Great article in the MediaGuardian this morning by Emily Bell.  She discusses the transparency issues surrounding the recently released BBC board minutes at the time of Greg Dyke’s 2004 departure.  Bell ties the transparency aspects of that madhouse with the current debates over the proper size of the BBC licence fee.  She writes:

If only this incident were to set a precedent for how the relationship between the government and BBC should be conducted - with full public scrutiny. If this were the case we would be in for a treat with the paper trail relating to licence fee renewal. The mad fool optimists who thought this would be done and dusted in the summer were confounded. Even the elastic deadline of the year-end came and went, then a supposedly definite deadline of last Thursday passed. Still no confirmation of the formula that will leave the BBC worse off than it would like, but better off than everybody else.

We were also misled as to how these negotiations would be carried out - in a fair and open process, with “no deals in smoke-filled rooms” supposedly. Well one assumes this was a semantic economy with the truth as, for health and safety reasons, the rooms at the Treasury are smoke-free.