Will we ever see an end to the special pleading of female staff at the BBC?
They are aghast that the Equality and Human Rights Commission has decided there was no unlawful wage discrimination at the Beeb. Can’t they accept that pay should be determined according to talent, as it is in any commercial business, and not on the basis of someone’s sex?
Truth is, many of the Beeb’s women are already overpaid — some of them grotesquely. How does Zoe Ball cope with last year’s pay rise of just £1 million, poor sausage.
And what about the campaign’s cheerleader Carrie Gracie, who downed tools as the China Editor for BBC News, having discovered she was earning less than some male international editors?
How does Zoe Ball (pictured) cope with last year’s pay rise of just £1 million, poor sausage
At the time, I had never noticed Gracie on the telly. After she quit her China job, she presented the daytime news, and was spectacularly unremarkable. Now she has left the BBC, no doubt with a fabulous pension, although she generously donated the backpay she received to the Fawcett Society to set up the Equal Pay Advice Service.
Meanwhile, Radio 4 Today’s Sarah Montague won a £400,000 settlement from the Beeb, having been paid less than co-hosts such as John Humphrys, now a Mail colleague. This struck me as ludicrous. Montague could never consider herself in the same league as one of the greatest radio presenters of all time.
Similarly, Samira Ahmed, who fought for £700,000 in backpay claiming she should receive as much for her unwatched Newswatch show as Jeremy Vine did for his highly successful Points Of View. Vine is by far the superior presenter. It would be just as much of an outrage if an unwatched male presenter earned anything like the estimable — and highly paid — Fiona Bruce. Mail.
