Biased BBC contributor Alan takes issue with Victoria Derbyshire here.
“Victoria Derbyshire confirmed every prejudice I ever held against her today as she presented a phone in on unemployment. Derbyshire lives in the BBC bubble completely out of touch with reality continually expressing either amazement or outrage at everyday realities that most people recognise as ‘normal’.
She of course is flown to work by her employers, and no doubt gets a couple of hundred thousand pounds for her trouble…when she turns up for work that is….and all paid for by the enforced generosity of the viewing public.
When told by an employer that people that applied for jobs either didn’t turn up for the interview or when they did they didn’t really want the job she firstly blamed him for not selecting the right people or wording his adverts wrongly….and these were jobs for a van driver and leaflet posters…but then went on to rant about him not paying them enough (although she didn’t actually know how much he pays).
Derbyshire in full flow (about 1 hour 17 mins into show)…’Well if you paid them a decent wedge they would do it (leafletting)…it’s got to be the most boring job in the world, it’s got to be difficult when it’s pouring down or when it’s freezing…but if you get a good hourly rate surely people would carry on after day one!?’
The employer said they wouldn’t.
Derbyshire then decides perhaps it would be good to do some journalism and to ask him what that hourly rate was…he said £7-8 /hour….working about 5 hours a day.
Derbyshire nearly faints at the thought declaiming in shocked tones….’£40 for 5 hours work?….would you do it?’
What planet is Derbyshire on?…this woman prides herself on being the nation’s conscience, it’s social and moral arbiter…a woman who presents these programmes day in day out looking into the heart of social issues of ‘deprived Britain’.
And yet she has no idea of what a normal working man might earn.
Leafletting/driving…..manual, unskilled labour…but paying up to £8/hour.
Let’s have a comparison taken from official figures……what might some other workers….many of them skilled, earn (all based on 8 hour day)?
L/Cpl Army…..Initial rate £7.50/hr
Emergency Care assistant in ambulance service…..£6.50/hr
Ambulance technician….£7.50/hr
2nd Lt in Army on lowest level….£7.50/hr
Fireman before fully trained to \’competent\’ level….£7.50/hr
(http://www.ome.uk.com/AFPRB_Reports.aspx)
My postman earns £7/hr….and out in the\’pouring rain and freezing weather’.
These are nearly all jobs that require a good level of training and yet they pay no more than the leafletting job that Derbyshire expresses her shock about. How on earth can this person really put herself forward as a serious journalist if all she really relies on is her own personal prejudices and half baked beliefs to inform her inane witterings.
And it might be noted with great rolling of eyes that it was her ‘investigation’ into the recent riots that was used as part of the evidence into the causes of them….no wonder the conclusions that were reached were so far from the truth. Is it any wonder that the BBC sets itself against every policy that the government has when it has such unrealistic ideas about the real world and the lives people really live.
These presenters cushioned from the harsh realities of life, living it up on license payer’s money…the dustman’s, postman’s, nurse’s and leafletter’s on £7.50/hr…..have a naive and simplistic view of life little realising that real people have to work hard for what little they earn and that the relevant word is ‘earn’ not sitting there waiting for handouts or wandering into a nice warm studio to do a couple of hours chatting and then fly down to your well appointed London home.
Nice work if you can get it.
Oh and to Dan Cruikshank (who I like a lot), fish and chips may be nourishing, tasty and cheap but I don\t think they ‘more importantly represent the fusion of cultures….a fusion of the Jewish emigre culture of East London and the working class Communities of the North.’
