The BBC has just revealed further details of the story everyone is talking about – BBC presenter salaries. It’s been a good year for Huw Edwards, who’s clocked in a bumper £25,000 pay rise. That should cover any unexpected costs…
As record wage growth contributes to inflationary pressures, the BBC has been doing their best to make the situation worse. Gary Lineker remains the corporation’s highest earner, on £1,354,999, as Victoria Derbyshire, Laura Kuenssberg and Amol Rajan also do alright for themselves. Here are the highest-earning politicos, and others:
Today
- Amol Rajan – £339,999 (+3%)
- Mishal Husain – £319,999 (+14%)
- Justin Webb – £284,999 (+10%)
- Nick Robinson – £279,999 (+2%)
- Martha Kearney – £264,999 (+2%)
World at One
- Sarah Montague – £249,999 (NC)
PM
- Evan Davis – £284,999 (+4%)
BBC News at Six and Ten
- Huw Edwards – £439,999 (+6%)
- Sophie Rayworth – £369,999 (+19%)
- Gerge Alagiah – £339,999 (+3%)
- Clive Myrie – £289,999 (+12%)
- Reeta Chakrabarti – £219,999 (+7%)
Question Time
- Fiona Bruce – £399,999 (-4%)
Newsnight
- Victoria Derbyshire – £299,999 (+22%)
- Kirsty Wark – £284,999 (+14%)
BBC Breakfast
- Charlie Stayt – £194,999 (NC)
- Jon Kay – £189,999 (NEW)
- Sally Nugent – £184,999 (NEW)
Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg
- Laura Kuenssberg – £309,999 (+17%)
On-air editors and correspondents
- Faisal Islam – £234,999 (-4%)
- Jeremy Bowen – £234,999 (NC)
- Katya Adler – £219,999 (+5%)
- Chris Mason – £229,999 (NEW)
- Sarah Smith – £224,999 (+15%)
- Lyse Doucet – £209,999 (+35%)
- Mark Easton – £199,999 (+3%)
- John Simpson – £184,999 (NEW)
Non-politics or news
- Gary Lineker – £1,354,999 (NC)
- Zoe Ball – £984,999 (NC)
- Alan Shearer – £449,999 (-0.1%)
- Stephen Nolan – £404,999 (-4%)
- Greg James – £399,999 (+1%)
- Jeremy Vine – £289,999 (-2%)
- Louis Theroux – £204,999 (NC)
Co-conspirators can read the full report here. Thank God for BBC transparency…
Sports fans among Guido’s co-conspirators will recall one of the biggest examples of leftie pearl-clutching in recent times: the commentariat’s outrage at the 2021 Saudi takeover of Premier League club Newcastle United. Labour MP Mike Amesbury raised the issue in the Commons: “Is the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund a right and proper and fit for purpose owner of Newcastle United?” Comrade Clive Efford added: “It may be one thing for the morally bankrupt Premier League to accept money from Saudi Arabia, but for the UK government to turn round and say it welcomes its investment is another thing.” Labour frontbencher Chi Onwurah intoned: “I think it’s important to say that in utterly condemning this atrocious, horrific massacre [executions in Saudi Arabia], I speak for many, many of my constituents and Newcastle United fans”. All perfectly fair points…
The woke elite of football punditry were quick to join the bandwagon. Always outspoken Labour Party supporter Gary Neville worried: “How were the Saudi Arabians accepted into the Premier League? We don’t know. There’s no transparency and there’s no independence.” Specifically criticising the Saudi acquisition, he said: “there will always be question marks about them”…
You’d be forgiven for wondering, then, why Labour and left aren’t sheikh-ing their fists at the impending Qatari takeover of Manchester United (Guido’s football insider sources say the deal may come to the crunch soon). It’s not clear what moral distinction there is to be drawn between the Saudis and the Qataris – both states have an authoritarian grizzly charge sheet. Officials are reportedly sceptical about the Qatari bid, according to Bloomberg, particularly given controversies surrounding bidder Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad Al Thani. Once again, the leftie outrage bus is curiously selective…
Labour, which recently enforced a boycott of the Qatari World Cup on its MPs, is keeping a studied silence. As for the football commentariat, the fact that luminaries such as Lineker (£1.6 million) and Neville (£10 million) pocketed Qatari cash for their TV work surely cannot be relevant…
The BBC’s capitulation to Gary Lineker, who recently revealed Tim Davie gave him express permission to tweet about refugees and the climate, seems to have emboldened other presenters at the corporation to tweet to their hearts content. Gary’s defence in the impartiality row (and for tax purposes) relies on the fact that as a self-contracted sports presenter – not employed by the BBC and away from news content – he should be less constrained by impartiality guidelines. It seems as though another presenter wants to make the most of Lineker’s loophole…
Now, there’s another name to add to the list of partisan presenters. Just a quick look at the Twitter feed of Roland Pease, the self-contracted host of BBC Science in Action, is enough to reveal flagrant breaches of neutrality. Guido notes that Roland’s Twitter bio includes reference to his BBC employment – a factor relevant to determining impartiality breaches…
- Roland compared Nigel Farage to Joseph Stalin.
