H/T Pounce……
HSBC hearing – Summary
It is not that unusual to see a public figure subject to withering scorn by MPs on a select committee – it is one of the few unadulterated pleasures that parliament offers – but, still, this was astonishing. We’re used to see Keith Vax duff up some hapless copper, or a second-rate council chief. But chair of the BBC Trust is one of the triple-A jobs in the British establishment. To hear someone that senior be told to her face by a select committee chair that she should be sacked is remarkable.
- Margaret Hodge told Rona Fairhead that her peformance as an HSBC director meant she was no longer fit to lead the BBC Trust. She told her:
I don’t think that the record that you have shown in your performance here as a guardian of HSBC gives me the confidence that you should be the guardian of the BBC licence fee payers’ money. I reallly do think that you should consider your position and you should think about resigning and if not, I think the government should sack you.
Can’t see how Rona Fairhead can survive this…especially after all the flak the BBC sent towards the Tories for giving HSBC boss, Stephen Green, a peerage and a job…..the whole intent of the BBC’s ‘HSBC tax evasion’ story wasn’t to tackle HSBC itself but to take down the Tories….and yet they are ‘guilty’ of exactly the same sin…more so in fact as Fairhead is still employed by HSBC earning megabucks.
I see the BBC Trust have leaped to her defence, using licence fee money of course.
If the same standards were applied to the BBC senior management, then all of them would have to resign !
The next time the hypocritical, faux anti-capitalist Beeboids criticise bankers,
they need to be reminded of their own business and political interlocking:-
HSBC- Rona FAIRHEAD-BBC Trust.
“HSBC accused of incompetence by MPs in tax scandal”
(Of course, Beeboid boss, Ms Fairhead is kept off Beeboids’ own headlines.)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-31799405
Of course, Fairhead should be sacked NOW.
Of course, ‘the BBC Trust’ should be abolished NOW.
Of course, the BBC licence fee should be stopped, NOW.
“BBC Trust boss Rona Fairhead faces call to quit for being ‘naive or incompetent’ about tax evasion when on HSBC board.
“Public Accounts Committee chairman Margaret Hodge urges resignation.
“Says MPs cannot have confidence in Fairhead to run BBC watchdog.
“Fairhead says she had been ‘unyielding’ about any wrongdoing at bank.”
By TOM MCTAGUE,
DEPUTY POLITICAL EDITOR
FOR MAILONLINE.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2986749/BBC-Trust-boss-Rona-Fairhead-faces-call-quit-naive-incompetent-tax-evasion-HSBC-board.html#ixzz3TvFVpDIz
“Rona Fairhead should lose BBC job over HSBC role, says influential MP.
“Margaret Hodge, chair of the public accounts committee, says Fairhead should either resign as BBC Trust chair or the government should sack her.”
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/mar/09/rona-fairhead-should-lose-bbc-job-over-hsbc-role-says-influential-mp?
“‘Totally Incompetent’ BBC Chair Told To Resign.
“The chief of a parliamentary financial watchdog tells Rona Fairhead if she does not quit her job she should be sacked.”
http://news.sky.com/story/1441644/totally-incompetent-bbc-chair-told-to-resign
And then, of course there’s this, as D.G. Tony HALL knows-:-
“Fury at £36k bill to find new BBC Trust chairman as taxpayers’ cash is handed to headhunting firm that employs Director-General Tony Hall’s wife.
“Headhunting firm used to find the new BBC Trust chairman
Saxton Bampfylde, which employs the Director-General’s wife, was paid £36k.
“The bill represents just under a third of the new chairman’s salary
MP Philip Davies brands the fee a ‘ridiculous waste of money.’ ”
By GLEN OWEN and MILES GOSLETT
FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2754930/Fury-36k-new-Trust-chairman-headhunting-firm-employs-Director-General-Tony-Hall-s-wife.html#ixzz3TvJ8mLro
And when it comes to tax evasion, what about the Jeremy Vine story..
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2983593/Jeremy-Vine-daughter-10-shareholder-lower-tax-bill.html
How can anyone at the BBC criticise anyone else over their tax arrangements, especially on grounds of morality.
Will Vine ever again be able to feature tax avoidance on his show?
