Patten Won't Change BBC!

[Teddy Bear]

An excellent article in the Daily Express by Neil Hamilton about how the appointment of Chris Patten to chair the BBC trust suits the BBC agenda perfectly. Because I'm so sure that this element will be a recurring factor for the next few years I'm going to sticky this thread.

PATTEN WON'T CHANGE BBC

The biggest joke of the week was the BBC cowering in terror at the prospect of Lord Patten as chairm

Sunday March 13,2011
By Neil Hamilton

THE BIGGEST joke of the week was the BBC cowering in terror at the prospect of Lord Patten as chairman.

Patten, the most wringing-wet member of the Eighties Tory governments, was the apotheosis of anti-Thatcher, euro-fanatic, social-liberal political correctness. When he lost his seat to the Lib-Dems in 1992, Rightwing wags called it a Tory gain.

Patten has spent his life as a political insider and bureaucrat, moving from one Establishment job to another. Edward Heath’s head of the Conservative Research Department, Governor of Hong Kong, EU Commissioner, Chancellor of Oxford University; this is not the CV of Genghis Khan. If Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt wanted to scare BBC apparatchiks he would appoint Norman Tebbit.

Denis Thatcher called the BBC Buggers Broadcasting Communism. If only it were that simple.
The biggest joke of the week was the BBC cowering in terror at the prospect of Lord Patten as chairman

Until the early Sixties it was the high-minded, plummy-voiced relic of creator Lord Reith. Then it was transformed in the satire boom around That Was The Week That Was by the liberal-Left luvvie mindset which afflicts most media folk.

Political opinion is overt in papers. Buy The Guardian or the Daily Express and you know what you’ll get. Where is this diversity in broadcasting? TV is highly regulated for impartiality but it’s a con. Man-made global warming is treated as gospel truth, bleeding-heart attitudes are endemic in any economic discussion and moral relativism is everywhere.

TV is smothered by a centre-Left consensus. Patten is part of the problem, not the solution, though he could hardly fail to be better than Sir Michael Lyons, who used his farewell speech last Wednesday to reflect on the “cock-ups” of his four years.

Amazingly he attacked Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand’s “toxic combination of profanity, misogyny, bullying and black farce” in their phone call to Andrew Sachs. Yet at the time, he refused to act against a spectacularly disgusting episode which plunged the BBC to its nadir.

It was no thanks to Lyons or his management that the BBC had to accept boundaries it must not cross. It was public outcry which led to Ross and Brand going.

Lyons prepresided over a colossal waste of public money, from Ross’s £18million three-year contract down to Andrew Marr’s £600,000 a year.

No other broadcaster would pay these absurd sums. Its licence income of £3.5billion a year insulates it from commercial reality.

Such obscene fees are paid from the annual £145.50 TV tax which millions of retired and poor people struggle to pay.

The BBC does good things which might not be done but for public subsidy: Radio3 and BBC4, for example. But much of its output is hardly “public service broadcasting”. Why use licence cash to fund Radios 1 and 2 or endless lifestyle programmes?

Channel 4 and Sky complain the BBC drives up the price of sport and US imports.

It paid £400,000 per episode for Heroes, broadcast on BBC2, which in turn forced up the cost of such shows as Channel 4’s Desperate Housewives. There was the plan to take 295 BBC staff to the World Cup in South Africa last summer.

ITV muddled through with 145.

Meanwhile, the magnificent World Service is slashed, with plans to close five of 32 language services and cut up to 650 jobs from 2,400. And, as the Sunday Express exclusively revealed, the BBC spent £18.2million on taxis and hire cars last year.

Despite repeated pledges, BBC Director-General Mark Thompson shaved just £710,000, or four per cent, from the car bill; less than his £831,000 pay.

So far, Jeremy Hunt’s most celebrated moment was Jim Naughtie mispronouncing his surname but he is also a whizz at the lambada, a dance requiring pronounced sidestepping . A kind of Tory Vince Cable then. You never know when such skills will be useful. Onwards to Strictly Come Dancing.

He is also Sports Minister but knows nothing about football, announcing on TalkSport that the FA has offered him referee training to understand it. His time would be better employed devising new rules of the game at the BBC to curb its extravagance and represent the opinions of the ordinary licence-payer, whom BBC grandees have ignored for too long.

[thehighlandrebel]

Way to go.

[Teddy Bear]

Welcome back THR - good to see you. Hope your voyage went well.

Good links. The best site I know for anybody who wants to find out what their rights are regarding TVL is this one. It's a real eye opener and helps empower the individual.

[thehighlandrebel]

Thanks Teddy.

