Jonathan Wynne-Jones is the Religious Affairs and Media Correspondent of the Sunday Telegraph. He was described as "the scourge of church and state" at the Britsh Press Awards for 2009. He tweets @JonWynneJones . The BBC cuts arrive far too late, but they're at least a step in the right direction Bashing the BBC has become something of a sport over recent years. And more often than not the corporation has been pretty generous to its critics, giving them plenty of sticks with which to beat it. It has struggled to defend a series of embarrassing stories: from the obscene phonecalls made to Andrew Sachs to bloated salaries and the excesses of senior managers. But today, the BBC went some way towards addressing these oft-repeated criticisms, announcing that 2,000 jobs are to go, particularly from news, that its property empire will be reduced, and that the endless layers of management will be slashed. As soon as the plans were revealed by Mark Thompson, the unions were warning of strike action, and claiming the job losses would "destroy the BBC". The truth, though, is that Thompson, along with Lord Patten and the BBC Trust, has come up with a way of saving 670 million of licence-fee payers' money without damaging the broadcaster's output . While digital stations such as the Asian Network and Radio 1 Xtra will see their budget slashed and the HD channel will be closed, more money is to be invested in investigations and programming for BBC One