I was on Talkback yesterday and the topic was stars’ wages. There has been a move to reveal the salary of top presenters earning over £150,000. Seems reasonable. They’re paid out of our pockets through the licence fee, so why shouldn’t we know what they’re earning and if they’re worth it?
I can see the merit in that argument, but the fact is, the BBC is competing with commercial media. If it’s forced to reveal what it’s paying its stellar performers, it’s going to be at a disadvantage. Imagine if you had a corner shop and your rival had a corner shop: s/he has ready access to what you’re charging for various items but you can’t find what he’s paying. Puts you at something of a disadvantage.
If we’re talking about the BBC, there are bigger questions to be considered than the salaries of stars. Questions such as the BBC’s impartiality, the gawdawful shows it puts on, and what, in a divided society, its ethos is. Let’s talk about those things, rather than how much of our licence fee the Beeb spends on its headline performers. Why? Because the Tory party and its media allies are keen to stoke the fires of public resentment against the licence fee to the point where it’ll be abandoned and the BBC privatised. It may not be perfect – in fact it isn’t – but it does a lot of things very well and the alternatives to it are an appalling vista.
As taxpayers we have a perfect right to know what these cosseted ‘celebrities,’ pedlars of triviaand obsequious political commentatirs are paid. we already know on RTE – and it’s far too much! As consumers we should also know what commercial broadcasters earn. I reject the idea that talent is directly propartionate to salary. I think that we would still have fine bradcasters – possibly more – if salaries were capped at 120k pa. A big nough incentive for most. It would broaden the field and, in Ireland at least, undermine the cosy incestuous relationship between Tubridy, O’Connor, O’Callaghan Finucane etc. Let the obscene earners ply their ‘talent’ in England as does FK and (did) the late TW. They are a drain on the taxpayer and when the English pastures get too polluted with Irish expats unable to wield a pick they will be glad to negociate their terms of surrender with the oul’ sod.
Jude, I pay the license fee. Apart from the news, I watch most programs on iPlayer. I do think it is value for money: a person’s contract with their employer should be confidential.
Yes but not in the circumstance when their contract is funded by the compulsory tax that is the licence fee.
The BBC spends money like water. How many people did they have at the Olympics? Even Steven Watson of BBC NI was there for no good reason. That boy’s passport must be worn out by the number of times he gets to travel at our expense to follow his hero Rory McIlroy.
And can any one say that the local BBC gives value for money when it is still stuck with its 1950s Unionist viewpoint.
The problem is that they are not paid a wage but a fee. That fee is usually paid to an off shore ‘management company’ Owned by the ‘star’ so they avoid paying PAYE and NIC. I would have no objection to their salary if they were paid monthly and taxed at BBC end rather than on the paltry fee their management company pays them. Perhaps if there as Mor fairness in Income a tax paid there would be sufficient money to make sure Health and Education had sufficient funds. When Nolan ask d Conor Murphy if he thought Slab was a good republican by not paying tax, perhaps he could ask his fellow BBC talent if they are good British Citizens when they avoid taxation but have no qualms in using the infrastructure they don’t contribute to.
“…Send in the clowns…”
Perhaps Steptoe and Arold will provide us with a definition of Brexit, perhaps a sequel to Porridge may deal with difficult questions associated with crime, gender and class. Prequels and sequels beg the queston, Are You Being Served by the BBC?
It was once suggested that if you want comedy, watch politics, if you want the truth watch comedy. Yes Minister. With bargain basement sitcoms the search for impartiality and truth may be rendered as slow as some responses to Freedom of Information requests.
“I remain just one thing, and one thing only, and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician.” Charlie Chaplin
Always wondered, Esteemed Blogmeister, why Wee George Hamilton hightailed it out of BBC Belfast as far back as 1984 (!) to travel south of the Black Sow’s Dyke via Dundyke to Dublin in general and RTE in particular.
If the, erm, nation held its breath this did not apply to the remarkably composed Wee George: he kept inhaling normally. He knew what he was about: the dosh.
It certainly cannot have been the opportunity to put another arrow in his linguistic quiver which attracted him, especially a narrow nationalistic linguistic arrow.
A noted linguist (this Methody old boy studied German and French in Queen’s) Wee George is fluent in at least four real languages – the German Q’s English, German, French and Footiespeak, in fairness, going forward. Despite his being now (gulp) 32 years in the 26 counties he still does not have the cupla focal to make the knuckle-scraping beast of two backs with.
It is, accordingly, a matter of no little Southern pride than nobody compelled this gifted Nordie to add the Leprechaun to his already overloaded linguistic crock of golden clichés.
-150,000 squids?
Peanuts, primates and pay are the 3 Ps which came to mind on reading that piddling per annum sum.
