BBC bosses today announced that 2500 jobs are to be axed at the corporation, confirming workers’ worst fears over budget cuts.

Director general Mark Thompson said the BBC would create some new jobs and offer redeployment to other staff. The net loss across the UK will be 1800, as he tries to plug a 2 billion funding shortfall. In Scotland there will 230 job losses, although 130 new positions will be created.

The BBC also confirmed the sale of its iconic Television Centre building in Shepherd’s Bush, west London where thousands of staff are based. Union chiefs today warned industrial action was “inevitable”.

The NUJ has launched a scathing attack on the top brass of the corporation, calling on them to consider their positions.

Stephen Lowe, NUJ union representative for Edinburgh and Glasgow, said: “It’s ludicrous. We’ve had two years of ongoing cuts and redundancies - they’ve bled the place dry. They’re still looking for voluntary redundancies from the last process, so I don’t see where or how they are going to cut back further without doing less.

“What we are dealing with here is management failure on a grand scale. They failed to get an appropriate licence fee settlement, and then failed to plan for that.

“Industrial action is inevitable. There are plenty of options as well as strike action.”

It is likely to lead to more programmes made by independent companies being bought by the BBC. This approach has already got the corporation into trouble.

A trailer made by an independent firm featured clips of the Queen it wrongly claimed showed her storming out of a photo shoot. The BBC is cutting ten per cent from the number of programmes it commissions, which will lead to more repeats on television, in an effort to make efficiency savings of three per cent a year.

BBC Trust chairman Sir Michael Lyons said the trustees would be making sure the cuts would not damage the quality or “distinctiveness” of the BBC. But Mr Low attacked the move. He said: “Mr Thompson is saying we are going to sack people in the BBC to allow huge companies like Endemol to come in and make money from the licence fee.”

Officials from the broadcasting workers union Bectu were meeting with their NUJ counterparts today to discuss a response.

After meeting Mr Thompson, Gerry Morrissey, general secretary of Bectu, said unions were willing to negotiate with the BBC to help make savings.

He said: “We’re saying we want to enter a meaningful dialogue with the BBC. That meaningful dialogue cannot take place against the background of the BBC writing out to people, saying come and collect your redundancy cheques.”

A VIOLIN teacher targeted a Lothian provost by scratching his BMW and daubing it with goat’s cheese and eggs because he backed the creation of a sports pitch near her home.

Susan Matasovska, who provides school pupils with violin lessons, was protesting against Midlothian Council’s decision to provide a 420,000 synthetic football pitch in a Penicuik park.

Matasovska, of Cranston Street, Penicuik, had pleaded guilty previously at Edinburgh Sheriff Court to scratching the car owned by Councillor Adam Montgomery between July 11 and 12.

Today, she was ordered to pay the Midlothian Provost compensation of 480 for the damage caused.

The 55-year-old began her hate campaign after Cllr Montgomery told her fellow objectors they “were getting his goat”.

Matasovska started off by sending him drawings of a goat, including one showing the animal wearing a provost’s chain.

Cllr Montgomery, 56, called in police after four separate attacks on his car, including one incident where the roof was covered in goat’s cheese and eggs.

He had also suffered deliberate scratch tracks into the paintwork of his BMW and had a broken bottle placed behind the wheel.

In all, more than 2000 worth of damage was caused to his private car over a eight-day period.

Matasovska was caught by the provost - a councillor for 21 years - when he matched the handwriting on the letters with that of her official objection letter.

The teacher, employed to instruct music by the same Midlothian Council that elected Cllr Montgomery as provost, admitted all the offences when quizzed by police back in July.

Defence agent, Mike Bevan, told Sheriff Elizabeth Jarvie QC, today that his client was ashamed, embarrassed and remorseful, and was under medication for depression.

Mr Bevan said her actions had been borne out of frustration after she and other residents raised a petition about the proposals, but that had failed to stop the development.

He added: “What triggered this was the comments made by the complainer - he was very dismissive of the objectors.

“This is where the phrase ‘get on my goat’ came from’.”

Last night, Cllr Montgomery said: “I don’t deserve this and neither do my family - I have done a lot for this area and I haven’t been re-elected for the last 21 years for nothing.

“The letters I received I could shrug off. But targeting my family and property is an invasion of privacy and is way over the top.

“The vast majority of people are delighted with the sports pitch - they realise it is better to have the kids round here playing football than causing trouble.

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A tennis instructor accused of conducting an affair with a girl she was coaching was today found guilty of molesting the student.

Claire Lyte, 29, was found guilty of four out of five counts of sexual activity with a 13-year-old pupil between 2005 and 2006. The girl cannot be named for legal reasons.

Lyte, who will be sentenced on November 2, broke down in tears outside the court and was comforted by her parents.

She had denied any sexual encounter throughout the trial, telling police: “I like men.”

The jury rejected her claims that the child’s mother had invented the allegations out of jealousy and a reluctance to accept that her daughter would not make it as a professional tennis player.

The court heard that Lyte, of Shirley, Solihull, in the West Midlands, was found with the girl naked and engaged in oral sex when the mother returned home early from a party in October 2006.

The girl’s mother did not report the18-month relationship to police until August the following year.

She said she was disturbed by her daughter’s reaction to her discovery, and was terrified of what would happen if she told the police.

During the two-week trial, the court heard that the rising tennis star first met her coach at the Lawn Tennis Association’s academy in Leicestershire, where Lyte had been named “coach of the year”.

Within months Lyte and the girl had become noticeably close, spending lunchtimes together in isolated parts of the University of Loughborough campus where the tennis academy was based. They wore similar clothes and tied their hair back in the same distinctive ponytail.

Lyte’s bosses became suspicious as she spent more time in the youngster’s study room, and the pair were suspected of sharing a toilet cubicle.

But they did not realise the pair were spending nights together at the child’s home and sharing hotel rooms during tournaments.

The eight women and five men of the jury heard that the girl fell in love with her coach, sending her gushing text messages and, on one occasion, a stick drawing of the two in bed and the words “You” and “Me” written over them.

On another occasion, the girl told Lyte to “stop stressing” as bosses at the academy would never believe they were in a relationship.

Lyte admitted twice wearing a pair of the child’s pink knickers left in her home but said she thought they were her own, despite the girl’s nametag inside them.

Lyte’s employers at the LTA repeatedly warned her about spending too much time with the girl, the court heard.

As the relationship continued, the girl’s tennis suffered and ten months after her original discovery, her mother was confronted with further proof that the relationship was continuing.

She saw Lyte wearing her daughter’s shorts and jumper in the summer of 2006 and said her “stomach turned over”.

She went to the police, but upon hearing the news her daughter climbed on to the roof of their Merseyside home and threatened suicide.

After a period of recovery, she has returned to live at home full-time and told the court herself she was “doing fine” and was once again playing tennis.

The youngster could resume her professional career and told jurors she plans to meet LTA officials after her 16th birthday.

Lyte began playing tennis herself at the age of ten when she was spotted at her local tennis club by county selectors in Warwickshire. By 16 she had turned professional and three years later was ranked among the sport’s top 500 players.

But she lost her position through injury and gave up playing to work as a waitress and coach part-time at Edgbaston’s exclusive Priory tennis club.

Within two years her fellow coaches voted her the LTA young coach of the year and she was headhunted by the LTA academy to coach young stars of the future.