- Unearthed 1930s immigration rhetoric to compare to the present day, during the Gary Lineker controversy.
- Questioned Ofcom over Nigel Farage’s show and criticised his “nonsense”.
- Likened “King Boris” to an orangutan.
- Applauded Ben and Jerry’s “principled” criticism of Priti Patel – which ended with the statement “PEOPLE CANNOT BE ILLEGAL”.
- Joked about Boris Johnson’s sexual interests.
- Shared criticism of Brexit and Implied Brexit supporters couldn’t pass a history test.
- Made a searing criticism of the “lily-livered” BBC’s “shameful” cancellation of Gary Lineker.
- Mocked Thérèse Coffey’s turnip comments.
- Retweeted LedByDonkeys’ anti-Tory investigation.
Gary and Roland are two Pease in a pod…
As a science presenter and a freelancer, he may well hope to be equal to Gary in his immunity from impartiality obligations. Impartiality does seem more relevant to science than sport. In case he wanted to try his luck with BBC executives, Guido would just gently remind Roland that he doesn’t quite have Lineker’s star power…
Away from the distracting noise of the Budget, Labour Peer Lord Young of Norwood Green had a go at solving the Gary Lineker crisis in the Chamber this afternoon. His solution? Sacking Lineker, Shearer and Wright – the “old boys’ club” – and replacing them with at least “one or two women… which we could probably get at half the price and they’d do twice as good a job… I don’t believe we should be paying those kind of prices to presenters.” It didn’t exactly go down well…
When you’ve got your opponents pencilling in a little moustache under your nose and calling you a fascist, you really don’t want to help them out by saying you want to put them all into concentration camps. Don’t play into their hands by saying you want to break all their shop windows, execute their leaders and burn their parliament building down.
Rishi caused an early excitement on the benches opposite him by telling the SNP they couldn’t make their trains run in time. Not quite the same, you think? Insufficient totalitarian mania? Absence of genocidal energy? It’s only a matter of degree for the Left. In their discourse, Hitler started out as a One Nation Conservative, took an aggressive line on emigration, invaded Poland. The trajectory is, in three words, ineluctable.
It may be that under Lineker’s leadership that they are winning the argument. That a larger part of the country than we might wish feel that the “small boats” in the Channel are the moral equivalent of the “little ships” of Dunkirk. That the traffickers running their fabulously profitable operations are so many Schindlers. The Left are very much better at this than the Right.
Does “The Left” still include the LOTO?
Keir ‘Storming’ Starmer went on a lightning raid of his own in PMQs. He is blitzing out of his ideological homeland in order to circumvent the Maginot Line the Tories are sheltering behind. He attacked them, daringly, on a far-flung flank. “Last summer, the Prime Minister said he wanted to protect free speech,” (Labour: Ah!) “And put a stop to No Platforming.” (Labour: Ah! Ah!) “So, how concerned was he by last week’s campaign by Tory MPs to cancel a broadcaster?”
In today’s pre-Budget PMQs, Keir Starmer decided against questioning Sunak on the economy – instead focusing on the reaction of Conservative MPs to Gary Lineker’s tweets. Sunak responded to the Labour leader attacking “Snowflake MPs” by calling out Labour’s “usual political opportunism”. He also pointed out the fact that some of Starmer’s own top team also joined the charge against Lineker. Presumably Keir thinks they’re snowflakes too.
The Prime Minister rounded off his response by unleashing on Starmer’s approach:
“What a surprise, he saw the chance to jump on a political band wagon and changed his mind!”
It wouldn’t be the first time.
