Your name has gone on ze list…

[nmfnp1977]

And this is all a pretty transparent Tory scheme to harm the BBC. I don't really want to indulge it.

Indeed. I'm sure the pension age rise news coming today is just a coincidence...

[E10 Rifle]

As with football salaries, there seems to be an oddly fine line between arguing for the rights of the workers and arguing for the rights of rich people to use the benefits of a free market to impoverish others.

If someone who makes the tea is having pennies stolen off of them to pad someone else's pay packet, does it matter morally whether that person is a head of strategic development or an anchorman?

Which is why you should give institutional pay ratios a go, say of 10:1 between highest and lowest paid or even lower.

[johnr]

Which is why you should give institutional pay ratios a go, say of 10:1 between highest and lowest paid or even lower.

Like this.

[Jah Womble]

Hate to go all Daily Mail on yo' ass, but they're all getting paid far far too much, as are most media folk. To pick just one example, how is Gary Lineker paid that much to ask obvious questions of guests, and make bad puns? Seriously, I could do at least as good a job. People will watch MOTD regardless of who presents it, which is why this is all so depressing. Norton, Evans, and a few others - much as I don't like them - at least seem to have some discernible attraction/skill.

Yes, many of them - including Lineker - are paid too much, but, no, you couldn't do at least as good a job as him. This is neither a big-up to Lineker, nor a slight to you.

I don't think he's the best by any means, but he has hunkered himself into a post-Des Lynam-type role relatively smoothly. And he has the added advantage of having played the game at the highest level.

But £1.7m? Nah, Gawd bless yer.

[pebblethefish]

The man can chuckle at Alan Shearer. Deserves every penny.

[johnr]

I don't take it as a slight, Jah, but I disagree. I chose Lineker because I cannot see what he does that is in any way worthwhile; he just asks banal, obvious questions, and takes part in dreary banter. I can 'present' things - I've chaired plenty a meeting and public event - and would need just a bit of training in receiving info via earpiece; and not having played the game would only matter if Lineker used it to offer any real insight, which he doesn't particularly. Logan, for example, can present as well as he does.

Anyway, it's probably unlikely to happen...

[Snake Plissken]

Kuenssberg gets her pay topped up by CCHQ anyway.

[Jah Womble]

I don't take it as a slight, Jah, but I disagree. I chose Lineker because I cannot see what he does that is in any way worthwhile; he just asks banal, obvious questions, and takes part in dreary banter. I can 'present' things - I've chaired plenty a meeting and public event - and would need just a bit of training in receiving info via earpiece; and not having played the game would only matter if Lineker used it to offer any real insight, which he doesn't particularly. Logan, for example, can present as well as he does.

Anyway, it's probably unlikely to happen...

It really isn't the same kind of pressure, to be fair - you might well be good at it eventually, but it only looks 'easy' from the sofa.

As I said, Lineker's not the best by any means, but he presents smoothly and is a recognised face. (As a player, he was always 'Mr Nice Guy' and a household name, which gives him a massive advantage over the majority of ex-players now in TV positions who will be known only to followers of the game: GL could arguably be slotted in anywhere.) Your irritation at his style is only your opinion - millions seem to like him, which will keep him in BBC buttons probably for another twenty years at least...

[Southport Zeb]

Steve Wright's also in the "how much?!?" category.

I assumed the only reason he was still on the radio was that he was paying the BBC, given that you could find five more competent broadcasters in the average five a side team.

[WOM]

It's funny how this works. Here, they publish the Sunshine List of public employees' salaries. So, for no apparent reason, your friends and relatives can learn what you earn and people who don't know you can decide you get paid too much. Meanwhile, 'we' say that teacher and nurses and whatnot, who do good things, should earn a good living. That is until we find out what exactly a good living means in dollars.

[Jah Womble]

You might have inadvertently hit upon something there.

Perhaps there should be a 'pay list' for all those working in public-sector jobs - then it might finally become transparent to this selfish f***ing government just how badly paid our most essential workers are.

Little bit of politics, very nice.

