BBC Solutions

It comes to something when Graham Norton, "one of the BBC`s highest-paid stars", criticises his employer for wasting taxpayers` money on "multimillion payoffs to departing senior executives". Money could also be saved by adopting the tactic the Green party`s MP, Caroline Lucas, has suggested for rail companies, without the resultant state-ownership; when the contracts of ageing and arrogant presenters expire, end them; not only are they too expensive, many still are tainted by the accusations made by the Observer last year of tax avoidance, and such claims do not lose credence when current affairs programmes of the corporation pay so little attention to the subject.

      Norton also accuses the BBC of scoring "way too many own goals", most appropriately, when the prime culprit is the over-long crisp advertisement, otherwise known as Match of the Day. The Corporation still doesn`t get it,does it, as changing the pundits every week shows? They could have the Queen and Pope doing the "analysis", but as long as they re-showed the goals, already shown 4 times, in slow motion, and used their technology to reveal the assistant referee`s decision made in a fraction of a second, using only two eyes,as idiotic, the programme would still flounder. If they must have punditry, because that`s what their rivals do, the obvious solution is to show all the football action first, leaving the "analysis" to the second half of the programme; most of us could enjoy an extra thirty minutes` sleep every Saturday night!