Citizen space fillers

Dear licence-fee payer,

Do you lie awake at night worrying that the BBC's purpose remits may no longer be fit for purpose ? If you don't, somebody at the BBC Trust does, and has escaped the supervision of Lord Patten long enough to make the Trust's work more bureaucratic. So they have re-drafted the Remits that respond to the Purposes that allow the Measurement of the BBC's Output for the Trust to Adequately Assess that the Purposes are being Met. Or something.

None of the changes are shorter. Indeed, there is a move from "plain English" to aping the language of legislation in a style favoured by failed lawyers. And some funny things have appeared. 

For example, here's the old wording that puts some scoping round "Stimulating Creativity and Cultural Excellence":

You can expect the BBC to offer the best examples of creative work that engage and delight audiences, break new ground and encourage interest in cultural, creative and sporting activities.

The new paragraph offered by the Trust for your views reads...

The Trust should ensure that the BBC ‘enriches the cultural life of the UK through creative excellence in distinctive and original content’ and to ‘foster creativity and nurture talent’. The BBC should also ‘promote interest, engagement and participation in cultural activity among new audiences’. In doing so it should ‘have regard to the need for the BBC to have a film strategy, and for appropriate coverage of sport, including sport of minority interest’. 

Do we expect the BBC to have a film strategy ? Did we ask for one ? Are we sure we, even in this post-Olympic euphoria, we want more coverage of minority sport ? Or is that being wished on the BBC by its rivals ? And who is in charge of quotation marks at the Trust ? In all this, it remains possible I am being obtuse. Let me know.