[Teddy Bear]

The following article pretty much sums up my estimation of Patten that I made at the beginning of this thread.

Despite it being obvious to everybody about the ridiculous pay awards that the BBC top echelon were giving themselves, for the years that Patten presided over the BBC Trust, precisely to address these issues, he did nothing.

Now it has come out in the public sphere just how far this milking of the licence fee payer has gone, he finally acknowledges it - as if he is the man that will do something about it.

Now it is about the stupidity of government that maintains this man, and the body he represents, to carry on in their present positions.

Too many BBC managers on high salaries and generous pensions, Lord Patten admits
The BBC has too many senior managers on high salaries and generous pensions, Lord Patten has admitted, as he argues the corporation has been “unused to scrutiny” but must change.

By Hannah Furness

Lord Patten, the chairman of the BBC Trust, said there were still too many managers at the corporation, who had been paid “too much” to preside over “processes and relationships of labyrinthine and often unnecessary complexity”.

He added the publicly-funded foundations of the BBC had sowed “some seeds of weakness” which led to a “broadcasting elite”.
Speaking at the Prix Italia, a broadcasting award presented in Turin, Lord Patten debated public service broadcasting and its place in the 21st Century.

He argued the “bruising experience” of having the BBC’s “serious errors” scrutinised would lead to “positive lessons” and allow them to reinvent themselves for the modern day.

He added the “only case” for public service broadcasting was “idealistic”, resting entirely on the “respect and affection” of the public.

Speaking in the inaugural BBC Speech in the TV and Radio Museum, Turin, Lord Patten said criticism of the corporation was sometimes “unfair”, “nakedly commercial”, and the result of “occasionally greedy eyes”.

But, he added: “Some of the criticism should be taken very seriously indeed.
"Profligacy, self-indulgence and waste are as inexcusable among public service broadcasters as anywhere else in the public sector.”
He said: “It seems to me that the assured funding which furnished public service broadcasting with such strength and confidence for so long also sowed some seeds of weakness.

“Guaranteed income, coupled to economic prosperity and the rapid expansion of first radio, then television and more recently the internet, created a broadcasting elite.
“That elite enjoyed, in some cases still enjoys, secure jobs, high salaries and generous pensions.

“Understandably, the emphasis was on creativity rather than accountability and perhaps inevitably there was a degree of complacency about the management of public money.
“Hand-in-hand with prosperity went complexity and over-management. And at the same time our much prized independence meant that we were unused to external scrutiny.”
He said he did not want to “point the finger at others”, with “more than enough experience of this at home”.

When he arrived at the BBC, Lord Patten said, he found “too many bosses who worked hard but were paid too much and presided over processes and relationships of labyrinthine and often unnecessary complexity.”

He added the BBC had already cut pay and reformed pensions, but said he hoped to see senior managers cut from 2.5 per cent to to one per cent of the workforce by 2015.
He also admitted the corporation had been “too slow to embrace the need for openness and honesty”.

Arguing the case for continued public broadcasting, he said it was still a protection against the “worst excesses of those who see audiences simply as a means to make money”, by making television for the “lowest common denominator”.

He said the next step had to be “renaissance”; re-inventing for the 21st century and embracing new technology and competition.
He added: “The fact is that despite enduring a year of widely reported editorial and financial lapses – and those were serious errors which merited negative publicity - the BBC remained and remains one of the most respected and admired British institutions.”

[Teddy Bear]

In light of the pay-off scandal, among other things, the BBC Trust must be feeling the heat to show that they actually do something for the licence fee payer. So they have come up with a suggestion - to extend children's TV till after 7pm

Proves how useless they really are.

An excellent article about the recent Thompson/Patten rift which echoes my own view.

The 'guardians’ who damaged the BBC
Lord Patten’s BBC Trust is ultimately responsible for the past year’s failings

By John Ware

This time last year the Savile tsunami was about to smash over the BBC, wreaking huge damage to its reputation for corporate and editorial probity. The BBC’s annus horribilis has ended with a visceral row between a former director-general, Mark Thompson, and the BBC Trust over big pay-offs to BBC executives.

A “grossly unedifying spectacle”, lamented Margaret Hodge, chairman of the Commons public accounts committee, inflicting yet further damage on the “standing and reputation of the BBC”. As we approach the anniversary, it’s time to take stock of who, ultimately, has been responsible for the damage. The answer is the BBC Trust, guardian of the licence-payers’ interests. Each event leads back to a series of misjudgments.

As regulator of BBC management, the trust’s job is to uphold the corporation’s core values of truth, fairness, accuracy and admitting when it gets things wrong. The suspicion must be that the trust picked this unseemly fight with Thompson to distract from its own failings.

