Owen Paterson.

Me too, but if you want to improve on that level of skills and experience then you need to improve the pay not diminish it.

To be fair as a headteacher you only need to have good oratory skills and talk bullshit! However I would actually like a system where people who got to the top of their professions went into politics to apply that knowledge, skills and experience more widely. That's a million times more valuable than career politicians who have no wider experience of climbing ladders except the bullshit based one that they do.

 

I've not mentioned big business at all to be fair.

But yeah, if a successful businessman wanted to move into politics then the wage structure should make that possible too.

 

This rant is just pure, blind anti-BBC prejudice. The BBC will pay market rates for celebrity presenters, just as every other broadcasting organisation does.
You happen to think that the presenters you quoted are 'mediocre', but that's just your personal taste, filtered through your obvious anti-BBC bias. Millions of people really like these individuals and they wouldn't be paid those sorts of sums if they were unpopular.

 

Oh, that was funny, see you do have a sense of humour..!!

 

Does Zoe Ball actually do anything anymore? I know she's got a radio slot but surely that doesn't pay her £1m plus a year?

Other than that though there is absolutely a strong argument that the BBC should be defunded and exist within its own means like every other media platform around the world.

 

Until recently she was part of the Strictly umbrella but I believe she now just does the Radio 2 breakfast show, which I imagine is one of, if not the most listened to radio programmes in the UK.

You may think that there's a strong argument for defunding the BBC and making it purely commercial and you're perfectly entitled to that view, obviously. I totally disagree. Despite the increased competition from Netflix, Amazon etc, I still believe that the BBC is the best all round broadcasting organisation in the world, with a range and quality that is unparalleled. It's a national institution and should be cherished. In a world where Britain's reputation is dropping further and further down the toilet, the BBC maintains an excellent international role and reputation. It will be a sad day for this country when it is defunded and split up. It appears that this country increasingly knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

 

she probably doesn’t get paid the same salary as when she was doing Strictly etc. and this is part of the problem when people talk about stuff like this, they quote past salary and then current jobs, not realising that the two may not be the same

 

It's not just me that thinks that, it's clearly a substantial number of people that are unhappy about paying for what is essentially a compulsory subscription service.

It never will, so this is all speculation on my part, but if for instance the bbc channels and radio stations were sustained by a voluntary subscription like other media platforms what percentage of British people would choose to pay for it?

Given its the "best all round broadcasting organisation in the world, with a range and quality that is unparalleled" surely making it a voluntary subscription service wouldn't make a difference and the BBC could carry on as normal?

Unless of course you're massively over egging it's popularity and it's possibly the case that you're in a minority in your opinion of the service?

 

The license fee is a tax - dont pay and go to prison. Its not about the BBC its about watching live telly.

So if you dont ever watch the BBC or listen to its radio or the news site it matters not a jot because most people watch some form of live tv through the year and so are liable to pay. Its archaic, its taxation and it should be of the past.

The BBC in my eyes enabled Brexit, some will disagree. But when the referendum was announced the support for Leave was at 17% but due to BBC guidelines of balance, not impartiality, but balance, Leave was given parity with Remain so much so that to achieve balance the journalists were giving a so called 'mature' analysis of some of the spurious claims.

They can get fekt I wouldnt care if it was broken down bit by bit tomorrow.

 

Yes, I'm well aware of the arguments, and that there are lots of people who resent paying the TV licence and think the BBC should not be state funded. But I'm not one of them. I don't know whether they are a majority or not, and I doubt you do either.

Clearly it would impact on the range and quality of BBC output if the licence funding were removed, because some aspects of the corporation's output are fairly niche and wouldn't survive commercially without the public funding.

Since the Tories hate the BBC - because they, absurdly, believe it to be biased against them and most of them oppose state funding as a matter of principle - it seems highly likely to me that the licence fee funding will be removed eventually - probably after the next election. Some of the populist bits of the corporation might then survive on voluntary subscription but large parts of it would just disappear, never to be seen or heard again, and the country would be immeasurably the poorer for it.

 

Despite the cynicism of @Rogered Tart and others, all MPs are not the same.

The vast majority of second/third/fourth jobs are done by Tory MPs. The argument that this work brings in useful commercial expertise and experience to Parliament is largely bunk, because most of them don't go from proper jobs into politics; they get given these positions because they are MPs - for the inside tracks and contacts they can give to companies, who pay them vast amounts for the privilege.
These are mostly privileged people who expect to live lavish lifestyles, send their kids to expensive public schools etc and think that an £80k salary is a pittance.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/22/second-jobs-conservative-scandal-mps-lifestyle-politics?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

 

Isn't that the whole point though?

Of course there's going to be more government MPs being tapped up. What sort of inside track would an opposition MP give you?

It's not a moralistic difference it's a capability and accessibility difference.

So ban second jobs completely and pay MPs more to offset it. Its not difficult. So why does nobody say it.

 

It I don't think it was as prevalent when Labour were in government.
I agree about banning second jobs. I believe it's now Labour's official position.

 

How would we know? The scandal didn't hit until after they left but we do know that the biggest beneficiary of big business after they left office was Tony Blair, its difficult to believe that he didn't make these connections whilst in office?

As for the Labour position - isn't it just banning paid consultancies and directorships (typical Conservative jobs) rather than banning them all? That strikes me as political game playing rather than particularly useful. Without the accompanying pay rise its not the same though, I don't want to get into a position where somebody who is capable of earning £150k - £200k is capable of running a company but realistically excluded from helping to run the country. That's as bad for democracy as having second jobs.

 

The Labour policy is to ban any jobs as strategists, consultants or advisers - ie where they are using their parliamentary position to further the interests of a company.
I agree with you about the pay rise. But, actually, how many of these MPs doing consultancy directorships are capable of running companies? It's not as though they give up successful business careers to go into politics. The vast majority get these extortionately remunerated sinecures simply because they are professional MPs, having had no prior business or industrial experience.

 

Yep and I would prefer it to be a straight ban or nothing. Making it traditional Tory jobs but not traditional Labour jobs is clearly game playing. The traditional route into politics for a Conservative is through business endevours whereas for the Labour party it is more often Union work, soft skills, charity and education so anything that doesn't cover both outlooks is clearly made to favour one rather than the other.

A lot of them will be capable of running a company - not all by any means - but the difficulty is creating a system where we discourage those that aren't while still keeping open the opportunities for exceptional people to make a move into politics otherwise it's pointless.

The Labour position misses that nuance and it's why it's coming across as an empty platitude when you delve any deeper than it being the politics of jealousy.

Take Sajid Javid for example - you might disagree with his politics or you might not - but he went from literally nothing to being a board member of Deutsche Bank earning £3m a year before he entered parliament. Are we really expecting him to give up all that knowledge and lifestyle to work for £80k? However, he's got exactly the background that I want from my MPs so how do we put a system in place which encourages people of that knowledge, capability and experience to do it without it looking like a ludicrous career choice?

 

It's a difficult one, remember for a lot of MP's their tenure can be not much longer than a football manager, they have to keep tabs on outside interests so they have somewhere to go when voted out...