"Complete independence from political influence"

Sir Michael Lyons on the Today programme made the laughable claim that the BBC currently enjoys "complete independence from political and commercial influence". Does he live in the real world, does he listen or look at the bias that drips from the BBC every day? Has he ever read the articles at Biased-BBC or those on here dealing at length with the BBC's clear bias? You can hear Sir Michael Lyons' out of touch waffle here and his laughable claim near the end of that extract.