Imagine the fury of right-on BBC managers at being compared to the British Empire
Not for the first time, Jeremy Paxman has delivered a blunt verdict on the BBC. Speaking at the Cheltenham Literature Festival, he has attacked the corporation for spending £1 billion on new central London offices – the equivalent of “building palaces before they are decolonised”, as he put it. He also suggested that the BBC had failed to make “radical” changes in the wake of cuts, although he did not say what those changes should have been. Mr Paxman has a point about the BBC’s property portfolio: the eye-watering expenditure on Broadcasting House and the media centre at Salford is hard to justify. And he knows how to hurt – imagine the fury of right-on managers at being compared to the British Empire. Even so, perhaps he should be wary of calling for radical changes: he is, after all, paid around £1 million a year by his “colonial” employers.