The BBC Trust chairman is Lord Patten. Two weeks ago, he and senior trust officials categorically denied to MPs on the public accounts committee that Thompson ever told them the details of what Patten calls the “most egregious” pay-off of all — the £1 million redundancy package to Thompson’s deputy, Mark Byford, in June 2011. The trust has suggested that Thompson misled them by not disclosing that Byford would, in effect, get four months’ pay in lieu of notice without working.

The committee has retired to consider its verdict; but there is no doubt in my mind that it is Thompson who is telling the truth. A close reading of the documentary evidence shows Thompson played it straight, consulting Patten’s predecessor Sir Michael Lyons and trust officials. But the trust has been economical with the actualité.

Bluntly, its claim to have been kept in the dark is swervy. This matters, not least because the trust is itself the final arbiter over licence-payers’ complaints about swervy BBC journalism.

But in Patten’s case, the swerviness is especially rich, since it was he who later approved the half-million pound pay-off to George Entwistle, his chosen successor to Thompson. Talented but managerially inexperienced, Entwistle buckled under the Savile scandal after just 54 days. Yet, unlike Byford’s pay-off, Entwistle’s was incontrovertibly double his contractual entitlement.

Despite losing out to Entwistle for the top post, the BBC’s surer-footed chief operating officer Caroline Thomson offered to hold her rival’s hand until she found another job – with no pay-off. This was rejected by Entwistle, who almost immediately made her redundant, incurring a contractual redundancy pay-off of £670,000. I am told this was with Patten’s blessing, even at his behest. A few days later, the Savile scandal hit. Had Thomson stayed, she might well have averted the annus horribilis, having successfully handled previous BBC crises.

Patten’s choice of Entwistle, unanimously supported by the trust, was itself a disastrous misjudgement, exposed by Entwistle’s failure to show leadership during the Savile affair — and leaving him to twist in the wind. Of course, big pay-offs have corroded public trust in the BBC. But shrill criticism from MPs in this wretched story has ignored some inconvenient truths — much as politicians sometimes accuse the BBC of doing in its reporting of their affairs.

Byford earned £475,000 per year, which entitled him to his £1million pay-off. His salary was precisely why Thompson made him redundant. He wanted to send a credible signal to licence-payers about cost-cutting. What MPs may not know is that it was Byford who offered himself up for redundancy in the first place. Quite a noble act when you consider just how much Byford loved the BBC, how BBC values were the calcium in his bones, and how valued he was in turn.

Besides leading coverage of the Olympics, the royal wedding, and being responsible for regional reorganisation, Byford also headed BBC journalism. That’s why Thompson at first resisted Byford’s offer: he feared a wheel might come off.

As we now know, two wheels came off: first Newsnight discarded the Savile story soon after Byford went, exposing the BBC to damaging (and false) allegations that it was covering up its dirty corporate washing; then Newsnight tried to redeem itself with a report that led to the Conservative peer Lord McAlpine being falsely accused of child abuse. Had Byford stayed, I doubt this would have happened.

Yes, the BBC lost the plot over pay, but perspective is also needed. By 2016, £92 million will have been saved by a 25 per cent cut in senior managers. Pay-offs to managers not required to work their notice are a fraction of that sum — and manifestly not worth the damage to the BBC from the loss of Byford, the appointment of Entwistle and Patten’s unworthy shot at Thompson.

Has the BBC’s annus horribilis left its governance structure broken? Not necessarily. For all the trust’s serpentine weavings, its chairman is a doughty defender of its independence from political interference and seems to get on well with the new director-general, Lord Hall. “I love the BBC,” says Patten.

All the more reason why its guardians shouldn’t play fast and loose with BBC values to protect their reputations.

[Teddy Bear]

Another article that highlights the wording of this thread.
Back in 2011, Patten gave this assurance: ‘There are still too many senior managers — currently three per cent of the workforce. I want to see this cut to more like one per cent by 2015 to create a smaller group of people more clearly accountable for spending the licence fee.’

So we would expect over 2 years later, and halfway between the term he proposed, we should be seeing about 1.5% of senior managers. This is without those who have been 'seen off' as a result of one scandal or another.

But last week in a speech he said '‘There are still too many senior managers, around 2.5 per cent of the workforce. I would like to see this cut to more like one per cent by 2015 to create a smaller group of people clearly accountable for spending the licence fee.’'

What a waste of space!

Patten and his BBC repeat

Embattled BBC Trust chairman Lord Patten enjoyed unusually positive headlines last week when he pledged to cut the number of senior managers at the corporation. In a speech at the TV & Radio Museum in Turin, he said: ‘There are still too many senior managers, around 2.5 per cent of the workforce. I would like to see this cut to more like one per cent by 2015 to create a smaller group of people clearly accountable for spending the licence fee.’

