Nice to see that austerity has not quite reached the shores of the BBC;
“BBC fatcats have splashed out thousands of pounds of licence-payers’ cash on nearly 100 leaving parties at exclusive restaurants and bars.
Staff, including many top executives, spent £70,000 on alcohol and lavish parties despite a pledge to cut more than 20 per cent off the corporation’s entire budget.
The figure includes £20,403 on staff leaving parties at top London venues.
On top of that, executives blew £48,000 last year on beer, wine and spirits at award ceremonies, parties and power lunches, which amounts to a weekly alcohol bill of nearly £1,000. Information released by the BBC shows that on one occasion, £581 was spent on a party for only 17 people at the swanky Paradise gastro-pub in Notting Hill, London.
BBC bosses also sanctioned £600 on a leaving do at The Clarendon in Holland Park and another £600 at Iskele, an exclusive Turkish restaurant in central London. Another £595 was spent on a night out at the Stinging Nettle pub near TV Centre in London’s White City and executives splashed out £550 at LVPO, a fashionable cocktail bar in Soho.”
Those parties sound nothing like as lavish as what the the BBC used to spend.
Yes, the Express gave this story its front-page headline yesterday. But it really is chicken-feed, a bit like Parkinson’s Law of Triviality. Wasting time on a small issue rather than tackling the big issues. For instance – who needs BBC3 or BBC4 – now THERE’s some real huge waste of our money.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law_of_Triviality
Bastards. I have wined and dined a few BBC folk in my time and I have always, without exception, paid.
Mind you, I have usually been able to claim the money back on expenses.
Accountability?
Some BBC insider with access needs to copy these Expense Claims (as with MPs) sell to a newspaper who will publish them unredacted. (Wot no Wikileaks eh?) Suspend the BBC Authorising Officer of each claim for missuse of license payers money, and require all claimants to repay the sums claimed from their own pocket. List attendees – they might want a retrospective whip-round to help them out.
Same rules as the rest of us have to live by. Or are BBC staff, unlike MPs thought they were, untouchable?
I was a Civil Servant for many years and attended scores of leaving dos. Not one was paid by the taxpayer, we were always aware that we had to pay for all of our own entertainment with no expenses claims (except on courses, and even they were limited and monitored).
Now as far as the BBC goes, these wastrels, who nearly all “earn” (I mean get paid) much more than I ever did, have no compunction in spending our money on themselves. They should not receive a penny for these functions, after all they are really Civil Servants just as I was and should be subject to the same scrutiny.
And the BBC-NUJ justification for being permanently spendthrift with licencepayers money is…?
At MediaCity in Salford a new Booth’s supermarket has opened.
Booth’s is a Waitrose style store, if not even posher, and only has shops in the most well-heeled locations.
It has never had a store in an inner city zone before, preferring genteel towns like Knutsford, Ilkley and Keswick.
But the Booth’s bosses obviously know that the BBC’s arrival at Salford Docks means lots of affluent, high spending public sector types – the same ones who moan about hard times at the BBC and go on strike about their superb pensions.
And the Mailbox site of the BBC in Birmingham is to close sending many to Bristol.
Interesting that Wairose set up site near the Mailbox when the BBC moved in.
Also My friend on the inside reckons the BBC will get an EU grant for the site in Bristol to be upgraded.
Only heresay so far but bear it in mind for the future.
These sound suspiciously like taxable benefits. I do hope HMRC don’t want to have a snoop.
Don’t worry, BBCC’s 5,000-strong compliance team will have been all over this like a cheap suit.
Roland,
I wouldn’t hold your breath. HMRC probably use our money to pay for their top peoples’ leaving parties !