We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.

Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

Never ‘screwed up’ before

The Director-General of the BBC, Greg Dyke, has now resigned.

Mr Dyke’s decision to step down came 20 hours after BBC Chairman Gavyn Davies resigned following the Hutton Report.

An emotional Mr Dyke told BBC staff at their central London headquarters: “I don’t want to go. But if in the end you screw up you have to go.”

What with Gavyn Davies gone and now Mr Dyke, the corporation will hopefully be a bit less ‘hideously white’.

19 comments to Never ‘screwed up’ before

  • According to the 6.30 ITN News, Dyke was actually fired by the BBC Board in a 2 to 1 vote.

  • Apparently, hundreds of BBC staff went outside to protest against Mr Dyke’s departure. So presumably, they approve of the BBC’s behaviour in the Kelly affair, and should also resign or be sacked.

  • Jeffersonian

    It’s comments like Dyke’s “hideously white” that make me think trap doors ought to be installed under every Beeb upper management desk chair. It makes personnel moves so much more efficient.

  • Millie Woods

    Greg Dyke’s hideously white remark is a racist comment of the first order. What’s wrong in a country with a huge majority white population having large percentages of whites in management positions?
    No matter how long and loudly the multi-cultis sing the diversity tune at some time they have to do the math and face the fact that Europe is white. End of story.
    I’m a former academic and it would have been idiotic of me to bemoan the fact that we had no examples of mental retards in our departments.
    I’m sick and tired of hearing that because person X has something, person Y who lacks this commodity is suffering grave disadvantage and it’s all person x’s fault.
    If the UK is to reflect the diversity of its population, let nature take its course and don’t force the issue by affixing blame to one segment of the population.
    The last time I looked countries with white majorities were far more tolerant and advanced than any others. That didn’t happen by accident.

  • S. Weasel

    I suppose it’s too much to hope for that the incoming management will be any better than the outgoing management…

  • Robert Dammers

    The problem is, they seem only interested in diversity of colour – they have no room for intellectual diversity. As a result, they simply cannot comprehend the world as it is – they have no-one who understands it.

  • llamas

    The BBC is too ‘white’?

    Well maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t fire the minority staff they have, like Zenab Ahmed, a World Service newsreader who was let go because her accent was ‘too posh’.

    I listen to the World Service every morning, and the quality of speech of the readers and commentators has gone to h**l in a handbasket over the last five years. One of the reasons to listen was to hear news and analysis delivered in bland, standard English. Apparently, the purpose now is to see how many different regional accents and slang expressions can be crammed into one broadcast. I actually heard one commentator today refer to the Hutton report as ‘a bloody good kicking’ to the BBC – apparently, the idiom of the pub and the football terraces is the standard to which the BBC now aspires.

    llater,

    llamas

  • >The Director-General of the BBC, Greg Dyke, has now resigned.

    I don’t have any champagne, but I have just poured a dram of very fine malt whisky.

    Fucking marvellous, although the BBC will still be taking money from my bank account on Monday just the same.

  • Julian Morrison

    Ya know what this-all reminds me of? A lizard, grabbed by a predator, drops its wiggling tail as a distraction while it scuttles under a rock.

  • Well, he promised to “cut the crap” and now, at last, he has.

  • Cobden Bright

    Good news eh? With a bit of luck, the groundwork might now be laid for the eventual abolition of the TV Tax.

  • Jonathan L

    Lets start a privatise the BBC campaign. I am sick of hearing how the BBC is beholden to no-one because it doesn’t have shareholders or advertisers and is independent from the government. As it takes no notice of its viewers and listeners either it therefore has absolutely no reason to exist. An organisation is only as useful as the srvice it gives to the individuals that own it. The BBC serves the BBC.

    Sell it and sell it quickly before it loses the ability to make anything other than cooking programmes and statist propaganda.

    On the subject of horribly white, if there are not enough person of colour why did they sack Kilroy. Last time I checked he was a deep carrot colour, he certainly couldn’t be described as white.

  • Front4uk

    Hideously white, eh… catchy term indeed! I like it.

    I wonder when our socialist governing elites will finally have enough of the hideous white heterosexual male and will start a “final solution” to the “problem”… clean up the dust, fire up the oven ‘cos Auschwitz is back in biz!!

    Good thing is that us we’ll finally be accepted by the multicultural lobby because instead of being hideously white our skin colour will be crispy, charred black!

  • llamas

    Jonathan L. wrote:


    Lets start a privatise the BBC campaign. I am sick of hearing how the BBC is beholden to no-one because it doesn’t have shareholders or advertisers and is independent from the government. As it takes no notice of its viewers and listeners either it therefore has absolutely no reason to exist. An organisation is only as useful as the srvice it gives to the individuals that own it. The BBC serves the BBC.’

