The Huw Edwards scandal has blown the lid off the BBC’s HR practices. In the wake of Edwards’ disgrace, employees are stepping forward to reveal that complaints about top BBC talent are routinely swept under the carpet. Whistleblowers against Edwards report their evidence was flat-out “ignored”. Some workers are more equal than others…
It’s odd, then, that the BBC’s HR department is so ineffective, considering that as of February, they boasted a staggering 331 HR staff members. Just the top four HR directors alone pocketed a whopping £815,000 last year. All this on the taxpayers’ tab…
Viewers this morning were left with eyebrows-raised as they saw Ed Balls of Good Morning Britain fame interviewing…his wife, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper. Funnily enough, Balls refrained from his usual “talking over the top” bit, asking some soft questions to Cooper, one of which (about social media and rioters) opened with “We’ve talked about this a few times in the last few days”. Presumably Yvette would know the question already then….
While watching Mr. Yvette Cooper give the Home Secretary an easy ride this morning, Guido was reminded of when Balls interviewed James Cleverly when he was in post. He was much more keen to look tough than actually get any answers. Meanwhile, Cooper couldn’t find the time to go on GB News this morning. Guido can’t possibly imagine why…
UPDATE 7 August: Today Ofcom said the Monday programme attracted 8,201 complaints about Balls questioning Ms Cooper, and an exchange with Coventry South MP Zarah Sultana.
Veteran wonk Sam Bowman pointed out on Twitter that BBC Verify seems to have slowed down recently with old stories on its top page. Sure enough, only half of the top stories you see when landing on its page are from this week. Scroll down and more items are from June. One is even from December last year…
Guido got in touch with the BBC to ask about this and was told that it’s “completely untrue to say that there have been cuts to Verify… It’s business as usual.” That is: “it’s always been like this”…
According to an FOI request from Guido, the BBC moved staff from other departments into the BBC Verify Team this year – As of February 2024 there were 63 people with combined salary costs of a whopping £3.2 million. Last month they advertised a correspondent position in the team for £69,000…
According to the ‘latest updates’ section, since the beginning of last week Verify has produced nine stories. Nine stories in twelve days – that’s 32 hours per story. It also means that the 63 staff have been paid around £13,675 per article. Maybe the BBC should verify this project’s value for taxpayer money…
If you thought a change of regime would be bad for Guido’s trade… think again because a new government means new readers with traffic rising and on X @GuidoFawkes just broke through the 400,000 followers mark for the first time. Our freedom-oriented campaigning journalism resonates with readers even more under a socialist government.
In the early hours of the morning freed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich landed at Joint Airbase Andrews in Maryland. The freed political prisoners were greeted by Biden and Harris…
The prisoner exchange included Gershkovkich, who had been held for 490 days on fantasy espionage charges, the former US marine Paul Whelan, arrested in 2018 after being accused of spying, and the journalist and Radio Free Europe’s Alsu Kurmasheva. Russia got eight nationals in return, three held in US prisons. Andrew Sullivan said that opposition politician Alexei Navalny was meant to be part of the deal…
The prisoner swap took place in Ankara yesterday. Welcome home.
Things are looking ugly for the BBC after their top presenter Huw Edwards fell from from grace. Not only has Edwards admitted to having 41 indecent images of children, it turns out BBC boss Tim Davie knew of his arrest in November for having Category A images – which involve the most serious form of child exploitation. Yet he decided against sacking Huw, who was still paid a whopping £480,000 by the BBC despite his suspension and arrest…
Now Davie has admitted that disgraced Huw will likely get to keep his £300,000-a-year gold-plated pension, funded by taxpayers and those forced to fork out the £169.50 licence fee. After a grilling from Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy, Davie admitted the pension scheme is “very difficult to claw back, nigh on impossible…These are unfortunately the specifics of how it works.” The BBC’s slow and weak response to this scandal is a disgrace in itself…
Speaking at his speech on how to achieve “progressive capitalism” Wes Streeting fired a dig and Andy Burnham:
“Bond markets are not bond villains and fiscal rules matter.”
