Sometimes I love the British Broadcasting Corporation; and sometimes I think it’s a bit of an Arse.

 I guess it’s characteristic of the English that their major institutions often mirror each other in the way they operate – like their love of change for its own sake. Frequent change is perceived as essential, not necessarily to improve or in any way alter the exercise of a function, but to give the appearance that things are happening, decisions are being made. It suggests among other things, that the hierarchy are, at least, alive.

          Take, for instance, the Church of England, and the innovations instituted by the current Bishop of Hereford, Anthony Priddis. When he moved into the Bishop’s Palace in 2004 he showed that he was a man with a thorough understanding of the value of change. Perhaps he had in mind the words of a former Anglican churchman, later Catholic Cardinal, John Henry Newman – “To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.”  

          In any event, to show that he wished to be closer to his new congregation than his predecessors and that in these liberal, classless times it just wasn’t right that a bishop should live in a Palace, he changed the name of his dwelling from the “Bishop’s Palace” to the “Bishop’s House”. Everything else stayed the same, but now he just lived in a house, and no doubt, his congregation felt all the better for it. And he’d made a change.

          Take, also, the BBC’s decision to replace Ed Stourton with Justin Webb in R4’s Today Programme. I suggested last December when the decision was announced that it was perhaps because it was felt by R4 Controller, Mark Damazer that Stourton wasn’t jokey enough and didn’t possess that flippant touch which has, it seems, become so essential to mass broadcasting. It was also possible that he was perceived as too flagrantly posh – still considered a fairly serious sin among the ‘80s intake of Beeb execs. Now, at last, we’ve had a taste of Justin Webb’s efforts on Today, it’s clear that it can’t have been for either of these reasons – for Webb displays no more jokiness (which is something) and rather less humour; he doesn’t have an identifiably regional accent, sounds only marginally less posh than Stourton and certainly lacks the gravitas and politely probing interview techniques of his predecessor.        

It turns out to be no more than a ploy by a BBC executive to show that he’s earning his salary by making a high profile change – nothing more, in other words, than a bit of territory marking; the controller cocking his leg on the bushes to let people know he’s still around.

          “Poshness is not the answer to this question,” Damazer told the Guardian.  ”I don’t think there is anybody I respect or like more in journalism. What I won’t do is a line-by-line, argument by argument anatomy about the strengths and weaknesses of various Radio 4 presenters. What I will say is that the Ed decision only makes sense in the context of Justin. In terms of how it was handled it was a manual in how not to do it: we were rubbish. We just did it wrong.”

          Meanwhile the punters have no say; a lesser man has been foisted upon the programme’s six million listeners, simply because the control wants to show them he’s still got balls.

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