His remarks seemed familiar. They were. Here is Patten delivering the Royal Television Society lecture in July 2011. ‘There are still too many senior managers — currently three per cent of the workforce. I want to see this cut to more like one per cent by 2015 to create a smaller group of people more clearly accountable for spending the licence fee.’

[Teddy Bear]

The prediction concerning Patten at the beginning of this thread has unsurprisingly proved totally correct.

This Mail Comment sums him up perfectly.

Patten's complacency is letting the BBC rot

By Daily Mail Comment

There is something worrying about the contempt with which BBC Trust Chairman Lord Patten treats growing public concerns about the Corporation and justified criticism in Parliament.

We saw this when he stood by a report clearing the BBC of a cover-up when Newsnight dropped its investigation into Jimmy Savile. This was after it emerged that key evidence had been omitted – something on which he was stubbornly evasive when pressed by MPs.

His complacency was evident again when the Public Accounts Committee found ‘failure at the most senior level’ had allowed vastly inflated severance payments to staff, concluding that the BBC’s governance was ‘broken’.

Now we see it at its most glaring in his arrogant refusal to release documents to MPs about the £100million Digital Media Initiative, which was scrapped in May.

With breathtaking contempt, he says publishing them would inhibit ‘free and frank’ exchanges between BBC staff.

In other words, protecting the guilty is more important than telling licence fee payers what happened to their money.

To be fair, the BBC empire – with its monstrous bureaucracy, unthinking profligacy with public money, cover-ups of sexual abuse and all-pervading soft Left bias – was already in advanced moral decay when Lord Patten took office.

What cannot be excused is his failure to stop the rot, let alone put anything right. Witness his appointing the wrong man as director-general and then shipping in, without any interview process, a former BBC insider who proceeded to appoint a string of New Labour supporters.

Indeed, with his supine instinct to defend the Corporation, this ultimate Establishment figure has allowed everything that was worst about the Corporation to worsen on his watch.

[steevo]

How about a slight reinterpretation where smug self-satisfaction equates to giving you the finger?

[Teddy Bear]

I think the contemptuous way he has reacted every time he's been shown to have completely failed at the responsibilities given him amounts to just that.

It's his way of trying to deflect his complete and utter uselessness, and I think many licence fee payers would like to give him 5 of their fingers wrapped tightly in a fist on the end of his nose for it.

[Teddy Bear]

While ex-BBC director general Greg Dyke is expressing here what he would like to have seen as the 'weak link' in the problems exposed about the BBC, which is far from the reality, this statement about Patten shows just who he would 'throw off the sinking ship' at this point in time.

BBC would be better off without Lord Patten, says Greg Dyke
The former BBC director-general has described the BBC Trust chairman as a ‘busted flush’

By Agencies

Former BBC director-general Greg Dyke has called current BBC Trust chairman Lord Chris Patten a ''busted flush'' who the broadcaster would be better off without.
He said Lord Patten had been damaged by the Jimmy Savile scandal and payouts to former executives such as 54-day director-general George Entwistle.

In an interview with the Guardian, he said: ''The BBC has a problem in the sense it's got a busted flush as chairman. I am surprised (Patten) is still there. It would probably help if he wasn't.''
Mr Dyke, who ran the corporation between January 2000 and 2004 and is now chairman of the Football Association, said the BBC's supporters needed to ''stand up''.
He said: ''It's time for those of us who really care about the BBC and who can get a mouthpiece to stand up and say what we value about the BBC.

''The BBC is very good at regrouping and sustaining itself. In the end it has the support of the country and it always has had. That's why Thatcher never took on the BBC – because it has the support of middle England.''

The Six O'Clock Show creator said 2014 will be a crucial year for the Corporation as outrage gives way to debate on the nitty-gritty of funding and regulation.

In October Conservative party chairman Grant Shapps threatened to cut the licence fee or share it among other broadcasters if the BBC did not ''win back public trust''.

Mr Dyke said it was ''almost certain'' that regulation of the BBC would pass to Ofcom.

But he expressed doubts about Dame Janet Smith's investigation into historic sexual abuse at the BBC, saying: ''It's very difficult to apply the standards of today to 25 or 20 years ago.''

[steevo]

You see right through him and the point is taken but I'd still like to post some of the obvious. So he's pinning it on this one guy's handling of Saville and executive pay, then downplays the significance of sexual abuse because of historic context, and degrades Thatcher. Right, now lets start the cheerleading because certainly that's not bad enough to win public trust.

