More misery heaped on the BBC today. First, its prodigal son and ex-journalist Ben Bradshaw, the new Culture Secretary, has accused BBC chiefs of showing such ‘wrong-headed’ leadership that they have lost the confidence of many of their senior staff. Bradshaw - who now has his own political axe to grind - says that the corporation’s complete rejection of sharing out a portion of the £3.6bn licence fee had left many senior staff demoralised.

He told the Financial Times: ’There are plenty of people within the BBC that do not feel it is a well-led organisation and that is almost for me the most worrying thing. And they don’t feel they are being well led on this issue. It fits into a pattern. It is not the only issue. There is almost a feeling of despair among a lot of highly respected BBC professionals.’

All this on the day when, in an attempt to regain the moral high ground, the Beeb has announced that it is suspending bonuses for the 10 most senior staff indefinitely. However many measures it takes to placate the forces which would do it ill, nothing is ever enough. They always want another turn of the rack. 

At some point the BBC is going to have to put a line in the sand, regroup and then get back on the front foot. There’s only so much punishment an organisation can absorb before morale seriously starts to head South. It’s all very well to say that most Beeb staff are safe in their jobs and are unlikely to jump ship to ITV or Channel 4 as both are in a dire state. That isn’t the point. If they are made to feel unremittingly bad about themselves and their employer then their output is inevitably going to suffer.

The damage done will not be mendable. They aren’t churning out widgets – it’s a creative organisation and requires some self-belief and encouragement to function. It requires some heroic leadership.  It’s only a confident organisation like US rival HBO that will, for example, take a risk and make The Wire rather than believing the box-ticking Inspector George Gently will do. 

Sooner or later we have to realise that, for all its faults, we’re fortunate to have the BBC. Life would be a reduced business in Britain if it weren’t around – just ask the foreigners who envy it and find it utterly baffling that we spend so much of our energy beating it up.

I pay two thousand quid a year for the privilege of living in the London Borough of Lambeth for which I get my bins emptied weekly and precious little else. Three grand of my tax has gone to bail out RBS and Lloyds. God alone knows how much I’m going to have to splash out to replace Trident or divvy up my bit for the National Identity Cards fiasco. A year’s worth of Sky costs £675… 

For £140 a year the BBC seems a bargain and I don’t even resent my contribution to Bruce Forsyth’s bottle of Krug to celebrate his 80th birthday.

In today's bulletin

Inflation drops below 2% target at last

Boom time ahead as French car workers threaten to blow up factory

Editor’s blog; Auntie must go on the offensive

McDonald's Euro HQ burgers off to Switzerland

Woolies collapse drags high street down