Poor effort

Published on 15/11/2012 00:00

Your rightly scathing editorial (13 November) might also have scorned Lord Patten’s “justification” of his doubling George Entwistle’s pay-off, that it was needed “to conclude matters quickly” and avoid lengthy negotiations.

Does Patten not realise that the whole point of a specific contractual rate for a voluntary termination, particularly an already generous one, is precisely to avoid any negotiations at all, lengthy or otherwise?

Stephen Jardine is broadly right in his praise of the BBC’s Cenotaph Remembrance Day broadcast (14 November) but there were two regrettable features – firstly, the abrupt change-over at its end to the next programme’s raucous music without a pause of even one second for us to switch off, or preferably long enough to absorb the solemnity of the service and the dignity of the march; and secondly, the interruptions of the march on our screens by Sophie Raworth’s interviews.

Her interviews are invariably moving but can be repetitive and could easily follow the end of the march; and there seems little point in David Dimbleby apologising twice for not having enough time to identify each of the 233 groups of marchers, when he then interrupts himself to hand us over to Ms Raworth. It is also rather ungracious to the unidentified groups.

John Birkett

Horseleys Park

St Andrews