[Duncan Gardner]

Nolan's wedge is down to, variously

a) workaholism. He's on Radio Ulster four days a week, 5 Live the other three nights, plus 20 TV shows a year. According to my cousin Tina (local business and entertainment freelance who appears on his Belfast shows), he'll be flitting to the US shock-jock circuit once his Ma and occasional sidekick wee Audrey realises he's gay

b) the long term structure of media in NI (combination of small place and big story- political violence). So, there is a disproportionate number of experienced current affairs hacks, compared with say Lancashire or Hampshire

c) he can claim some personal success in finding stories that embarrass local politicians (eg Cash for Ash), even if that's largely down to the haplessness of the latter. But as his schtick is basically shouting 'It's all about ME' at phone-in callers, the DUP and SF just send on guys who've had basic training in how to speak through him with a bit of jargon...

Nolan justifies himself. Badly- answer to almost every question was "BBC as employer won't allow me to say". I imagine this will bring forward his flit to Los Angeles.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05961vp

One small example- Nolan wouldn't tell Allister where exactly in that £400- 450,000 range his salary fell last year. But Andy Marr did yesterday, to the nearest pound...

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

Nolan also seems to be in the group of broadcasters who are being paid through their own production companies as well as directly by the BBC, so his wedge is more than the £450,000 upper end of that bracket.

[Duncan Gardner]

True. He deadbatted that and all

Allister suggested that when you add fees to the production company, national insurance contribs etc. Nolan actually costs at least a million a year. Our hero gurned that it was "commercially sensitive", then started ranting about how he comes from Ballygomartin (a dreary hilltop suburban estate) and that he'd taken the trouble to drive up to Coleraine for the interview. You won't catch Lineker or Shearer doing that, although to be fair David Moyes comes to the Milk Cup every summer. His mother is from the town.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

I've haven't got much of an opinion about him tbh, despite bringing him up twice in this thread - he's just always there as a recurring mild irritant on Five Live when I'm driving back from somewhere late on a weekend and have ran out of podcasts. Though I did hear him say once that he'd never been to Windsor Park for an international, which seemed a bit strange for such a high profile media figure.

[pebblethefish]

I was most surprised by the number of Radio DJs on the list. Obviously if it was Agnew, Blofeld, Boycott, then they deserve several million each, but does filling in the gaps between songs with blandness really earn you that much? I never listen to the radio (sport aside), so I may be wrong, but does it really matter who the DJ is?

[Duncan Gardner]

@Walt: the small pool- big story combo that I mentioned also coincided with the start of 5Live and similar 'radio bloke' stations. As a result you got a 'Belfast mafia'- Colin Murray, Christine Bleakley, Alan Green etc. I can understand the irritation

He was never into football until we qualified. The last time he was in primary school to be fair.

[Lucy Waterman]

I was most surprised by the number of Radio DJs on the list. Obviously if it was Agnew, Blofeld, Boycott, then they deserve several million each, but does filling in the gaps between songs with blandness really earn you that much? I never listen to the radio (sport aside), so I may be wrong, but does it really matter who the DJ is?

I suppose they broadcast for a lot of hours. Gary Lineker does an hour a week. Wright and Evans do three a day, every weekday.

[Satchmo Distel]

Lauren Laverne earns more than Mark Radcliffe but it's possible that Radcliffe and Maconie get paid via the company that makes their show. Radcliffe admits he is lucky to be paid for talking between records. They seem to have generous clauses for weeks off, when Maconie writes his books of variable quality that always read like rush jobs, painting the north with his own brand of nostalgia in a way that strikes me as rather defensive and ultimately patronizing.

But as with Lineker, the strength of Radcliffe and Maconie is that they make it sound easy to just play records, when in fact they are having to keep up to date with artists who are 30 or so years younger can them, and express enthusiasm for records that are on a playlist they do not choose.

[Patrick Thistle]

Jeremy Vine has regularly done a "bit" taking the piss out of public sector jobs he thinks are "non-jobs" so he deserves all the shit (and bricks) he gets thrown at him for his £700,000 salary. Because his pay comes off the tax payers as much as any £18K outreach worker trying to make life more bearable for a minority or vulnerable people group.

Fucking hypocritical wanker.

[Jah Womble]

What public-sector jobs does he think are 'non-jobs'?

[Patrick Thistle]

The one i remember was a health outreach worker to support the transgender community. But he used to read out job descriptions/ adverts and snidely mock them as a regular feature.