It turns out we were right.
Information finally released by the BBC confirms that its arse did go into the spasm the moment it realised that some half wit, who is probably reading this right now, had inadvertently publicised vast swathes of its TV Licensing secrets.
The aforementioned half wit now faces hours of retraining on "the safe redaction of documents and the use of Adobe redaction software". There's nothing like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted.
The BBC went into immediate damage limitation mode and started to anticipate awkward questions the media might pose in the wake of its recent Freedom of Information blunder. For convenience you can view the BBC's rehearsed responses to those questions here.
In scenes reminiscent of a Points Of View complaint, the BBC is apparently less concerned about its own incompetent cock-up and more concerned about the fact that someone (the TV Licensing Blog and others) has dared to notice and mention it.
The BBC willingly released the offending material in response to what it knew was a public request. It cannot blame anyone else for the fact that information is now available for public scrutiny and commentary. Had the boot been on the other foot and sensitive information had landed in the lap of Panorama, then you can be entirely confident the BBC would have reported the fact.
Thanks to the BBC's latest response to Doug Paulley, we now know that there are further revelations in the TV Licensing Monthly Performance Pack for March 2015 that it would rather weren't highlighted to the public.
We now intend to revisit that document and go through it with a very fine tooth comb.
Stay tuned.
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