The galaxy of gals and other steller fellers on RTE (and its, erm, competitors in the DOBland media) would titer, how they would chaffe, how these broadcaster and brothers would laugh on Liffeyside at the thought of receiving a purse so paltry.
Which begs a question about this concept of, erm, ‘competition’ as understood in the biz of communications.
Considering that the exact same identical stick of Queen Anne furniture is used to accommodate the plump rumps of discussion programme chairpersons both private and public:
-Granny’s Old Armchair.
Dublin is clearly the G.O.A- to place: just ask Wee George Hamilton (see above).
This q. certainly had its cloth cap out in pitiful supplication of late when the current Israeli Ambassador to – cue the collective holding of breath –‘Ireland’ , Zeev Boker, Esq. was doing the rounds of the broadcasting studios on Liffeyside, both public and private.
One listened, not so much for the questions (predictable) asked and the answers (predictable) given, but rather the questions unasked (even more predictable).
To do with a topic which ‘Ireland’ shares almost uniquely with Israel. To do with the revival of a moribund tongue from near-extinction. Indeed, the commencement of both revivals coincided: at the turn of the 19c and 20c century.
Whereas one was a success unlimited the other was a magnificent failure, as the following result from the Eurolingo League (group stages) indicates:
-Hebrew United: 116 – Leprechaun Celtic: o.
But, as the Liffeyside media never tire of reminding ourselves alone:
-We have the best Fans in the world.!
(Fans are not to be confused with Fainnes).
The Foreign Minister of the Free Southern Stateen, Charlie ‘Je suis Charles’ Flanagan, MP, who was simultaneously blessed with a comedian’s face and cursed with a humour byepass, could yet salvage something from the Hesperus of his hapless career.
Instead of striking oportunistic poses in front of TV cameras (for which admittedly he has an undoubted, if incomprehensible flair) with the straightlaced Mr. Brokenshire, MP, the disjointed and incoherent member for the Maryborough constituency in the Midlands could do something useful for once (dear Lawd). That is, before he finally departs the political stage, pursued by a deck chair.
He could, f’rinstance, kill two Word Systems with the one stone by both doing himself and his former Blue Shirted and shirty colleague, Alan Shatter, a favour. By dispatching the latter as a Special Envoy to the land of his ancestors to see How did they Do it with Hebrew . The Boy Shatter , as he liked to remind us (gan teip) , spent some time sweating his gutz out among the orange groves of a kibuttz.
That would be the ultimate Flanagan and Allen joke never told. As, of course, it will never happen. Requiring, as it would a dollopeen of the I-word, Imagination.
Imagine !
The BBC story on today’s Blog reminds one of another recent story from Belfast. Which could in its own weird way provide the less than flannel-tongued Flanagan with another – all too obvious –idea for him to finally have a bash at making a splash.
It concerned the Titanic surpassing even the Eiffel Tower itself/ lui meme as the Biggie of tourist attractions in Europe. And Babe Ruth thought Dublin had a monopoly on the Triumph of Failure !
Consider the following: when Barrack O’Bama was honoured to take his place beside Charlie ‘Je suis Charles’Flanagan on an appropriately wooden platform outside the Bank of Ireland on College Green, Dublin 2, he uttered the immortal tri fhocal:
-Is Feidir Linn.
Thereby exceeding 92.5 % of the membership of Dahl Eireann by one solitary focal. Meaning:
-We Can Do .
But then the Land of Uncle Sam (soon to become the Land of Aunt Samantha ?) is not known as the Land of Can Do for nothing (whatever about the Land of Khan Do, not).
By commemorating this deathless phase in the form of (gulp) a tower on the same site. To be called:
– The Tower of I.F.L.
Now, the Parisian totem pole toppled by the Titanic out of first place, stands at 1,063 feet in its sans culottes. Let therefore the new Tower of I.F.L. stand as not less than 1,064 feet, in its pampooties.
Once finished, of monolithic bogoak made, it could well turn out to be the second Iceberg on which the Titantic was to falter, tourist attraction-wise, going forward. (The FSS being, of course, a cold sod for the Northern Prod).
The only bone of contention would be the shape which The Tower of I.F.L. could take .
Proposals only in the form of a Limerick:
SHAPE OF TOWER OF IFL TO COME
Perhaps it might take the shape of Enda’s mojo
More an eyesore than the hideous NAMA logo :
There are those in the know
Swear that they used to show
It at the ready, steady go to the late, g. sprinter Flojo.
