BBC hypocrisy

There was a segment including interviews on yesterday's Radio 4 Today programme about the huge discrepancy between the total benefit package of FTSE 100 Company directors and the average pay of their staff, a factor of 67 was quoted by the Fabian Society report. The presenter was pushing the this is quite disgusting angle, and it set me thinking that John Humphries and James "If we win the election" Naughtie are quite highly paid so I wonder how much more than the BBC average they are paid. I raised this as a query at Biased-BBC and waited...

"Arthur Dent" has come to my assistance with some figures, apparently the BBC Accounts for 2005/6 show a total staff number of 25,377 and a salary cost (not including other costs such as pensions) of approx £1,373,600,000. This gives £39,000 as the simple arithmetic mean average wage. In fact the median will be much lower because of the inclusion of some of the very high salaries at the top (Mr Ross's £18,000,000 will raise the mean by over £700 by itself). The median is probably nearer to £25,000 and that the lowest salary in the BBC is nearer to £15,000.

Jeremy Paxman is reputed to earn £1,000,000 which, if true, gives him a multiplier of 67 when compared with the lowest earning BBC staff. I wonder what John Humphries and James Naughtie do earn.

This isn't just hypocrisy it's funded by the licence fee payer hypocrisy.