BBC Executive Greed

To be fair to the BBC, they have at least published the salary figures of their highest-earners, although presumably such a gesture is more borne out under duress and obligation than by any noble duty to the rest of us hoi polloi. So here folks is a snapshot of where some of your hard-earned Licence Fee gets re-distributed to. This list of greedy bastards is but the tip of the iceberg. The disproportionate and obscene amounts recorded here still don’t compare with the outrageous and disgusting amounts creamed off the BBC by their plethora of ‘presenters’ and assorted broadcasters, celebs, and ‘stars’. Is it any wonder that I no longer partake of the television licence? You won’t find me funding the lives of these mega-rich, selfish swine. Perhaps you the reader should consider doing likewise. It’s only by boycotting your television licence payments, akin to the Poll Tax revolt of 1990, that the BBC will take any heed of public disquiet. Unfortunately in modern Britain, the public have been cowed into submission and are about as likely to protest for a fair redistribution of public funds as a docile sheep. Baaaahhhh to the silly populace. Perhaps the BBC and their foolish feepayers deserve each other. xo
Here follows the hall of shame for the following greedy money-hoarders:
Natasha Adams; HR Director, Digital and Strategy: £137,800
Tony Ageh; Controller, Archive Development: £185,560
Shane Allen; Controller, