values; he partly made his name, and helped the process of rebranding the Tory party, with his sophisticated contributions to programmes such as Newsnight Review. But here he was in office trying to portray the BBC and Sarah Montague as a biased leftwing cabal purposely misrepresenting his position. This was Campbell plus – but fewer than 10 weeks into government.
On the same day the culture secretary Jeremy Hunt declared that there was a case for shrinking the BBC's licence fee. The corporation was indulging in "outrageous waste" at a time of stringency – and there had to be "huge" changes in the way it was managed. The public was right to expect more for less.
If the issues involved were only BBC executive pay, junkets and star salaries then the corporation should be left to fend for itself against such criticisms. But Gove's attitudes, and Hunt's stance on the licence fee, together with pressure for the National Audit Office to have full access to the BBC's accounts, reveal a more worrying agenda. It is to cow, browbeat and reduce the scale of the corporation while further undermining its independence – and, in the long run, its legitimacy.
Attacks on alleged BBC bias open up a whole new front – the argument that the rules governing partiality should be lifted altogether, and broadcasters should be allowed to express political opinions. The Americans, so the argument goes, were right to abolish some 20 years ago their fairness doctrine requiring broadcasters to be even-handed in their programmes and coverage. There is now such a well-developed market in diverse programmes that if viewers and listeners want fairness they can shop around for the varying opinions that constitute the national debate. Let the marketplace and private owners decide on our media and its content.
The American abandonment of fairness in broadcasting is not a happy precedent. Last week a black senior civil servant, Shirley Sherrod, was forced to resign her post by the White House as a supposedly unreconstructed racist after a conservative blogger posted an edited video on his website of her making allegedly racist remarks. It later emerged that the editing had been manipulated. Sherrod had made no racist remarks whatsoever. But with no fairness doctrine and no basic journalistic checking, Murdoch's Fox News had rushed the tape on to air. Even Sherrod's forced and pre-emptive resignation (for which Obama has now apologised) did not stop Fox's commentators, licensed to show no restraint or balance, continuing to damn her long after it was clear that the tape was false.
It was an ugly moment – but characteristic of a poisonous American public culture. The bile, unfairness and lack of restraint in the blogosphere is infecting the mainstream media and thus American politics. Senior American politicians and officials of all political persuasions despair about its impact on political debate and policy. Tough decisions – on banks, on fiscal policy, on defence, on the Middle East – have become almost impossible. An organisation such as the BBC, committed to impartiality and accuracy, is seen as a last bulwark against populist government by the mob. Yet in Britain one wing of the coalition government is set upon attacking it, regarding the American media model as one we should copy. Matters are made more ominous by the degree of emerging cross-media dominance by News International – matched only in a western democracy by Berlusconi in Italy – that will be further sealed when Mr Murdoch's bid for the balance of BSkyB he does not own is nodded through by the coalition. Lack of courage by weak politicians, with Blair and Brown especially culpable, is set to bequeath Britain the worst of the Italian and American media. Our culture and our democracy are at stake.
Yet at this crucial moment in its fortunes the BBC is virtually friendless among Britain's political and financial class – even though the vast bulk of the British public remains stubbornly loyal. It urgently needs to make some dramatic moves to make its cause easier to advocate. The proposed 8% cut in senior executive pay and ban on bonuses are moves in the right direction, but I would be far more radical. The director general Mark Thompson and his senior colleagues need to volunteer deep and eye-catching cuts in their own salaries and, where necessary, their pensions. The BBC's stars should follow suit. The fat cat label has to be shed, and shed fast.
At the same time every BBC producer, editor, reporter and presenter in every department needs to raise their game; they are fighting for the long-term survival of their organisation. The flagship current affairs programmes need to lose the populist default tone (why-is-this-politician-lying-to-me?) into which they sometimes lapse and instead rediscover the best in hard journalism and tough questioning while respecting democratic life. Anti-BBC jibes from any politician in future interviews have to be challenged as mendacious.
More widely, the BBC has to be scrupulous about the boundaries of its proper reach, and put the public's preferences at the heart of its decision-making. And then the liberal Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in the coalition must indicate that they recognise the danger – and rally to a reformed BBC's side. This is a precious institution. It is time for more people to say so.