[Teddy Bear]

Oh he's quite right about the uselessness of the insidious Patten, but instead of showing that's just ONE of the people responsible, he wants to close all the multitude of corruption still existing within the portals of the BBC.
A similar erasure of the problems within is in this article in the Telegraph by long time BBC presenter Nick Ross
This is the BBC - but for how much longer? He touches on the various failures and complete rot that have become apparent but then shows that everything is much better now. You will see that like most at the BBC, he really wants to do all the thinking for the reader, but to arrive at his idiotic conclusions.

Perfect justice would be to privatise them and watch them try to make it in the real world.
I'd keep the site going just to record their squirms and failures - the equivalent of watching somebody drown as they bob up and down a few times before disappearing under the waves.
Perfect justice and karma.

[Teddy Bear]

Hoorah!
Patten has quit the BBC Trust following heart surgery. Considering the numerous failures to really do the job for which he was entrusted I'm not surprised his heart troubled him. He performed exactly as was predicted when he first took the post. Not only didn't he change the BBC, he enabled them to continue their insidious agenda and scandalous behaviour.

Now he can rot in hell!

Crisis for the BBC as Chris Patten suddenly quits as Trust Chairman after major heart surgery ahead of battle over licence fee

• Shock announcement after being rushed to hospital 10 days ago
• Former Tory Cabinet minister will leave the BBC with immediate effect
• Since 2011 has overseen Savile scandal, row over pay-offs and IT bungles
• He announced his decision to quit six days before his 70th birthday

By Matt Chorley

The BBC was plunged into a fresh crisis tonight by the sudden resignation of Trust chairman Chris Patten.

Six days before his 70th birthday, the former Tory Cabinet minister said he was resigning with 'regret' following major heart surgery. He earned £110,000 for working 3-4 days a week.

It marks the latest epsilon in a turbulent period for the Corporation, in which he has overseen the Jimmy Savile and Newsnight scandals and political rows over huge pay-offs to managers, left-wing bias, wasting £100million on IT and the future of the licence fee.

The unexpected hunt for a new Chairman comes as the BBC prepares to go into battle to protect the licence fee ahead of charter renewal in 2016.

Senior Tories have suggested the licence fee could be cut, or even scrapped, but Lord Patten has rejected the attacks, claiming the Corporation 'gets bashed more than President Assad'.

It emerged tonight that Lord Patten experienced 'serious chest pains' a week-and-a-half ago, and was admitted to Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.

On April 28 he was transferred to Royal Brampton Hospital where he underwent a heart bypass and angioplasty. There was no permanent damage to his heart.

However on the advice of his doctors and after consulting with friends and family he decided he could not work at the 'same full pace as I have done to date'.

Vice Chairman Diane Coyle will take over as Acting Chairman until a successor is appointed, the BBC said. She is the wife of BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones.

Conservative MP Michael Fabricant tweeted: 'The Chairman of the BBC needs to be alert to issues. Not a superannuated grandee detached from modern reality.'

Tory Philip Davies, one of Lord Patten's most fierce critics on the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, said: 'Always wanted to see Lord Patten leave the BBC Trust but not in these circumstances. I wish him well with his recovery and recuperation.'

In a statement Lord Patten said: 'It has been a privilege to have served as Chairman of the BBC Trust.

'Like the NHS, the BBC is a huge national asset which is part of the everyday fabric of our lives. It is not perfect – what institution is?

'It always needs to challenge itself to improve. But it is a precious and wonderful thing, a hugely positive influence which benefits greatly from the creativity and dedication of its staff.

'I have had no reason to doubt that the leaders of all main political parties support the role it plays at the centre of our public realm.

'Most important of all, the British public enormously value the strength of its output, its independence and the contribution it makes every day to the quality of our lives.'

In September 2012 Lord Patten welcomed George Entwistle as the new Director General of the BBC, but just 54 days later Mr Entwistle resigned

One of the most contentious issues during Lord Patten's tenure was the huge pay-offs given to BBC managers, which lead to a series of grillings in Parliament. Pictured left to right are: Former BBC Director-General Mark Thompson, Marcus Agius from the old BBC remunerations board, former BBC chairman Sir Michael Lyons, BBC Trust member Nicholas Kroll, departing BBC personnel officer Lucy Adams, Lord Patten, and departing BBC trust member Anthony Fry

One of the most contentious issues during Lord Patten's tenure was the huge pay-offs given to BBC managers, which lead to a series of grillings in Parliament. Pictured left to right are: Former BBC Director-General Mark Thompson, Marcus Agius from the old BBC remunerations board, former BBC chairman Sir Michael Lyons, BBC Trust member Nicholas Kroll, departing BBC personnel officer Lucy Adams, Lord Patten, and departing BBC trust member Anthony Fry

BBC ROLE WAS JUST THE LATEST IN A CAREER IN THE FIRING LINE

Chairing the BBC Trust was just the latest in a string of high profile - and often controversial - roles Lord Patten has held.

