BBC Executive Pay and Expenses: Why All The Fuss?
The issue of executive pay and expenses at the BBC has become a political football again today and I have read articles in both the Evening Standard and The Grauniad. I assume this middle class outrage is the most reasonable of the no doubt loud public outcry with the Mail and Express probably calling for mass deportations or lynchings over the issue.
I personally feel that the British do rather well out of their state funded broadcaster. Looking to other large scale democracies it is dissapointing to see the level of debate, particularly political, that comes from an entirely free market press. If you have any issues with this statement please see Fox News. In the same way that perhaps only NPR can be held up in The States, the BBC is a bastion of good journalism and public service content.
The issue I have with the expenses debate, particularly in regards to the latest BBC debacle, is the constant reference made to taxi fares. What do people expect high value executives to do when travelling on business, particularly in London? The figures mentioned, when broken down, may feel slightly eye watering but a more worthwhile exercise would be to break down how much these executives are being paid on an hourly basis. The papers have already made quite clear how they feel about the salaries being awarded within the BBC but the papers seem to have completely missed the point that once we have hired an executive, no matter how middle management their position might be, we should make best use of their time. Why is it we never see a headline that says “BBC pays executive £100 an hour to sit on the tube?” I would possit that it might be that they are sensible enough to take cabs from meeting to meeting and make best use of their allegedly overpaid time!
Having a parent that works within the civil service as a consultant and bills by the day or the hour I am much happier as a tax payer to know that when our public servants are on the clock they don’t waste their time faffing about on buses like the rest of us and actually spend their time delivering.
Photo credit: Martin Deutsch on Flickr
