Spending Public Money

The news that the BBC has wasted £100 million in a half-baked technology project   comes as no real surprise - because the public broadcaster displays all the signs of being out of control for years.

First we had the film star salaries paid to presenters and senior management figures - then we had the embarrassment of hugely generous 'Golden Goodbyes' being paid to executives who were being shown the door - but often going on to other jobs.

Now the new BBC director general - Tony Hall - has scrapped this £100 million digital technology project and suspended the executive in charge - after admitting that it has "wasted a huge amount of licence fee payers' money".

The Digital Media Initiative (DMI) was apparently designed to improve the programme making process - to make it faster and more efficient - and dispense with old-fashioned video tape, but the project ended in tears and with a lot of public money poured down the drain.

The senior Beeb executive behind DMI was a chap named John Linwood - who was paid a ridiculous BBC salary of £287,000 a year as its chief technology officer - no doubt John is still drawing this massive salary even though he has been suspended.

John Linwood reportedly joined the BBC from Yahoo! in 2009 - having previously worked for more than a decade at Microsoft and in 2011 the BBC paid John a £70,000 bonus which took his pay for that year to an eye watering £358,000.
Yet in the same year (2011) a highly critical report by the National Audit Office found the BBC's approach to the DMI project had been "disappointing" and that it was "not good value for money".

Which begs the obvious question - "What was the £70,000 bonus all about, who approved this whacking great bonus - and is that person's job also now on a suitably shaky nail? 

The BBC has made some great programmes over the years and I support the concept of a well-funded public service broadcaster - but I would still like to see the Beeb being taken down a peg or two.

Because, in my view, the BBC has fallen into the hands of overpaid, timeserving managers and - like most giant organisations - remote from the very people that it claims to serve.