Beebspeak

Via Guido, the following is a memo to all BBC News staff from their boss, rapping some quite senior people's knuckles for Tweeting their decidedly Left, anti-Conservative/Coalition, pro-Green political opinions, thus giving the game away.

Dear All, We have had some occasions recently of BBC News staff using social networking sites to share with the world their somewhat controversial opinions on matters of public policy and the future of the BBC. Unsurprisingly, these have been picked up by the wider web and used to discredit the BBC and its impartiality (sic... oops... hahahahaha). We have Editorial Guidelines which cover the personal use of the internet …which everyone should observe. We also have brains and judgement which I suggest people fully engage before rushing to communicate. Hx

The BBC calls itself 'the world's greatest news gathering organisation' and its employees consider themselves a cut above Sky (Murdoch mouthpiece), Fox (Murdoch arsehole-piece), CNN and all its other competitors in news broadcasting. It pays its managers galactically impressive amounts of public money, its top bananas trousering up to six times what we pay our Prime Minister.

The BBC is the Mount Parnassus of Planet Clipboard. It has systems and grids, groups and protocols, monitors and matrixes and meetings and modules for every conceivable purpose. Throngs of experts in, oh, everything, more or less, clog its corridors in all its many establishments, fighting it out with squads of management consultants for prime position at the watercoolers.

Thus are we led to believe that the BBC is the last word in management-communication skills, so we must therefore assume that the management gurus of the world's best business schools recommend that a general bollocking from an operational chief should begin with

Dear all

and be signed, not as, for instance,

Helen Boaden, Head of News

but as

Hx

Fuck me, no wonder they're called luvvies.