Saturday 10 November 2012
An Open Letter to George Entwistle, Director-General of the BBC
Mr Entwistle
I am a collossal supporter, recommender, 'fan' and enthusiast for most of what the BBC does. I am possibly the UK's most dedicated listener and collector of BBC output: it has been the soundtrack to the whole of my adult life.
I am sorry to say this - because I have no doubt you are a good & decent man, but you have appalled me with incompetence in this latest matter: and unless you undergo a truly massive change of heart and of focus and of management technique within the next few hours, then you you must resign immediately. Today.
I have just heard you interviewed on the Today programme by John Humphries, and was appalled by the stuttering, bumbling excuse-making embarrassment that you made of yourself. I am sorry for that too but there it is.
It is completely incredible that after the Savile debacle, any DG could possibly not have put the flames of hell itself under the buttocks of every single manager and editor in the BBC, and made it collossally clear in words of very few syallables that their balls would be on the hotplate if anything remotely contentious were in preparation, yet not notified to the DG.
Since that monumental foul-up you should have been checking every planned transmission weekly: indeed it amazes me that every DG does not do this. To John Humpries just minutes ago, you were just making the excuses that in essence "..there is so much going on.." that by implication you don't have time to do such a thing. If you really believe that, then you are an incompetent as a manager and you must resign right now - on reading this. That is because you will have completely failed to understand what delegation is about: you repeatedly asserted that you believe in putting the right management in position and then 'letting them manage' without your oversight. But that is a nonsense: all large organisations need oversight from above and any skilled manager knows that if you delegate properly, YOU personally will not be excessively busy - the whole point of delegation is to have time, to do what only you can do.
Every DG should have a slot once a week of an hour - that is all it needs - where with a small senior team of two or three, you review - in very brief - what is in the running order a week or two weeks ahead, plus anything which has been 'jumped' up the running order for reason of urgency. Most programmes will require ten seconds discussion: it is only the very few, perhaps a few tens of programmes, which need even a minute or two. Plainly only a very few, like this one, need to be flagged as "contentious" - a hardly difficult notion to grasp. That will allow you and your seniors to stop anything dead in its tracks that needs stopping.
That I even need to explain this simplicity suggests you really are not up to the job, for it so self-evident that this should be a routine part of managing the BBCs output. Do not make excuses that "there are too many output channels" - that why you have subordinates who can summarise for you. In essence "anything contentious on your channel(s) this week ?" is all that need be asked.
As to Twitter, it was a sign of complete disconnectedness from how the communications world works that when John Humpries asked you if you'd known about the Tweet out twelve hours before the show which flagged the problem, you started bumbling on about how "...I sometimes check twitter in the late evening...".
How can you NOT realise that thousands of tweets are being issued each second globally, and no individual can check them. You simply MUST have a technical team with some simple computing tools within the BBC, which electronically LOGS ALL tweets globally that mention the BBC - this is technologically trivial. The output of that process needs to be screened by the equivalent of a clippings team hourly and anything alarming, must be flagged direct to senior management immediately - day or night.
I am sick to the pit of my stomach to think of the risk that this very fine organisation is being put right now: if we lose it (and there are plenty who would like to kill it off each time the licence fee is up for renewal) we will never get it back. Either wake up, apologise for your own desperately blinkered approach thus far, declare a new clarity of management method and GET ON with all the above - or get out of the job today, for the sake of this great public enterprise.
Monday 23 April 2012
Abu Qatada and the Saga of the Three Months... Theresa May IS Right
In the UK papers this past week the question of whether the UK Home Office "got it's dates wrong" has been batted back and forth and large amounts of hot air and grumbling has been generated.
May I just - instead - inject a simple line of clear logical analysis to this :
1. The European Court appeal rules are perfectly clearly set out - see here for a PDF version: http://tinyurl.com/ECHR-Appeal-Rules
2. An extract from the relevant Section VI(b) of those rules (page 13) clearly state that :
"The Panel declares inadmissible any referral requests which:
. . .
(b) do not comply with the three-month rule set out in Article 43 § 1 of the
Convention.
In this connection, it is to be noted that the period of three months within which referral may be requested starts to run on the date of the delivery of the judgment, irrespective of whether the party concerned may have learned about it at a later stage.
It expires three calendar months later and is not interrupted by bank holidays or periods of judicial recess. The request for referral should reach the Registry of the Court before the expiry of the above-mentioned period. "
3. The judgement (which triggered all this controversy) was handed down on 17th January 2012.
4. Consider: If we define time-intervals, for some purpose, where we agree we will disregard the hour of the day (as here), and simply define periods by the date then - looking at a couple of simple examples :
a. If we were speaking of a period of one day, beginning on the 5th, then on what date would you describe the subsequent period, as beginning ?