    John Stossel’s new book has an excellent analysis of why it is that commercial media in the US – TV and radio – are generally much better at protecting the customer’s interests, exposing corruption and malfeasance, and generally being a sort of guardian of the public good than non-commercial media are.

    As he notes, non-commercial media (which means, in practice, public broadcasting) is generally nowhere in sight when it comes to exploring any sort of controversy. The hoary old chestnut that Big Commercial Media cannot act in the public interest because it is ‘beholden’ to its owners and advertisers is not borne out in practice.

    I will miss the World Service. And it’s sad to compare and contrast the present BBC output with their broadcast heritage. But this last mess shows that the whole thing has collapsed into an incestuous mess of party politics and featherbedding. Dyke and Davies are the only honourable actors in the whole thing – when the ship screws up, the captain takes the blame – and even their honourable decisions have been taken from them and dragged in the dirt by self-important nobodies fretting for their comfortable jobs on the public dole.

    Put it up for sale. If you want it to be non-commercial, organize it by public subscription. I’d send dollars from the colonies to support the World Service, but only if it can be dragged back to the high quality of non-partisan news reporting which I remember.

    llater,

    llamas

  • A_t

    llamas, are you listening to the same world service as me? Everyone sounds pretty easy to understand from my p.o.v.; just not quite the same super-standardised accents people had 30 years ago. The world changes dude, get over it.

    As for all this ridiculous hysteria about the “hideously white” comment, all he’s saying is “hmm… the proportion of non-whites in management is not that which i’m used to in the general population, or have been used to in lower echalons… why is that?”. What’s wrong with that? Is he proposing positive discrimination? Not as far as I could see… perhaps just looking at the way people are selected, & seeing if some level of racist “coloured people can’t do difficult jobs” thinking gets into the process.

    Millie,

    “No matter how long and loudly the multi-cultis sing the diversity tune at some time they have to do the math and face the fact that Europe is white. End of story.”

    hmm… ok, let’s just boot out all the non-white people who’re tightly integrated into the fabrics of our societies then, shall we? That’ll show everyone how damn civilised we are.

    “I’m a former academic and it would have been idiotic of me to bemoan the fact that we had no examples of mental retards in our departments.”

    What kind of academic were you precisely? Clearly not someone overly concerned with logic, unless you’re a raving racist. Mental deficiency clearly makes one rather underqualified for most academic positions. Different coloured skin, as far as I’m aware, does not in any way affect one’s ability to fulfil management duties, so unless you subscribe to Guessedworker etc.’s ridiculous theories of genetic intelligence/”racial character”, what the hell are you talking about, other than having a good old outraged time?

  • Jim

    A_t, I think you might be overreacting a little here, “dude”. Take a chill pill.
    So, if I understand you correctly, you’re saying that if someone doesn’t buy into the ridiculous guilt-ridden comment of a quango aristocrat, they’re a raving racist who wants to expell all the non-white minorities from Europe? Uh-huh. Sure.
    I know you’re wrong in at least one case (myself), and I suspect in the case of most others as well. I have to ask you, then, “…what the hell are you talking about, other than having a good old outraged time?”
    Indeed.

  • Alfred E. Neuman

    A_t, I thought I told you to use “duder”, not “dude”. How dare you disobey me.

  • Verity

    Besides all of the above (save A_t, so no surprise there), no matter what Londoners and, say, Mancunians see, the official statistics for ethnic minorities in Britain show they comprise between 5.5% and 6% of the population. Many of that percentage are settled in the capital and big cities, which leads the chatterati, who don’t get out much, to assume that this is how Britain looks. But it’s not. I lived in a town of approximately 40,000 and I only ever saw one black person who lived there. Always the same woman. I never saw any obvious Muslims, although they may have adapted to local colouration. A Chinese family owned the fish and chip shop and there was an Indian takeaway and an Indian corner shop. That was it. Around 15-20 ethnic minorities in toto out of a population of a busy southeastern commuter town of 40,000. This wasn’t remarkable and was reflected in other towns in the area. But the multi-cultis close their eyes to the facts because it’s really hard to be a mahatama by warmly immigrants and being tolerant of their differences and showing how willing you are to adapt to their wonderful culture “which has so much to teach us” when they are such an imperceptible blip in the demographics. And when they all speak with English accents and seem to be perfectly well integrated and are on first name terms with their neighbours.

    Finally, throughout history, there have been host societies and immigrants. There’s always been some people wanting to move (or being forced to move) to another society for whatever reason. Even the Native American tribes had immigrants who joined “alien” tribes, learned their language and their ways and fitted in. So what’s new?

  • A_t

    “A_t, I thought I told you to use “duder”, not “dude”. How dare you disobey me”

    😀