It will be a good test of BBC brass neck.
So let’s say I know nothing about the story at hand and garner all my news from the bBC what would I be thinking about poor Rona Fairhead regards her former employer:
HSBC accused of incompetence by MPs in tax scandal
HSBC executives have been accused by MPs of incompetence for saying they were unaware of tax evasion activities in their Swiss private bank. Chris Meares, the ex-head of HSBC’s private banking division, said he didn’t know what staff “were up to”
Ah a former employee is brought out by the bbC in which to lay a very subtle smokescreen for the anti banking (read HSBC) ideology of the left , which allows them to introduce the head of the bBC trust as having cut her links with HSBC. I quote:
“Ms Hodge also called for ex-HSBC risk chair Rona Fairhead to quit the BBC. Ms Fairhead took over as chair of the BBC Trust last year, but before that she was chair of HSBC’s audit committee until 2010 and subsequently led the bank’s risk committee.
Good job I don’t get my news from the bbc (And I spent £145 last week for that luxury) which is why I know this:
Fairhead has been a non-executive director of HSBC since 2004.. She earns £513,000 a year for her HSBC role, significantly more than the £110,000 paid for her work at the BBC Trust, of which she became chair in September last year
I wonder why the bBC doesn’t mention that leader of its trust is also a director of HSBC (You know, that banking firm the left hate with a vengeance) which pays her almost 4 times as much as they do for working for them.
Now what’s the name of this Blog????
I notice BBC News are not showing the withering putdown of Fairhead by Margaret Hodge, in contrast to Sky.
Having said that, I don’t know how Hodge dare criticise anyone in public life. This is the person who did an appalling job whilst in charge of Islington social services – another Labour politician ignoring child abuse. She is not fit for public office. I’m surprised Fairhead didn’t fireback with both barrels and tell her where to go.
Keith Vaz is another Labour MP with no right to take the moral high ground on any topic, yet he is always on our screens criticising others.
What awful MPs we have.
Classic nature of the leftwing , scream, shout, wave hands in which to direct unwanted attention away from your own failings. Muslims are getting pretty good at it as well: Islamophobia, racism, EDL,UKIP. Israel , empire and beautiful boys who just happen to cut off peoples heads because they were asked a few questions after getting kicked out of Africa for being…drunk.
Stemcor, – anybody?????????????????
I’m surprised Fairhead didn’t fireback with both barrels and tell her where to go.
Probably because Hodge is so litigious, and there’s the other issue of contempt, which is why people don’t generally answer back.
Whatever one thinks about ‘Hodge the Dodge’, she certainly gladdened the hearts of millions today with some real truths at last – see some quotes from the evidence:
Margaret Hodge got this one spot on!
Hodge Quotes:
“If you look at the data [the leaked HSBC files] here … I just can’t believe Chris Meares or Rona Fairhead … If you look at the data, a third of the data is stuff that is entered by the customer relations managers about the individuals.
There are pages of this, absolutely pages, of total collusion by the bank, in your name, in tax evasion …
This is your guys saying to you: “I contacted this guy by phone saying unless he changed his situation he would be subject to UK tax.”
Next one. “This client has been informed several times on ESD” – that’s the European directive – “even by being visited in London”. So the idea, Mr Gulliver, that this was contained in Switzerland is a nonsense …
Either you were incompetent, completely and utterly incompetent in your oversight, or you knew about it. This is tax avoidance on an industrial scale. A third of the entries on the data we have seen – the data from [the whistleblower Herve Falciani], we haven’t seen the rest – is written up by your officials. And there are endless visits to Britain to sign credit card forms, to endless things. I don’t believe you didn’t know.How can someone blatantly working at HSBC and understanding exactly what Swiss Bank accounts are generally about ….with the tax avoiding records of HSBC
In the public sector, if things go wrong on your watch, whether or not you were individually involved, you accept responsibility and resign. Neither of you, nobody in the bank, either at this hearing or at the hearing at the Treasury select committee, has deigned to accept responsibility for what was a massive, massive, illegal, terrible tax evasion.”
“In the public sector, if things go wrong on your watch, whether or not you were individually involved, you accept responsibility and resign. ”
ROLF, laughable falsehood. Wake Up! Problem is, both private and public sector top echelon surround themselves with clapping seals, so neither of them have any sense of where they stepped out of the moral compass.