Plainly and categorically, the 6th. The next period begins at the start of the succeeding interval of time - here one day - hence the subsequent period begins one day later. Seemingly trivial.
b. Now - extending that notion, if we define a period of one calendar month, as beginning on 17th, then on what day of the succeeding month, would you describe the succeeding period of one calendar month as beginning ?
Plainly it has to be at the start of the succeeding interval of time, which is 17th : were you to consider it instead 18th, then what would the beginning date of the next succeeding period be - 19th ? And then, 20th ? and 21st ? That is plainly wrong, as the boundary date would be 'drifting' down the months. The only possible answer for the start of the succeeding period, is 17th.
SO - if it is plainly true that the succeeding period begins on 17th of the succeeding month, then what is the end date, of the one-month period which begins on 17th? Plainly, the answer must be, the 16th of the following month.
c. And so it proves, for any longer period - a three-month period beginning ON 17th January, plainly, categorically and definitely, ENDS ON 16th of April - NOT 17th April.
If the ECHR or its spokespersons do not agree with that, they are simply wrong: it is not a matter of opinion, or open to dispute: it is an unshiftable, indisputable logical fact arising from their own procedure wording.
5. Abu Qatada's lawyers submitted their appeal papers at 22:00 on Tuesday 17th of April: 22 hours outside the legal deadline.
I am not personally a great fan of Theresa May: but on this she has been abused quite wrongly. She IS right. She deserves to receive apologies from many sides. If the ECHR turns out not to agree would be a travesty - they will be making themselves - and their procedures, a laughing stock.
Go Theresa. :-)
May I just - instead - inject a simple line of clear logical analysis to this :
1. The European Court appeal rules are perfectly clearly set out - see here for a PDF version: http://tinyurl.com/ECHR-Appeal-Rules
2. An extract from the relevant Section VI(b) of those rules (page 13) clearly state that :
"The Panel declares inadmissible any referral requests which:
. . .
(b) do not comply with the three-month rule set out in Article 43 § 1 of the
Convention.
In this connection, it is to be noted that the period of three months within which referral may be requested starts to run on the date of the delivery of the judgment, irrespective of whether the party concerned may have learned about it at a later stage.
It expires three calendar months later and is not interrupted by bank holidays or periods of judicial recess. The request for referral should reach the Registry of the Court before the expiry of the above-mentioned period. "
3. The judgement (which triggered all this controversy) was handed down on 17th January 2012.
4. Consider: If we define time-intervals, for some purpose, where we agree we will disregard the hour of the day (as here), and simply define periods by the date then - looking at a couple of simple examples :
a. If we were speaking of a period of one day, beginning on the 5th, then on what date would you describe the subsequent period, as beginning ?
Plainly and categorically, the 6th. The next period begins at the start of the succeeding interval of time - here one day - hence the subsequent period begins one day later. Seemingly trivial.
b. Now - extending that notion, if we define a period of one calendar month, as beginning on 17th, then on what day of the succeeding month, would you describe the succeeding period of one calendar month as beginning ?
Plainly it has to be at the start of the succeeding interval of time, which is 17th : were you to consider it instead 18th, then what would the beginning date of the next succeeding period be - 19th ? And then, 20th ? and 21st ? That is plainly wrong, as the boundary date would be 'drifting' down the months. The only possible answer for the start of the succeeding period, is 17th.
SO - if it is plainly true that the succeeding period begins on 17th of the succeeding month, then what is the end date, of the one-month period which begins on 17th? Plainly, the answer must be, the 16th of the following month.
c. And so it proves, for any longer period - a three-month period beginning ON 17th January, plainly, categorically and definitely, ENDS ON 16th of April - NOT 17th April.
If the ECHR or its spokespersons do not agree with that, they are simply wrong: it is not a matter of opinion, or open to dispute: it is an unshiftable, indisputable logical fact arising from their own procedure wording.
5. Abu Qatada's lawyers submitted their appeal papers at 22:00 on Tuesday 17th of April: 22 hours outside the legal deadline.
I am not personally a great fan of Theresa May: but on this she has been abused quite wrongly. She IS right. She deserves to receive apologies from many sides. If the ECHR turns out not to agree would be a travesty - they will be making themselves - and their procedures, a laughing stock.
Go Theresa. :-)
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