BBC News

I

It's good that Matt Wiessler, the designer scapegoated by the BBC in the Martin Bashir/Princess Diana Panorama scandal, has finally received compensation [some £750,000 apparently] 'from the BBC', though it appears as if every penny of it will actually be paid by the licence fee payer. 

The licence fee payer has already forked out £1.5 million for the Dyson review into the scandal, and paid out about £1.5 million to a charity chosen by the Royal Family because of the Bashir scandal, and looks set to compensate former royal nanny Tiggy Legge-Bourke over smears spread about her by Mr Bashir.

II

Meanwhile, BBC DG Tim Davie has been talking again, this time telling a leadership conference that he feels 'exhausted' by the 'pathetic' flapping of some who 'surround' him, and he doesn't want them around him. [Are they among those who have recently departed, or will be soon departing?]

Daily, we are on the front pages of the papers. You have to judge where something is serious, and it’s not necessarily what’s the biggest press headline. I might get an email now that’s genuinely a problem that hasn’t got any press. 

You don’t want to surround yourself with people who flap and generate all this, ‘Oh it’s really serious.’ It’s not. I’m exhausted by all of that and I find it slightly pathetic. Sorry if that sounds nasty. 

In public-eye jobs we’re in the middle of the so-called culture wars and navigating that in my life is huge, in terms of what’s progressive versus what’s woke. We’re constantly being dragged around on this.

I feel some sad violin music is needed for poor Tim, whilst we wonder what he means by 'navigating' in terms of 'what's progressive versus what's woke'.

 

III

Talking of which, according to The Daily Mail the BBC is running its own in-house training about 'unconscious bias', warning against 'micro-incivilities', and that kind of rubbish. 

What struck me here is that the Mail says it has been pursuing the BBC over this through FOI requests and the BBC has refused to answer them twice before being forced to reveal the information by the Information Commissioner's Office. 

Woke or otherwise, that's very BBC.