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The BBC may be a global force but needs to be championed at home
26 JulGuardian.co.uk - Media News
Corporation is dogged by poor choices and a lack of decision-making about its future
In the Wall Street Journal recently, Columbia University's president, Lee Bollinger, laid out the case for America to develop an "American World Service" that could compete with the BBC. His thesis rested not on the power of the BBC's international reach so much as a potential resolution to the current crisis in American journalism. What was remarkable about the article - apart from the obvious oddity of an op ed piece urging an extension of a BBC-type model running in a Rupert Murdoch-owned paper - was the reinforcement of the fact that the BBC is now not simply an enormous force in the UK, but internationally too.
For someone who is now employed by Bollinger but has spent a large part of my career as a media journalist trying to fathom the contradictions of the BBC, it seems like a very apposite subject for this week. The idea that the BBC is a template for a public presence in a converged media world should make us all feel proud. The billions of pounds of public money the corporation has ingested have not simply gone down the drain or into taxi accounts; they have created something that is woven into our cultural and democratic fabric of our country.
Yet in the UK, why does the BBC feel as though it still wobbles on the brink of an existential precipice? Every day bad news dribbles out, whether it is as mundane as the defection of Strictly's spangled staples, or the threat of a licence fee cut. The ghastly and long-running misjudgments over executive and star pay threaten to erode a reputation that commercial money still struggles to buy or build. They are surely just footnotes to a flawed commercially-oriented strategy, yet the corporation's sprawling expansion needs focus and purpose to be applied to it rather more crisply.
While the model and the output of the BBC may look unsightly under a microscope, from a distance it is an incredible entity. It is not really immediately threatened by funding or structural issues, but it is threatened by some of its own poor choices, and a continuing rhetoric that furthers a general diminishing of all the BBC's resources, rather than focus and growth in important areas.
Alarmingly, moves such as ending the pension arrangements for not particularly well-paid staff are much more likely to make the dozens of key producers, editors and operatives who create the best of the BBC's output lose heart and change occupation. Instead of raising our eyes collectively to a broader stage and a vision of what the BBC ought to and could be, the ongoing debate is bogged down in an issue of scale and appearance rather than one of relevance and opportunity.
This is not a plea to stop "BBC bashing"; without the corrective of intelligent and robust criticism, there is a good chance that it would have not survived the past 30 years so well. But if we can accept the BBC's funding will be smaller, then collectively, not just the corporation's management, or a fleeting government, we need to debate what the shape of the UK's media and cultural presence can and should be in the world, with the BBC playing an important part in that picture.
As Bollinger's piece (which caused a riot in the comment threads among the Journal's heartland readership) suggests, there is a much more fundamental shift going on where a strong pan-national presence is vital for engaging the world. Cutting the fat is necessary, but understanding what is precious for a properly defined long-term future for the BBC is crucial; and it is not immediately apparent who is either going to convene or to champion that debate. It seems, though, that there isn't a more important issue for the future of British media at the moment, and it would be a real shame if we were incapable of conducting it ourselves.
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BBC executives receive extra pension cash
25 JulTelegraph - UK News
BBC executives are topping-up their pensions from a secret fund despite asking staff to accept cuts in their own retirement packages, it has emerged.
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Sign up for your free account nowThis week's news on BBC cuts.
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Public services face cuts
29 JulFrom BBC News
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Clegg explains spending cuts U-turn
29 JulThe Guardian World News
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The BBC's new film trailer may have a hidden message
29 Julwww.guardian.co.uk
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Will Gompertz loves the arts – shame the story has to be cuts
28 Julwww.guardian.co.uk
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BBC Proms: Doctor Who, Royal Albert Hall, London
27 JulThe Independent - Arts & Entertainment
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Our leaders shouldn't threaten the BBC. Let it sort itself out
26 JulGuardian.co.uk - Media News
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Mark Damazer has some advice for his successor as controller of BBC Radio 4
26 JulGuardian.co.uk - Media News
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Stick up for the BBC. It's the last bulwark against rule by the mob
26 JulGuardian.co.uk - Media News
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The BBC may be a global force but needs to be championed at home
26 JulGuardian.co.uk - Media News
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BBC executives receive extra pension cash
25 JulTelegraph - UK News
