One of the most interesting books I've read in the last few years is Robert Coram's biography, "Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed The Art Of War".

There's section in there I really wish those in charge of the BBC for the last 10 years or so had read. THREAD 1/

USAF Colonel John Boyd was a radical thinker who revolutionised air combat tactics, the strategic thinking of ground warfare, and aircraft design. The latter meant battling the Pentagon to keep aircraft light and nimble rather than weighed down with excess technology. 2/

Boyd and his acolytes became a tiny reform movement, fighting to change a procurement process that demanded the most expensive tech because this ensured it could continue to command high budgets. In 1978 one acolyte, Chuck Spinney, delivered 'The Spinney Report'. 3/

The report showed that the drive for more tech was weakening America's defence forces; the same money as 30 years earlier would now buy only a tenth as many planes or tanks. Spinney showed the Pentagon was underestimating projected defence spending by $500 billion. 4/

The Pentagon's response to this blasphemy was to conceal and dismiss it. But the press wanted the story, and when Time Magazine asked for an interview Boyd ordered Spinney to do it. He made the front cover and became the movement's poster boy. 5/

Boyd told him this was his protection. "Boyd knew that when Pentagon bureaucrats seek vengeance, the best strategy is not - as many believe - to keep a low profile, but rather to become so prominent that any retribution will be seen for what it is." 6/

This is the point that I wish the heads of the BBC understood.

For as long as I can remember, if I were asked what made Britain great I would say two things; the BBC and the NHS. Both are profoundly socialist in nature; they are they for all. 7/

The Tories hate them both because they are the antithesis of their capitalist ideology... and they work. Hence their attempts to diminish the NHS slowly by cuts and privatisation, and to install Tory directors on the BBC board. 8/

Over the last decade the BBC has been appallingly timid toward the Tories. They have reported on the crisis in the NHS, but without mentioning that cuts in Government funding are to blame. Thus allowing the government to paint it as a failure of the NHS, not of themselves. 9/

Even as this duty of factual reporting is neglected, Boris Johnson claims the BBC have a pronounced left wing bias. The BBC are hoping to go unnoticed; hoping that if they don't criticise then maybe the Tories will go easier on them.

But they won't. 10/

The Tories don't attack simply because the BBC criticise them. They attack because the BBC *can* criticise them. They would rather make the BBC compete in the market... ie. be owned by billionaires, and airing Tory viewpoints as fact in exchange for freedom from taxes. 11/

The BBC's failure to hold the Tories to account has been disgraceful, and already people are saying it should be dismantled. But this is exactly what the Tories want; Fox News UK, as biased and fact free as the Sun and the Daily Mail. 12/

The BBC needs to be fixed, protected and its political independence restored. And it needs to stand up for itself. It won't be easy to make this happen. But the alternative is one we cannot afford. 13/END