The Going Rate

Panorama, what is it for?
The one about teachers being unsackable. Melanie Phillips has written about this state of affairs here.
“Just imagine the outcry ” she says “if incompetent doctors weren’t struck off but were moved to another hospital, thus exposing yet more patients to dangerous treatment.”
Or if paedopriests were shunted away to other child-rich parishes.
Oh wait. Shocking innit.
Seriously, schools might be a shambles, state education may be all over the place, the teaching profession is probably in meltdown, but Panorama certainly didn’t add anything constructive to the mix.

The number of people who declined to be interviewed outnumbered those who agreed. Panorama pressed ahead regardless, making do with the oddbods they were left with.

The presenter styles herself on the appearance, but not the intellect, of Vanessa Feltz. The camera lingered on her expression while she cocked her head from side to side attentively whilst yet another shocking revelation was revalated.

Chris Woodhead suffers from motor neurone disease and is now in wheelchair. Pity he couldn’t have given Samantha wassaname and Jeremy Vine the day off and produced and presented the whole programme himself.

Now to Today. Charles Moore has decided, now that Jonathan Ross has gone, to pay his licence fee. “In the old days,” someone said, “icons like Sir Robin Day were paid a pittance, and they didn’t complain.” “They didn’t have all the competition from ITV then” said someone else. “It’s the talent. If you want talent, you have to pay the going rate.” It seems that the BBC does pay some of its employees rather handsomely. But where oh where is the talent?

Channel Hopper

Now to an important subject. Christine Bleakley. Off to ITV. Good old BBC, making out that she was dithering, and they had to ‘let her go’ in a new-found frugality policy over wages for celebs and that.

Looks much better than if she’d simply ditched them for all that lolly, and they’ve got the added bonus that they can use her departure as ‘exhibit one’ in the ‘Market Forces Argument’.

You know, the one they use to justify forking out unbelievable sums for all those other overpaid talents, most of whom haven’t even got nearly such toned upper arms.