Yes. George Entwistle has resigned.

This is Jeremy Paxman's statement through his agent:

George Entwistle’s departure is a great shame. He has been brought low by cowards and incompetents.

The real problem here is the BBC’s decision, in the wake of the Hutton Inquiry, to play safe by appointing biddable people.

They then compounded the problem by enforcing a series of cuts on programme budgets, while bloating the management.

That is how you arrive at the current mess on Newsnight. I very much doubt the problem is unique to that programme

I had hoped that George might stay to sort this out. It is a great pity that a talented man has been sacrificed while time-servers prosper. I shall not be issuing any further statements or doing any interviews.

I must say that's been my own gut feel throughout. Perhaps it is time to break up the BBC. To make provision for that over the next three years, at which point the license fee would be terminated.

Sir Christopher Bland quoted in the Guardian:

Bland also accused others, including writer George Monbiot, Sally Bercow, the wife of the speaker of the House of Commons, and Tom Watson, the Labour MP, of irresponsible behaviour for circulating McAlpine's name on Twitter.

He's absolutely right to criticise anyone who named McAlpine. I noted this about Monbiot earlier in this thread, being careful not to pass on the name of McAlpine myself. I strongly advise George Monbiot to consult his lawyers. But what about the myriads of anonymous cowards who said terrible things about the peer who will never be brought to justice? The BBC knew that it could rely on this reaction on Twitter and blogs to greatly harm this individual - a total misuse of its power. But that doesn't let off the anonymous cowards, it makes it far worse morally for them too.

Meanwhile the Daily Mail has the inevitable kickback on Steve Messham: A victim of his delusions: Astonishing story the BBC DIDN'T tell you about its troubled star witness. But, for what it's worth, I believe Messham's testimony of being abused by a ring of paedophiles outside Bryn Estyn. I thought his apology to Lord McAlpine the moment he was shown his photograph was artless in its deep regret. Of course it's not right to try to beat up a QC who's cross-examining you during the Waterhouse Inquiry! (But, be honest, who hasn't sometimes had such thoughts about lawyers?) This points to the irreducible difficulties for the legal system dealing with such matters, meaning that some of the worst perpetrators escape justice again and again.

We're in uncharted territory today, as we remember those who paid with their lives for our freedoms. I pray today for all those in authority to be given grace and wisdom, more than any of us deserve.

The problem is a simple one. The UK, for reasons best known to itself, has a goverment owned state broadcasting service and media company whose main business is a subscription television service. This could be good or bad policy, but its what the UK does.

The government then obliges everyone who watches any sort of TV to subscribe to the state TV service. Its a bit like forcing everyone who reads a paper to subscribe to the Times or the Guardian.

The solution to the endless problems this creates is simple. Just make it optional to subscribe to the BBC. Everyone who likes it, which includes me, will subscribe. Those who don't will subscribe to some other broadcaster. Problem solved.

You can look at this in another way, if you object to the idea that the so called License Fee is in fact subscription. You may feel that its a tax. In that case the way to look at the situation is that the BBC has a monopoly on the proceeds of the tax, and that is what should be changed. Other companies should be able to get some. The way to do that is to have people nominate their broadcaster of choice, and then that company would get so much per capita for every subscriber.

Holland does, or used to do, the same thing with religion. You named your denomination of choice, and that got a per capital chunk of the hypoethecated relgion levy.

Whatever, the solution is simple. Stop forcing everyone to subscribe to the BBC. If it is as well loved as everyone says, it will get almost as many subscriptions as soon as its voluntary. It will actually better off, since those who resent being compelled to subscribe will no longer be able to receive it, having stopped subscribing, and so it will be spared their endless carping and complaining!

From the BBC itself in the last few minutes:

Reading East MP Rob Wilson says he never called for George Entwistle to stand down, and says it's a "botched" and "cowardly" decision. Mr Wilson has repeatedly written to Lord Patten over both the BBC's handling of the Savile scandal and the recent Newsnight programme.

I think Rob Wilson has come out of all this particularly well. I hope he helps shape the future. But I must stop my liveblogging now :)

Chris Patten – chairman of the BBC Trust – was the Tory minister who brought in the Poll Tax. At the same time Alistair McAlpine was treasurer of the Tory party. So not exactly unkown to each other.

