From: hotch@hotsytotsy.co.uk   
      
   Mandleson, Birt and Dyke were all cronies on LWT.   
      
   Birt took the BBC over, was hated from top to bottom, ruined it, dumbed it   
   down, PC'ed it up to the rafters and wrote a 20 year plan for its future   
   (Would love to have access to *that* and post it here for the perusal of one   
   Richard Caley).   
      
   Back at LWT Mandleson hung around Birt and when Mandy sniffed that Birt was   
   up for the top job at the BBC he stuck to him like shit to a blanket- two   
   chippy boys hunting the big time.   
      
   Birt get the top job and proceeds to reconstruct the organisation into a   
   monolitic, expanding, soft-left middle management behemoth of quangoes and 5   
   year plans. That he manages to do this whilst telling anyone who would   
   listen that he was making it more efficient to 'save it from Thatcher' is   
   probably testament to deviousness on a Stalin-like scale.   
      
   Dyke remains at LWT and trousers several million quid when its flogged.   
      
   Birt never stops moaning about this saying he's under attack constantly and   
   how noble of him it was to go and save the Beeb for half a million a year.   
   He says to Dyke: 'what would you prefer- constant attack or 7 million quid'.   
   Socialist Birt's grief for his lost loot obviously drove him to the wheeze,   
   you will recall (Dyke makes no mention of it) whereby he sets up his own   
   management company and *sells* his services to the BBC thereby fiddling his   
   tax down and putting more licence payers ackers into his back pocket. Ah   
   noble word, socialism.   
      
   Mandy hasn't forgotten Birt and vice versa (I wonder what wheezes they've   
   got up to?...) and after Birt's tenure at the BBC is done, lo and behold, he   
   becomes a Blair Panjandrum: Mandy gets him an office in *Number 10, Downing   
   Street* would you fucking believe it, working on long term policy. Long term   
   policy for the Beeb, long term policy for New Labour, Birt's yer man.   
      
   All's Well That Ends Well...   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)