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Fair to say that Charles Moore as BBC chair will not go down well with the corporation's 21,000ish staff: "This will shatter morale. People will leave, thinking: I won’t stay working here under Thatcher’s vicar on earth." https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/paul-dacre-and-charles-moore-are-no-fans-of-the-bbc-hiring-them-could-be-kill-or-cure-7v5g8bp0j
A few extra thoughts. Early on, there was speculation it could be a tech boss to arm the BBC to take on Netflix etc. As one media source said: "You have to know what 4G and 5G are, and whether the 'Sounds' app is working - Moore won't."
In fact, he - like Dacre - is particularly untech-savvy. Though that does mean no worries about his Twitter account. He has only ever tweeted once: "Where there is discord, may I bring more of it."
One of the clues about how Moore might view how The BBC should be is here: it is rumoured that Moore encouraged ex-Today boss Sarah Sands to raise money to create a new “home service”, combining Radio 3 and Radio 4. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/paul-dacre-and-charles-moore-are-no-fans-of-the-bbc-hiring-them-could-be-kill-or-cure-7v5g8bp0j
The broader point is this is obviously part of a culture war, and is thus related to the GRA/trans move. "The government is trying to remind Brexit voters 'we haven't forgotten you' - this is a very Dominic Cummings attack on institutions - very Bannonite," a Tory source told me.
They added: "These appointments have Cummings's fingerprints all over them. Cummings was really going after the BBC at the turn of the year - then it [the broadcaster] had a good pandemic - but now he's reigniting it."
Finally, they described Dacre to me yesterday as "almost the grandfather of Dominic Cummings": "The [Ofcom] job might appeal to his moral clean-up mentality, but the Dacre MO is shouting at people and calling them the 'c' word and as Ofcom chair, you can't do that."
