At midday Tim Davie, the BBC's acting director-general, gave some interviews. Plainly he was having a stressful day, so stressful that he'd forgotten to put a tie on. His first interview, naturally, was with the BBC, but he then granted one to Sky News. After two minutes it was going so badly that he (or perhaps a colleague signalling to him off-camera) decided he should cut it short.
"Anyway I'm going now, because I've got a job to do," he blurted abruptly. "I've got a job and I'm going to get on with it." Perhaps to show his colleagues how one goes about "stepping aside", he sidled to his right, out of shot. The camera followed him. He glared at it. Then he sidled a bit further.
"Tim Davie, ending his interview with Sky News," muttered the jilted presenter, Dermot Murnaghan. "Bet he wouldn't do that to the BBC."
Reluctantly tearing myself away, I ducked into the Commons, where MPs were debating, well, what else. No one had anything nicer to say about George Entwistle than that he was "a decent man" (Harriet Harman). Still, that was better than Lord Patten of the BBC Trust got. Conservative MPs in particular were savage about their party's one-time chairman.
"Wasted hundreds of thousands of pounds… asleep at the wheel… time to move aside and manage on all of his other outside interests… done absolutely nothing to earn his staggering salary…" And that was just from Philip Davies (Con, Shipley).
Many MPs earnestly reminded the House that the BBC was an otherwise proud institution. "I love the BBC, not least Radio Shropshire," cried Mark Pritchard, Tory MP for The Wrekin (Shropshire).
Sadly in all the excitement no MP thought to ask what should happen to anyone who'd mentioned Lord McAlpine's name on Twitter – for example, Sally Bercow, or, as she's also known, the Speaker's wife.
No comments:
Post a Comment