BBC taste test
JUST how robust and even-handed will the BBC’s much-vaunted overhaul of workplace culture be?
It’s a fair question given the corporation’s appalling track record.
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And if bosses are serious about improving the Beeb, as they say they are, then they also have questions to answer about why Gregg Wallace is still presenting Masterchef.
The allegations of inappropriate behaviour and rudeness levelled against Wallace in connection with other shows do not make him a monster.
Not like Huw Edwards, who was not only kept on the payroll but given a huge pay rise in spite of the most serious criminal accusations.
But nor, it would appear, were they a one-off.
So, how does Gregg’s behaviour compare, say, with that of Jermaine Jenas who was unceremoniously sacked from Match Of The Day and The One Show for sending “inappropriate” messages?
The BBC seems to get itself further into a mess with every decision it makes about its precious “talent” and there is a definite whiff of double standards.
Chair Samir Shar and his team need to come up with rules of behaviour that apply equally to all the staff, no matter how important they are to the brand.
Cancel mob rule
MINDLESS pro-Palestine idiots who forced the cancellation of a talk at Cambridge University by former Home Secretary Suella Braverman are typical of the growing threat to freedom of speech in Britain.
Universities should be places for exchanges of ideas, healthy discussions and respectful disagreements — not bastions of bigotry where woke morons only allow their own ill-informed beliefs.
Worryingly, the Government’s proposed Employment Rights Bill — forcing employers to protect staff from anything which might offend them — threatens to make it even easier for the loud-mouths to silence alternate views.
But it’s not just at our so-called seats of learning, or on social media, that the cancer of cancel culture is growing.
When a new bill could force pub landlords to police drinkers to make sure any banter does not upset the bar staff then we really are on a slippery slope.
BoJo glow
BORIS JOHNSON has regrets. Which former PM doesn’t?
He made mistakes in office, not least underestimating the ability of his Tory MPs to shoot themselves in the foot. Repeatedly.
But after Labour’s doom-laden first 100 days, and with world business leaders descending on London for a summit today, oh how we could do with some of BoJo’s energy and optimism.
It would help them see what a brilliant place Britain is to invest in.