I’d agree with you on this Jude. What the BBC does in terms of quality programmes is head and shoulders better than most others.I’ll admit that most of these efforts are buried on BBC4 or possibly BBC2 but these are the programmes with some substance .As for the rest…I don’t know how we’ve gotten to this but we appear to be buried otherwise in soap-operas, cooking/baking concerns and endless fly-on-the -wall reality shows about some very boring individuals who may or may not be celebrities…(How would we ever know?)…and endlesssinging/performing contests where originality is abandoned for emulating other unoriginal performers.Sure, it can’t all be high -art but it sometimes seems to have sunk to the lowest common- denominator instead. Most of the best programmes are imports from the likes of the HBO stable , at the moment.
As for the Beeb’s impartiality in a divided society…Well , it’s not just our wee local society that is divided , we should remember. The UK is divided too. We just have to look at something like the recent Brexit vote to realise that. If we look at it even a a bit more locally than that ,in the sense of our immediate society, loosely divided between Unionists(ie those who support a union with the British UK ) and Irish Nationalists (who generally do not), then it’s worth remembering that the Auntie Beeb is actually called the “British ” Broadcasting Corporation, so their local bias , for good or for bad is clearly aligned to a British ethos right there.I don’t see that taking away from the quality of the content ,mostly ,but it’s worth remembering too that it is being financed by many of those of us whose ethos is perceivably anti-British. We all pay , in other words , whether we want to support it or not.
It is odd though that although I whole-heartedly support it and I am not of a unionist mind, many such as the Democratic Unionist Party’s Sammy Wilson, regularly disparage the BBC as being biased in favour of an Irish Nationalist agenda or because it is possibly not quite “unionist” enough…or better than that , too secular or atheistic.From my perspective it would be very difficult to please someone like Mr Wilson without displacing the logic of scientific discovery or possibly re-writing the Laws of Gravity.I think the BBC for the most part attempts to honestly portray real events as they actually are and without too much political bias. That’s bound not to please everyone.
So if we are looking at a publicy supported institution rather than one paid for by advertisments from companies with their own agendas , given the circumstances and its remit, I believe it should be allowed to operate by the same rules of secrecy as does more commercial stations.
“Questions such as the BBC’s impartiality, the gawdawful shows it puts on, and what, in a divided society, its ethos is”
The BBC are very bias, as is many other channel’s in the North, like UTV. They tend to be very Pro-Unionist. When its time to wear that “Non political” poppy, all news presenters have it at the ready. Would a presenter be allowed to wear an Easter Lily or some other badge if they wanted to? I doubt it. One of the most notable things you see getting preached now days by BBC/UTV is the new nationality of “Northern Irish”. Even athletes playing for the Irish Paralympic team are repeatedly referred to as “Northern Irish”. I remember the news report regarding a Gold Medal winner from Derry who was representing Ireland, I think it was Jason Smyth but I might be wrong. In the report it was mentioned just once that he represented Team Ireland but yet he was referred to as “Northern Irish” at least 5 times.
Republic of Ireland footballer and Derry man James McClean was once called “Northern Irish” at a press conference by a Journalist. McClean went out of his way to correct the Journalist and say that he was Irish, not “Northern Irish”. Looks like I’m not the only one to see this new nationality being promoted and even forced on people at every turn…..
The BBC and other British media companies also have this agenda of claiming famous Irish people are “British”, even if they were born and raised in Ireland, North or South. Hollywood Actor Colin Farrell was labelled “British” by the British media (Samuel L Jackson stepped in and remained the interviewer Colin was Irish, not British). Actor Michael Fassbender, who is half German, half Irish but mostly identifies as Irish (even fluent in the Irish language…. don’t tell Gregory Campbell, btw….) was “British” according to the BBC. Irish actress Saoirse Ronan is the latest victim of the British media. American Hollywood superstar Samuel L Jackson even called this “claiming” of famous Irish people by the British media a form of slavery.
Irish Best Actress Oscar winner Brenda Fricker once said “When you are lying drunk at the airport, you’re Irish. When you win an Oscar, you’re British.” Its obvious this “claiming” of Irish people as British has been going on for a very long time….
Scottish people also accuse the BBC of a similar agenda. For example, when some famous Scottish person like Tennis star Andy Murray wins a tournament he’s described as “British”. But when Andy Murray (or any other Scott) loses a tournament or is portrayed negatively they are described as “Scottish”.
The latest bias in the media just happened an hour ago on UTV. The report was about the Northern Ireland football teams fans receiving a Award for being great fans at Euro 2016. But what the report made absolutely no mention of AT ALL was the fact the Republic, Welsh and Icelandic fans shared the very same Award……so apparently Norn Iron fans alone lit up Euro 2016, according to UTV……
The BBC could warm my little heart some more if they could get a continuity announcer that can pronounce words as Gaeilge, names as Gaeilge and the planters attempts at anglicised town land/place names . Not knowing any Chinese or African names, I can’t say how much care they take to find out their proper pronounciation but they certainly probe deeper than they do for the native speak.