It is not made up nor is it a rumour. NT stated this fact at a recent recurrent.
I'm not sure if you saw the same presentation as I did but NT did not say that the bmi board has lost patience with bmibaby and that they only have a year to turn things around. What he said was that the board had been patient over the last two years acknowledging the fact that profitability had been sacrificed for the expansion of the last two years. He said that any future expansion would depend on turning things around and that this year things were heading in the right direction to do that.
The way you stated it puts a very negative spin on what was actually a very optomistic outlook given by the board and NT.