Further to my rant about the BBC, I was gobsmacked a while back when I learned that Radio 4's Eddie Mair, hardly the biggest household name at the BBC, is paid £425k a year. More than double the PM's earnings, including the rent he gets for his house while he camps in no. 10 (so I count that as part of his package).
Most of the media get their knickers in a twist about the pay of Lineker or Norton. In the old days it would be Jonathan Ross. Me, I can see why they pay Lineker, but Shearer? I suppose he isn't quite as dull as he was but it's still work in progress at best.
The Radio 4 presenter Justin Webb has given us a fascinating family insight into this issue. Justin, bless him, told Radio Times magazine that he had been challenged by one of his childen about why he earns more than the PM (his salary is rumoured to be a comparatively modest £150k). "But you don't do anything" his daughter said. He protested that he got up very early, only to be put down with "But you just read things out. Literally, Daddy, you read for a living. And you pick me up every day." Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings!
Actually, though Mair's wedge seems disproportionate to his audience size, I get less agitated about most of these folk than the faceless managers. How many in the BBC backroom get more than the PM? I hate to think. I hesitate to look at their accounts as what it reveals on executive pay would give me blood pressure. Impossible to justify.
As for the presenters, I get more agitated about why on earth the Inland Revenue allow people who only work for one end company to operate as freelances, paying themselves through a company to evade (word used deliberately) income tax.
Of course, the BBC aren't the only institution who pay over the top. Another stat it might be best I don't research is how many public sector employees (in the broadest context of wholly paid by taxpayer, including agencies, etc) are paid more than the PM. Of course, the PM's pay is artificially low because of the political impossibility of paying ministers a fair rate. But I still find it hard to accept that Chief Execs of councils and NHS trusts are worth that much. (I'm not letting retail banks and utilities off here, they are also overpaid, but this is a rant about taxpayers' money, or more precisely BBC licence payers' money).
I believe executive pay at the BBC is the most egregious example of excessive remuneration, as the licence fee is a regressive, non-means tested, tax. If these execs want a market rate of pay, their corporation should join the market. If they want to pay their star presenters a market rate, they should join the market. This means funding by subscription, not licence fee. Until then their pay should be controlled as public sector pay used to be.
I think this would soon make them change the tune we hear every time the licence fee is up for renewal.
I think it's a disgrace the Tories have let them off the hook again. I suspect reform of the BBC is too politically difficult for the Tories to tackle, in lack of a Maggie type leader with balls.
So the BBC pay stories will trickle out for quite a few years yet. I'd better not hold my breath.
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