Born in 1944, he studied history at Balliol College before joining the Republican campaign machine in New York and later the Conservative Research Department, which he later ran from 1974 and 1979.

He was elected MP for Bath in 1979 and quickly rose through the ranks, becoming Minister for Overseas Development in 1986.

Margaret Thatcher then handed him the poisoned chalice of becoming Environment Secretary - in charge of the deeply-unpopular Poll Tax.

Under John Major he became Tory party chairman in charge of the 1992 election campaign, but lost his own seat to Lib Dem Don Foster.

In July 1992 Patten was handed the role of the 28th and last Governor of Hong Kong, to oversee the handover to China.

He famously wept during his speech at the handover ceremony.

By 1999 he was a European Commissioner, where he remained until 2004.

He became BBC Trust chairman in 2011 after Labour-backed Sir Michael Lyons did not have his term renewed.

Lord Patten had been due to remain as chairman of the BBC Trust until May 2015.

He had been criticised for the number of jobs he held, including Chancellor of Oxford University, non-executive director of Russell Reynolds Associates Inc, a member of the European Advisory Board of private equity firm Bridgepoint and member of an advisory panel for energy firm EDF.

Lord Patten added: 'I have decided with great regret to step down from much the most demanding of my roles – that of Chairman of the BBC Trust.

'This is a position that requires and has received from me 100 per cent commitment, and has been my priority at all times.

'It would not be fair to my family to continue as before; and equally it would not be fair to the BBC and those it serves not to be able to give that commitment which the role demands. I have to begin by taking a six week break from any work at all.'

Director-General Tony Hall said: 'I have enjoyed working with Chris over the last year; he is a staunch believer in the BBC and he has brought his vast experience to the role of Chairman of the BBC Trust.

'He has steered the BBC through some of its most difficult days. In undertaking this role he brought unrivalled experience, wisdom, and an overwhelming desire to ensure that the BBC remains the best public service broadcaster in the world.'

New Culture Secretary Sajid Javid added: 'I am very sorry to hear of your health issues and wish you a successful and speedy recovery.

'It is with regret that the Government accepts your resignation.

'Over the last three years under your Chairmanship you have steered the Trust successfully through some great moments for the BBC including coverage of the Olympics and continuing to deliver high quality original programming that is exported around the world.

'You have also embraced the challenges that have confronted the BBC, putting in place improvements to governance and building a stronger executive team helping the BBC to move forward with confidence.

'Throughout you have shown an unfettered personal commitment to securing the best outcome for the public.

'I wish to thank you for all that you have done for the BBC and wish you all the best for the future.'

Appointed in 2011, his tenure at the Corporation has been dogged by scandal.

He oversaw the appointment of George Entwistle as Director-General in September 2012.

But just 54 days later Mr Entwistle resigned over the handling of a BBC Newsnight report which falsely implicated Tory peer Lord MacAlpine in a child abuse scandal in Wales.

It reignited the row over pay-offs, after Mr Entwistle received a £450,000, double the amount he was entitled to.

The BBC also wrote off £100million for a bungled IT project while the National Audit Office also criticised over-generous payments made to persuade staff to move from London to new studios in Salford.

Faced with accusations of largess at the BBC, Lord Patten admitted last year: 'We should be seen to be spending licence fee payers money as though it was not just cash out of an ATM which we could do with as we wanted.

'We have to demonstrate that we are using licence fee payers money reasonably.’

In December, ex-Director General Greg Dyke dismissed Lord Patten as a ‘busted flush’.

He said: ‘The BBC has a problem in the sense it’s got a busted flush as chairman. I am surprised [Patten] is still there. It would probably help if he wasn’t.’

[thehighlandrebel]

Another eye watering amount of money getting ready to wing it's way into Pattens already burgeoning bank account in severance pay. Money that the British public hand over expecting it to be used for quality programmes and impartial news....something Al beeb deem contemptable.

[Teddy Bear]

I was thinking today that Fat Pang's heart operation is sure to affect his future quality of life regardless of titles our questionable politicians have bestowed on him, or the amount of money he has been able to scour. I was reminded of this clip from Monty Python's 'Meaning of Life'.

