It turns out that despite being paid £500,000 a year by HSBC and having been the Chair of HSBC’s audit committee Rona Fairhead has been unfairly accused of incompetence or a neglectful failure to oversee HSBC’s operations.
The BBC’s Today programme (around 06:55) for some reason found reason to doubt Rona Fairhead’s, the Chair of the BBC Trust, complicity and guilt in HSBC’s financial irregularities…despite being Chair of the audit committee…it’s all a bit unfair to blame poor old Rona.
Funny old world. Imagine if it had been an ex-chair of HSBC who had become a Tory Peer and minister? Can’t imagine the BBC whitewashing that one.
Rona Fairhead was supposedly a Conservative supporter if not a party member. She should have been on ‘our’ side against a blatantly biased BBC .
She was a non executive director of HSBC which for me means she had no decision making powers, and probably wasn’t even full time.
We know that the BBC trust has proved to be worse than useless under fatty Patten who to be honest always seemed ineffective, and an old boys club member rather than a decisive man of consequence.
Fairhead should be a natural enemy of people like Vaz, and Hodge, but she shouldn’t be a natural enemy of people like us, in fact we should have been supporting her (in as much as we could have supported Paten).
The alternative to Fairhead might well be someone much further to the left like perhaps Jack Straw ? I don’ think anyone here would support that.
For me the best outcome would be an abolition of the trust and a private sector company which actually had teeth set up to monitor and chastise the BBC. Public sector ‘watchdogs’ from all the evidence simply don’t work with chairs always keeping one eye over their shoulder to watch what the politicians want, and not one of them operates in anyone’s interest other than political expediency.
Sorry Thoughtful, I can’t agree with you on this one. The BBC Trust may well deserve abolition as a flawed experiment, but this does not excuse people of the ‘new’ establishment like Fairhead.
It used to be the case that ‘ignorance is no defence’ but that is no longer true as we see not only Rona Fairhead but many other non-exec bank board members ( as well as senior executives), who have failed in their roles, refusing to resign because they did not know of wrongdoing in their areas of responsibility or oversight. This completely undermines good corporate governance and shareholders’ interests.
If these people can award each other large salaries and bonuses for success then they should be penalised for failure. The principle cannot be operated asymmetrically.
Well I dare say you’ll be only too happy with the appointment of someone from the Claire Short school of management who has never done anything wrong, because they’ve never done anything !
Further pollution of the BBC by a hard leftist as the overseer of a hard left bias at the broadcaster.
There isn’t a director alive who can’t be criticised for something they’ve done, on that basis we can never have anyone with corporate experience overseeing the BBC.
I look forward to all the gasps of horror at the next politically correct & acceptable chair of the trust who will almost certainly not be acceptable to readers here, and I will remind people of their haste to get rid of someone who is much more appealing who was forced to resign.
Just tangentially; does anybody think that Hodge would have gone ballistic if Fairhead had been a non-executive board member at the Co-operative Bank and had failed to highlight the activities of the Rev Flowers or had been in post when the Co-op failed the BoE’s stress tests? Although Fairhead might deserve a kicking – I suspect she was “captured” by the bien pensant tendency within seconds of her appointment (if she hadn’t been captured already) – the kicker in this case is a world-class hypocrite (and BTW child abuse enabler: we should never forget that little bit of Hodge’s biography which is conveniently ignored at the BBC ).
Hodge might be right but this is a story of two bald men fighting over a comb. The BBC is (despite Rona’s “conservative” background) out of control as is evidenced here and elsewhere daily. All Hodge has done is to conflate her animus towards bankers and anyone to the right of Ralph Miliband and aimed it squarely at a convenient public face of someone ostensibly not in thrall to Hodge’s one-world fascism.
As it happens, I would be amazed were the BBC not in full agreement with Hodge. However, it finds it institutionally difficult to join the lynch-mob. This is because Rona is, essentially, one of its own. As with Patten, she represents the BBC to its audience rather than (as is the purpose of the BBC “Trust”) representing the audience/licence taxpayers vis-a-vis the BBC.
As with other selective outrages du jour, the whole Fairhead thing takes funny old world to a whole new level.
To answer your question, of course Hodge’s reaction would have been different if the target was flying other colours. It’s what she, the BBC, and too many others specialise in.
But for the life of me I can’t think what those who appointed her were thinking, and what she was thinking accepting.
To the latter, she was on about as cushy a number as it is possible to imagine, and then opts to enter the shark pool that is The Trust?
99.9% of the doo-doo the BBC is in happened well before she arrived, and yet she shouldered this for a few hundred thousand? It’s like Ed complaining his family suffers for his art. Dude, you knew what you were doing when you weaseled your way into the job, stabbing everyone around to get there. Throw the kids and suttee spouse in the fire for the career jollies fine, but don’t whinge about it.
She is also a ‘posh’ rich target at a time of austerity, so the unions and most staff were going to hate her no matter what. So what does she do?: tries to suck up with a bunch of ‘best in the world’, ‘impartial DNA’ BS that no one internally believes either, but only served to knock those cutting her some slack in the new job way offside.
