Save the Singers

 If the BBC carries out its declared intention of disbanding the BBC Singers, it will have taken away one more of the dwindling number of things that make the licence fee worth paying. It will also have impoverished the musical culture of the nation as a whole: the BBC Singers (the only professional full-time choir in the UK) perform free concerts at a range of London venues and appear at festivals across the country, they commission new works, and they do a great deal of outreach work with schools and other institutions, providing singing days and masterclasses. All this will be lost if the Singers are axed. 
  As Charles Moore points out in the Spectator, the 20 BBC Singers cost the corporation less one Gary Lineker – and they do, on the face of it, seem to provide, ahem, rather better value. If the BBC wants to save the sort of money the Singers cost, they could let the ghastly Lineker and his sidekicks go, replacing them with some new blood at a much lower cost. A few pointless executive posts (especially perhaps in the field of 'diversity' and 'inclusion') could be scrapped with no loss to the BBC or anyone else. And productivity could be greatly increased by changing the working culture of meetings, meetings, meetings that explains so much of what is wrong with the Corporation. I remember when I was writing for the Late Lamented Listener, many years ago now, the new editor caused profound shock all round when one of this first moves was to reduce the number of weekly meetings to just one, and that with a time limit. This, along with some imaginative hiring, created a vastly improved magazine. 
  As for the BBC Singers, I cling to the hope that this might be one of those proposals the Corporation comes up with from time to time that they know will be greeted with such a wave of furious protest that it will have to be abandoned, as was the case with an attempt a few years ago to close down 6 Music. Let us hope this is so, though the BBC's talk of a 'new strategy for classical music' sounds ominous. For now, the least we can all do is to sign this petition. I have.