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Viral whinging at the BBC

At this time of year it's customary to look back and reflect on life while gazing into the middle distance (or into the bottom of a glass of mulled wine). But today I found myself nipping back about 15 years.

I was transported by a fascinating - if depressing - article in the Guardian describing BBC staff moaning about Mark Thompson, the DG.

The bit that caught my eye was the fact that staff are using the compulsory "Safeguarding Trust" seminars as an opportunity to do the moaning.

Years ago, somewhere around the Jurassic era, all BBC staff had to attend compulsory seminars about the new BBC internal market - part of John Birt's Producer Choice revolution. Everyone was going to be a business unit and would sell their expertise to everyone else, even if they were sitting in the same office.

We all know how that ended in tears, but back then, being a naive young thing, I trolled along to these events looking forward to finding out about the brave new world and sharing views with my BBC colleagues.

I came away two hours later feeling like all my optimism had been sucked out of me. The seminar had become a conduit for all the bile that people were feeling about the new BBC, and the new DG in particular. I came from a relatively happy part of the BBC, and had never heard anything like it.

That was in the 1990s. I suppose nowadays we'd call is something like 'viral whinging'.

It looks as if "Safeguarding Trust" has been acting as a similar conduit for all the discontent that's been building up in the BBC over the last couple of years.

This is a shame, as there's nothing inherently wrong with examining the best way to keep an audience's trust.

So is it a problem? Well I suspect it might be for the sanity of BBC staff at the moment. Being forced to go on a seminar about trust when you'd rather be safeguarding your own job (or department) must feel like re-pointing the walls of Jericho - nice to have but ultimately a waste of everyone's time.

I see that the Guardian suggests senior staff are joining in the moaning and not passing back the bad news to Mr Thompson. That happened with Producer Choice as well.

I suspect the difference this time is that Mark Thompson doesn't realise how unpopular he is. John Birt was well aware and didn't care.

Business advice for thesps and other freelances

I'm always on the look out for places that support one-person businesses and freelances. Working for yourself is hard enough so all tips and tricks are very welcome.

I was asked to supply some blurb for The Stage the other day, and their Dear John section is a wonderful font of wisdom.

Check it out.

Approximately the size of Wales

It's not easy to come up with quick and easy comparisons that make it clear how big, small, expensive, or devastating an issue might be.  It's something we often talk about during media training sessions.

Traditionally, burning trees in the Amazon are 'roughly the size of Wales', or perhaps 'twice the size of Belgium'. A satellite is usually 'the size of a freezer' or weighs 'as much as a London bus'.

These are brave - and probably doomed - stabs at the tricky task of grabbing the audience's attention.

Yesterday two politicians used two different arresting analogies on BBC Radio 5 Live while describing prison policies. They caught my attention because they were both arresting and meaningless.

The first comment was:

"There are twice as many people in prison than there are in the Royal Navy."

The second:

"It costs more to keep someone in prison than to send them to Eton."

I haven't got a clue how accurate these comparison are, but they are interesting because they have no relation to each other.

There is no meaningful link between the Royal Navy and prisons, so the comparison quickly breaks down.

The Eton comment was presumably used to show both Eton and the prison system in a bad light. At least that was the effect it had on me.

These phrases just made me want to find out how many people are in the Navy and (more intriguingly) how much does is cost to send someone to Eton. The fact that I haven't got a clue about either of these figures underlines the weakness of the analogies.

At least I know the size of Wales. I used to live there.