Funny that , how when the left are up in arms over something they scream and shout demanding that the target of their anger must resign.. Yet when the target is a fellow lefty , why its silence is golden and if they do have to go, then it’s with a very well packed servrence package.
You only need look at the record of Lin Homer who has gone from department to department in the civil service leaving chaos & crisis in her wake. She must have been involved as head of department in at least 5 crisis she has directly caused, and now she’s involved in another at HMRC.
Doesn’t Margaret Hodge know this? She must either be completely and utterly incompetent in her oversight or have known about it. Perhaps she might now be expected to resign?
So why didn’t Labour do anything about this when they were in power?
This was wrongdoing in 2006, that the FT reported in 2008, the files were provided by the French in 2010, before the election, the terms of the release of that information (i.e. that it could not be used for prosecutions) were agreed by a Labour government. One person not in the grandstanding Hodge’s firing line, who has questions to answer, I note, is the Minister responsible, Ed Balls.
The BBC have been happy to report Fairhead’s discomfort; the inside track though according to reports is that as an outsider, she is not approved of in BBC Towers, or by other members (BBC insiders) of the Trust.
Mark my words, Fairhead is being targeted here. She is collateral.
And before you get all warm and cuddly with Hodge the Dodge, remember the old adage; Your enemy’s (the BBC and the Trust) enemy (Hodge), is not your friend.
BTW: Take a look at the astonishing interview that hard leftie, Jon Snow did with Hodge this evening. Their synchronised handwringing and mutual support for each other positions on HSBC was the like I have never seen before. As an interview it was a travesty and was without integrity.
Now if Snow had asked Hodge serious questions about her conduct, her apparent hypocrisy and her one eyed, partially-sighted stich up, the ‘chat’ might have been more worthwhile.
“In the public sector, if things go wrong on your watch, whether or not you were individually involved, you accept responsibility and resign. ”
Sorry but that is a totally laughable statement. The public sector and accountability just don’t mix. How many CEO’s of local authorities, heads of children s services, hospital managers, chief constables etc accept responsibility without either being pushed or paid off and then they are usually taken back on elsewhere.
‘that is a totally laughable statement’
And yet it is one they do persist in telling often enough.
It is possible some may yet believe it, but any who have avoided a full lobotomy may have reason to doubt it.
As regards Rona Fairhead and investigations into the BBC. The BBC Trust Editorial Standards Committee Secretary, the twit, Bruce Vander, can be followed on Twitter: https://twitter.com/BruceVander
Really? If so, very much a ‘views my own’ kind of person to be in a position of responsibility…
@guardian She should go because she is a #Tory stooge who has been asked to destabilise the organisation #theenemywithin
Clearly the personal politics have been left at the door there.
That’s quite a timeline there.
Glad I page captured a few choice tweets.
It’s an unusual name, and google does tie it to the role in question. And in amongst the football and politics there are indeed posts about trust issues, but… golly.
If they are one in the same, a lot about BBC complaints handling is explained. Not excused, but certainly explained.
Wonder if Hugs & Mary will be having a word?
It must be a spoof, or coincidence.
Surely no BBC employee would tweet this, even in a personal capacity, if part of the complaints system?:
#BBC what’s all this coverage re. Churchill’s death….nothing else to fill the schedule? Or desperate to appease Tory critics?
This high profile and emotional linkage of the licence fee to Ms Fairhead’s custodianship of it is interesting.
Is it;
1) merely to emphasise Hodge’s attack or
2) to underscore the importance of this licence fee to the British public at a a time whenit is under (mock) scrutiny ?
Interesting that since Scameron became PM that Marxists like Ms Hodge still dominate everything!
Rona must be ever so grateful that the BBC’s problems with Clarkson have all but removed her presence from today’s papers.
It seems that the Clarkson “fracas” took place over a week ago, he’s alleged “to have attempted to punch” a BBC assistant producer (i.e. no contact was actually made), and the BBC claims that no-one bothered to report it to them until Monday 9 March, the very same day that Rona was humiliated by Hodge. Is it only me that smells something not quite right?