The only positive, and it seems unfair to her, is all the ‘nose-severance-despite-face’ Wolfies within the bubble seem unaware their efforts to damage her simply hurt the BBC more in the eyes of a public unaware of their petty turf distinctions.
Even leftist Greenslade has-
“Fairhead has lost trust and BBC role must stop”
http://www.standard.co.uk/business/media/roy-greenslade-fairhead-has-lost-trust-and-bbc-role-must-stop-10100081.html
Blimey, is there anyone at the BBC those at the Graun don’t want to resign?
Well, other than colleagues already embedded, of course.
You’ll be fine Mr. Katz; don’t you fret.
Plenty more where you came from.
Supplementary.
“Rona Fairhead takes a press bashing the day after MPs roughed her up.”
By Roy Greenslade.
http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2015/mar/10/rona-fairhead-takes-a-press-bashing-the-day-after-mps-roughed-her-up?
Rona Fathead is the woman who as chairperson of the BBC trust is advocating the appointment of an independent watchdog.
I suppose that if the DG and the Trust can’t be trusted then they must need an extra layer of well rewarded appointees to add to the mix – but who will be watching them?
>The BBC’s Today programme (around 06:55) for some reason found reason to doubt Rona Fairhead’s, the Chair of the BBC Trust, complicity and guilt in HSBC’s financial irregularities<
I didn't hear this earlier, but have some sympathy with this view but only on a very narrow basis.
In the desire of the MPs to target blame they have overlooked one key component within the management of these huge organisations in the same way that they did with News International when that one blew up.
The component they should focus upon is the management framework that has been implemented within HSBC and the terms of reference that exist in the context of each of the committees that have been set up.
These committees exist to oversee the separation of the "doing" from the "managing". In this sense, Fairhead is being treated unfairly since she is neither involved in the day to day doing, or managing of the audit function. However, she is complicit in the sense that she is or was responsible for implementation of an adequate management framework to oversee the audit function properly. There is an important difference.
In their zeal to apportion blame, the MPs have overlooked this aspect, and it may be that since very few of them have ever run a meaningful business they don't understand this point.
There is another aspect, and that is whether this breach is actually an audit responsibility or whether it is a breach of the bank's risk management framework. Remember, it wasn't HSBC's "financial irregularities", it was the service they provide their clients that was at fault, and it is the clients who in seeking to minimise the tax they pay are not breaking any laws (the difference between avoidance and evasion).
In many respects, it might be the failure of the management framework that is to blame for this, and maybe Fairhead is complicit, but we will never know because the correct questions were never asked.
This is a very complex business and nowhere near the black and white instance that the media like to portray. It was highlighted originally some years ago as others have said, and is not restricted to HSBC. Others will be saying to themselves " by the grace of God… "
The public sector doesn’t understand responsibility and blame when it applies to them. It does of course recognise these concepts when it applies to the private sector. Indeed when there is a bit of a smell in the private sector the BBC is mobilised to find the culprits and have them hung out to dry in the court of public opinion. They fear no one and often don’t even need facts or truth, just a few scalps. But whenever there is a smell or even clear wrong doing in the public sector the good old state broadcaster goes into cover up mode, plays things down , blames the cuts etc etc. Huddersfield , McAlpine and North Staffs being excellent examples of the double standards employed.
In the Mail (two page Special Report) that Rona Fairhead had been appointed because she was a plant of ‘Common Purpose’ by Sir David Bell -the part time Chair of ‘Common Purpose’, as ‘no risk’ to the BBC ethos (i.e. left wing bent). The Mail also pointed out that her involvement at HSBC ethics gave rise to wealthy UK individuals (many presumed top BBC employees) paying minimal tax in the UK. She only works for the BBC ‘part time’ for £110,000/year which is on top of her HSBC salary of £513,000 for bank rolling high rollers in Swiss Bank accounts.
It is no coincidence that she has been asked to resign (by Patrica Hodge) when (Rona Fairhead) blamed the ‘banks customers’ for tax evasion (something that was rife in the BBC only a few years ago with ‘bingo’ payed staff and clueless celebrities on dodgy part-time contacts).
Mrs Hodge (Public accounts committee) asserted; ‘I think you knew’, .. ‘Either you colluded in tax evasion or you didn’t know. In that case your are either incredibly naive or totally incompetent’… ‘The performance you have shown here as guardian of the HSBC does not give me confidence as a (BBC) license fee-payer in your ability as a guardian of the license-fee payers’ money, and I think you should consider your position and resign’.
Rona Fairhead was also heavily involved in the HSBC drug cartel and was fined $2bn for its ties to drug dealers in the US. No wonder the BBC thinks that she would make an excellent replacement for Chris Patten who also ‘knew nothing’ where mind boggling payments went or have since disappeared ‘overseas’. No BBC ‘Panorama’ special on BBC ethics and HSBC money laundering.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2990852/As-leading-MP-tells-Rona-Fairhaed-resign-sacked-BBC-boss-neck-HSBC-scandal-worrying-links-zealot-Hacked-Off.html