The BBC are starting to panic (what will a Conservative government do to them?), they are finally looking into many of their contracts and if possible renegotiating or re-tendering.
We have spent years and years lo0oking at how much the beeb have managed to collect from licence fee payers, and their commercial ventures, and wondering whether it was being run as a business. Or, just a bit of a cosy left wing old boys club.
As well as the BBC, the old favourite, The Met Office have had a torrid time of it. They have admitted that they have got their predictions wrong in nine of the last ten years. There are also links with the data they use and the manner in which they predict and the East Anglia University professors who have been discredited through manipulating facts.
To top it all, their super “leader” John Hirst (Salary £20ok plus bonus of £40k) has gone all defensive because everyone can now see through him.
Why are we blogging about this? As an independent business insurance broker, we are involved in controlling a significant amount of commercial building insurance. We arrange cover for properties throughout the UK and we need to plan for our business.
One way of short term planning, for claims personnel, is to look at a range of weather forecasts and predictions. For example, if we are advised of significant (expected) rainfall we tend to alter answer phone messages over weekends in case people call in for help and advice.
We have long given up on the Met Office and their short and long term predictions. It is almost as if you get to the stage now where, if they say it is going to be a very wet season, you go for the opposite.
It is also quite serious, people have lost their lives because of the weather. We can’t blame the councils for not gritting roads when they planned for a mild winter. I am not saying that the Met Office are only to blame.
It has now been reported widely that the BBC, after 90 years, may be moving their weather contract to another company. This is funny really as a cosy monopoly has existed for far too long. Some in the Met Office would not even be aware that the BBC could renegotiate who does their weather.
We won’t bring global warming into it as the Met Office have got egg on their faces there as well. Let’s hope this makes for a more responsible forecast, where the company that provides it knows full well what will happen if they continue to get it wrong.