[Teddy Bear]

Steven Glover gives a synopsis of Patten's career at the BBC

STEPHEN GLOVER: Chris Patten was doomed by the poisoned BBC chalice

By Stephen Glover

When Christopher Patten looks back on his long and often distinguished career as a public servant, it is unlikely that he will remember his three-year stint as Chairman of the BBC Trust with much fondness.

Nor is it probable that he will be particularly upset that major heart surgery has led him to stand down from his job with immediate effect a year earlier than he had intended.

To be fair to him, he was passed a chalice when he accepted the post that was more dripping with poison than he or most reasonable observers could have possibly guessed.

The outgoing director-general, Mark Thompson, had fostered a culture in which sometimes mediocre BBC employees received enormous pay-offs. Bureaucracy had mushroomed wildly, and so had the pay of senior executives and ‘stars’.

The hope was that with his vast political experience at the highest level – after leaving Westminster politics in 1992 he had been the last Governor of Hong Kong, as well as a European Commissioner – Lord Patten would be able to knock heads together, and take charge of a bloated and self-satisfied organisation.

In the event he must be judged to have failed. He was never able to grasp the Corporation’s deep-seated difficulties with the acuity he had shown in previous roles, and he showed a surprising lack of sure-footedness in coping with unforeseen problems, of which the Jimmy Savile scandal was undoubtedly the greatest.

For a time, though, things went smoothly enough. Lord Patten was evidently more than happy to see the back of Mark Thompson, and engineered the appointment of George Entwistle, an apparently competent BBC insider, as his replacement. He was partly attracted to Mr Entwistle because he believed he could control him.

'As criticism of the Corporation mounted, Lord Patten might have seemed the ideal person to stamp his authority on the scandal. In fact he was notably slow off the blocks...'


The high point of Lord Patten’s reign was the BBC’s outstanding coverage of the Olympics in the summer of 2012. Though the Chairman of the BBC Trust could hardly claim personal credit, he could legitimately bask in the Corporation’s triumph.

But the plot began to unravel in the autumn of 2012 after an ITV programme alleged that Jimmy Savile, whose long career had been nurtured by the BBC, had been a serial sexual abuser on a scarcely credible scale, with some of his assaults taking place on BBC premises.

Allegations surfaced that, almost a year earlier, in December 2011, Mark Thompson had been told about the stories concerning Savile a few weeks before the BBC aired a saccharine Christmas tribute to the monster. A BBC2 Newsnight exposure of him had also been suspiciously canned.

As criticism of the Corporation mounted, and some of its executives traded blows, Lord Patten might have seemed the ideal person to stamp his authority on the scandal.

In fact he was notably slow off the blocks, though eventually a report by Nick Pollard, a former Sky TV executive, was commissioned.

Things went from bad to worse in November 2012. Mr Entwistle was forced to resign as director-general of the BBC after only 54 days in the job when it emerged that Newsnight had falsely implicated the former Tory Party Treasurer Lord McAlpine in a North Wales child abuse scandal.

The best that could be said about this affair is that Mr Entwistle was skewered in a coruscating interview by the BBC’s own John Humphrys on the Today programme. One of the Corporation’s best journalists betrayed a keener sense of its failures than any of its executives.

Having backed a horse that had ridden through the first fence, Lord Patten did not endear himself to the growing band of critics by taking it upon himself to crown as Entwistle’s successor Lord Hall, a former BBC employee who over a decade earlier had not been considered director-general material.

The question remains why someone considered such a safe pair of hands should have proved less than adept. I suspect that the answer is that, with the BBC in the state that it was, it needed a full-time chairman to help sort it out.

But Lord Patten had other irons in the fire. He is Chancellor of Oxford University, and has been a paid adviser or non-executive director to a clutch of companies, including BP.

All inevitably made demands on him, leaving him less time for the BBC than was desirable, especially when it was in crisis.

Lord Patten didn’t succeed in ending the culture of huge pay-offs and excessive executive pay as quickly as he should have done.

It was not until last September that he admitted, at a hearing of the Public Accounts Committee, that pay-offs to senior executives had been ‘eye watering’, adding that he had failed to protect the interests of the licence-fee payer by clamping down on the issue earlier.

Needless to say, he always acquitted himself with great aplomb on these occasions, brushing aside MPs’ concerns with marvellous insouciance.

Accusations that he has not always been as transparent as he might have been were revived last December when he refused to release documents to MPs about the BBC’s madly extravagant and aborted Digital Media Initiative, which cost the licence payer £100 million.

He said that publishing them would inhibit ‘free and frank exchanges between BBC staff’.

Such lordly condescension may have gone down well when Lord Patten was the Governor General of Hong Kong or a European Commissioner. It may possibly impress the dons of Oxford University. But it has not suited, or helped, the BBC.

