A world of grey

The column inches will turn into column miles - that's the one thing we can be sure of. What is disturbing me into "having a blog" is that the world of grey in which I live seems to have been aristocratically Huttonized into a universe of black and white. The government is all shiny, new and wondrous. The BBC is murky, guilty and heads will roll. Whether wittingly or not Lord Hutton seems to have undermined his inquiry by having taken such a strangely monochrome approach to what must be an incredibly complicated and difficult series of events. If the BBC made mistakes, and I bet they have, what possible benefit can be had from sacrificing Greg Dyke? Surely a leader needs to lead in good times and bad, take it on the chin, deal with it and when appropriate refute allegations where they are unfounded or unfair. That the BBC Governors found it necessary for Dyke to fall on his sword says more about their cowardice and inability to be independent than it does about any culpability. If apologies need to be made, then make them and move on. Anyone who saw Tony Blair on the news last night (January 2004) glinting from underneath his newly polished halo could have been forgiven for retching over their TV dinners.