McAlpine was named by scallywag magazine in1995 connected to child abuse at Bryn Estyn, it's not known weather Lord McAlpine intended to sue the magazine before it went out of print (during it's investigation into the N. Wales pedophile ring) after the mysterious death of the editor.

John Whittingdale is chairman of the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee which will examine the BBC’s reporting of child abuse…

According to Kathryn Knight in The Times, 2 September 1995:-
‘Former teacher jailed for sex abuse of boys’
‘A former British Council worker who sexually abused boys at his home was sent to prison for nine months yesterday. Charles Napier, 48, a former teacher and half-brother of John Whittingdale, MP, who was a private secretary to Margaret Thatcher, was a treasurer of the Paedophile Information Exchange and had convictions for child abuse going back as far as 1972, Kingston Crown Court was told.’

Small world eh.

If the full story ever comes out, it won't be just the BBC approaching a tipping point, it'll be the whole corrupt cesspit known as "the establishment"

I'll not be holding my breath.

And I've just seen on Sky News that George Entwistle is to receive a year's salary (£450,000) for resigning , apparently to compensate for the fact that he might have to hang around and answer some questions.

On his blog John Redwood asks 'Do we trust the BBC Trust?' and picks up on the Newbery issue:
'Isn’t it time for the Trust to demand proper journalist standards? It could ask why the BBC has spent a lot of money blocking FOI requests seeking to find out how balanced the BBC is in its approach to energy policy and global warming.'
I understand Redwood's musings get read by some of 'the great and the good'.

@martin a

You said

'I had a boss once who pointed out to me that organisations behave consistently. If they are shambolic on one aspect of their operations, they were probably shambolic in other aspects.'

You need only read Harry_Read_Me and have even a basic understanding of professional IT practices for this truism to become manifest. I have grave doubts as to whether anyone at CRU could find their arse with both hands, let alone whether they should be allowed to play with data of international social and political importance.

'Shambolic' understates the case.

I couldn't resist retweeting this from Mike Smith:

BBC News now have a live helicopter up at £1500 an hour. Filming the BBC. #bizarre

Boris Johnson makes some important points in the Telegraph:

Everyone at the BBC is agreed on one thing: that it is a “tragedy”. Yes, it is a tragedy for the poor old BBC. ... To call someone a paedophile is to consign them to the lowest circle of hell – and while they are still alive. It follows that you should not call someone a paedophile unless you are pretty sure of your facts.

But there's a ruthlessly populist side to BoJo. Thus:

You can’t really blame the tweeters and the bloggers. “McAlpine” was the steer they were given, and it was Alistair McAlpine that Newsnight had in its sights.

Bashing the BBC is great politics right now. But all those tweeters and bloggers have lots of votes so we can't afford to criticise them, can we? That's the wonderful thing about the Internet. You can accuse a person of the vilest crime but because you're doing it in a mob and cannot be traced, nobody can blame you.

This isn't just about the BBC. And it isn't just about the victims of abuse - though Eileen Fairweather gave a great overview of the way we should approach that issue now in the same paper on Friday.

It certainly should be about who in the BBC covered up for Jimmy Savile. Such a man cannot have done what he did without protection of some sort. And the fact this is shining a much brighter light on Tony Newbery's lonesome battles on the Climate 28, because of when the FOI verdict was handed down, is truly amazing. Not science but policy experts, eh. But experts in deception are on their way out. It remains to be seen how much of the BBC will be left at the end of that.

Shub, to be clear, are you saying that McAlpine is in fact a paedophile and that those who said so on Twitter and blogs were equivalent in moral stature and accuracy to the little boy in the fable?

The BBC has confessed to “shoddy journalism” in the paedophile area. Given its self-confessed bias in reporting on climate issues, together with its unyielding approach to FOI requests in the area, is there any mileage in pursuing it for shoddy environmental and climate journalism? Indeed, how can the denial of FOI requests on the grounds of “purposes of journalism” be justified if the alleged journalism is “shoddy” and therefore not journalism at all?