What progress Lord Patten was making in producing the BBC’s case for its next Charter Review in 2016 – when its future role in our national life will be examined – is not clear. But the Corporation needs a more vigorous defence than Lord Patten seemed likely to give.

The BBC has to convince ordinary licence payers that it has not grown too big, that its bureaucracy is still not too large, and that its executives and stars are not overpaid.

It has to confront charges of bias, especially in its reporting of Europe and immigration.

In fact, a thorough going review of the future of the BBC is required. Lord Patten was not the man for that task, any more than he has been the right person to steer it through its recent tribulations.

A fresher and more self-critical broom is needed than Christopher Patten could ever supply. That said, his announcement does signal the end of a remarkable career in public life.

[Teddy Bear]

Just for the record here's another account of Patten's failures. Hopefully the BBC will be privatised soon, but if the government continues to act as they have done for so long, then we can expect worse from whoever takes his place. The die has been cast for too long.

The cover-ups, scandals and payoffs of Lord Patten’s reign
Lord Patten forced to step down early after presiding over period of unprecedented crisis at the BBC dominated by Savile, McAlpine and Entwistle

Gordon Rayner

He had hoped to bring in a “golden age” of governance at the BBC, but instead Lord Patten presided over arguably the most crisis-ridden period in the corporation’s history. The epitaph for his chairmanship will be dominated by three names: Savile, McAlpine and Entwistle.

The premature end to his BBC career following emergency heart surgery will come as something of a relief to the Government, which would otherwise have had to replace him next April. As well as avoiding pre-election controversy if they can make an early appointment, ministers will also be able to help the BBC move on from the catastrophes associated with Lord Patten’s time as head.

Ironically, when he took over in May 2011, Lord Patten told staff he hoped to speed up work on editorial standards so that “we don’t spend the next four years talking endlessly about governance”.

One of the most controversial issues he faced at the start was the huge salaries being paid to “talent”, but another storm was brewing over the payoffs to departing staff. Dozens of managers left their jobs with lavish severance deals far in excess of what they were entitled to, including the deputy director-general Mark Byford, who left with almost £1 million in June 2011, almost double his entitlement.

That row would take another two years to come to a head, but in the meantime Lord Patten had to deal with the fallout from the woeful coverage of the Diamond Jubilee River Pageant in June 2012 which drew 1,830 formal complaints.

While Lord Patten could not be directly blamed for the inept performances of the presenters, the appointment of George Entwistle was very much his decision. Having spent £150,000 on headhunters to find a new director-general only to appoint an internal candidate, he would soon spend even more getting rid of him.
Mr Entwistle took over the top job on September 17, 2012, and less than three weeks later an ITV documentary led to an admission that a Newsnight investigation into Jimmy Savile’s paedophilia had been shelved the previous year.

Mr Entwistle was caricatured as “incurious George” after he admitted he had not asked questions when the BBC’s director of news Helen Boaden mentioned the investigation to him in 2011.

Weeks later, in November 2012, Newsnight, stung by criticism over Savile, carried a report claiming a leading Thatcher-era politician had abused a boy in a children’s home in the 1980s.

Lord McAlpine, who had been identified online as the subject of the report, issued a statement denying he was a paedophile, and within hours the man who had made the allegation withdrew his claim, saying he had got the wrong man.

Mr Entwistle resigned the next day, after just 54 days. Astonishingly, he was paid £450,000, a full year’s salary and double his entitlement. Lord Patten agreed the payment — which included an £870,000 pension pot — with his deputy Diane Coyle as she watched Strictly Come Dancing. Miss Coyle was named as Lord Patten’s acting successor.

When Lord Patten appeared before the Commons culture, media and sport committee he was accused of presiding over a “shambles” and came under pressure to say how many hours a week he spent on his part-time role at the BBC, for which he was paid £110,000 (it was one of 13 jobs he was juggling at the time). He accused MPs of being “impertinent” for asking.

More fury over executive payoffs followed in 2013 as it emerged that 150 BBC executives shared £25 million from 2006 until 2012, including £2.9 million beyond contractual entitlement. In another grilling by MPs, Lord Patten claimed he had been misled by Mark Thompson about the scale of the payments. Mr Thompson insisted he had been “fully briefed”.

Lord Patten also found time to be tainted by the BBC’s Digital Media Initiative, a project launched in 2008 to modernise archiving systems, which was outsourced after he took up his job. It was scrapped last May, having cost £98 million.
In his resignation, Lord Patten insisted it had been a “privilege” to chair the BBC Trust and he had “great regret” about giving up. Understandably, he did not go so far as to say it had been a pleasure.