The amount of money involved in "Brand Tiger" is just staggering.

 

A quote from the BBC website says:

A recent University of California study suggested the total economic damage of the Tiger Woods affair to all involved parties could amount to as much as $12bn.

But sports equipment giant Nike, which pays Woods a reported $40m a year, has given its support.

And video game maker Electronic Arts is to go ahead with plans to roll out an online game featuring the golfer."

My slightly mischievous thought is that I hope the EA on line game is just about golf rather than any of Tigers extra curricular activities!

Well, it certainly didn't take the BBC unions long to react (in the predictable knee jerk way) to the "cuts" announced in yesterdays Telegraph.

 

I think that it's pretty safe to say we will be seeing lots of this in the public sector in the next few months.

 

 

Good heavens - it's reported that the BBC will try to save £600 million by closing a couple of radio stations and cutting back on it's internet coverage.

 

However rather than saving money, the £600 million will be diverted into delivering better quality programmes (isn't that a subjective judgement?).

 

So, in reality all this means is the BBC is just re-distributing it's resources rather than making any real savings or efficiencies.

 

Just for a moment I was quite hopeful - should have known better really...........

 

 

I am almost lost for words - how on earth did the BBC manage to go £100 million over budget on the building works on Broadcasting House?

 

The Audit Commission has said there was "poor governance" - is this "Quangospeak" for staggering incompetence?

 

I have just heard Jeremy Peat (apparently a BBC trustee) on Radio 5 Live giving a mealy mouthed apology and offering up some feeble reasons why the BBC has p*s**d so much of our money up the wall.

 

What Mr Peat didn't say was how many heads have rolled for their incompetence and wasting our money - I'd like to bet the number is less than 1.

 

The way in which the BBC is funded has to be re-examined, the way in which the BBC is managed needs changing and above all else the organisational culture of the BBC has to be changed.

 

As long as the BBC has a guaranteed and ever increasing income from the television tax (licence) we all have to pay, fiascos like this will continue.

 

Until such time as the BBC is forced to "live within its means" then all of us will continue to have to subsidence the bloated, over staffed, bureaucratic monster that it has become.

 

Here's a policy idea for Cameron & Osborne - cut the TV tax to £100 per year and force the BBC to operate on a more commercial basis.

 

Good for votes, good for family budgets and good for forcing BBC "efficiencies".

 

Even better, make the BBC operate on a subscription basis - like its commercial competitors, then at least we have a choice of paying towards the BBC if we decided to watch their output.

In the excitement (if that's the right word) of Tuesday's full council meeting I suspect a fairly important initiative may have been overlooked by most observers.

 

The Conservative Group recently decided that details of Council Expenditure to external suppliers (over £500) should be put into the public domain.

 

This policy was announced in David Lewis's budget speech and details (for October - December 2009) have now been published on the Council website.

 

I see this as a most welcome and necessary step in improving local peoples understanding of where their Council Tax goes and is absolutely consistent with Conservative Party policy of improving local democracy.

 

This is a  small but important move in improving local accountability and transparency.