The BBC was shedding its gothic past, being stripped and shredded, and cut into bite-size business-friendly chunks. Remodelling, streamlining and internal marketing were on the way, with lots and lots of Management. Management was a growth industry within the BBC, like a mad fungus which stuck its greasy stalks into every crevice and expanded to block light and logic. We 'Operatives' were no longer trusted with decision-making, and if we questioned the twaddle which was issued to justify the 'selling' of car park spaces from one department to another, it was suggested that we needed to go on A Course. On A Course, you learned that colleagues were no longer colleagues; they were Clients or Customers.

Everything was subject to cost analysis, and had its price...

The place had gone unhappily loopy, mired in constant reorganisation, obsessive emphaisis on administration, and volumes of gobbledygook statements on Vision and Strategy. Staff posts were disappearing; contracts ran for just a few months, and insecurity gnawed at every level... More than anything else, there was a loss of confidence."

Kate Adie, The Kindness of Strangers