‘Get exclusives!’ Unless you happen to be a BBC boss…

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Just a reminder of what a small world it is, a very incestuous world where Politics and the Media mix and are increasingly hard to tell apart.

 

Sue Inglish is the BBC’s  Head of Political Programmes, Analysis and Research

  • Sue Inglish has managerial and editorial responsibility for the BBC’s political programmes, and news analysis and research.
  • She is responsible for 200 staff producing political news and programmes on radio, TV and online.
  • Sue’s editorial responsibilities include content such as Question Time, the election results programmes, Today, and Yesterday In Parliament.
  • She is responsible for all output on BBC Parliament and Democracy Live.
  • Sue is a member of the News Group Board.

  • Salary and total remuneration

    Salary: £142,814
    Total remuneration: £150,614

 

She has no ‘personal interests to declare’.

 

She is married however to John Underwood who worked as a Labour Party spin doctor in the 1990’s and maintained very close working relationship with Labour throughout its period in government.

 

Sue Inglish was appointed to her current post in 2005 and in 2006 Underwood was making the headlines himself:

Professor who backed Tory hospital closure is former Labour spin doctor

Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt was last night at the centre of a row over cronyism amid fresh claims that Tory constituencies were deliberately being targeted for savage hospital cuts.

A former Labour spin doctor earned an estimated £100,000 for writing an independent report that endorsed the closure of a popular hospital in a Conservative area.

Ex-TV presenter John Underwood was once Labour’s director of communications and later became chairman of a Left-wing think-tank.

However, The Mail on Sunday can disclose he has reinvented himself as an ‘independent expert on engagement and consultation’ and calls himself Professor Underwood.

He was commissioned by Labour-appointed health chiefs in Hertfordshire to report on their plan to axe the hospital in Tory-held Hemel Hempstead with wards being moved to Watford, a Labour seat.

Ms Hewitt has already been accused of gerrymandering health cuts to avoid the axe falling in Labour heartlands. Earlier this month she was forced to publish secret ‘heat maps’ of Britain drawn up by her officials to show which areas were being targeted by closures.

According to recent research, seven out of ten new hospitals have opened in Labour areas.

 

In 2008 he was again in the headlines for underhand dealings with Labour:

‘Get exclusives!’ Unless you happen to be a BBC boss…

There’s plenty of smirking over at the BBC Politics office in Millbank, as correspondents watch their dragon-boss, Sue Inglish, squirm during the Peter Hain dodgy undeclared donors affair.

Inglish, 54 this year, is married to the old Labour spin quack John Underwood – who happens to be a mate of Hain and was his treasurer. Inglish’s husband is now in the news for setting up the controversial thinktank at the heart of Hain’s problems – a thinktank without any thoughts but which masked the identity of donors to Hain’s campaign to be deputy Labour leader…he was also once Neil Kinnock’s media chief and, under Tony Blair, chaired the New Labour think-tank Catalyst Forum.

Inglish was extremely bullish during last year’s cash-for-honours inquiry, pushing her staff to “Get out! Get exclusives!” Her department even offered its journalists an incentive of £100 to the first hack to confirm that Tony Blair was to be questioned by police.

She appears less enthusiastic about this hoo-ha being laid bare. She disappeared from the office the moment the story broke about her husband. “She wants sleaze exclusives?” spluttered a colleague. “She could give us the exclusive on this right now!”

Most galling for Inglish must have been when her own camera crews “door-stepped” her, seeking a surprise interview with her other half. No cuppas there.

 
 

 

 

 

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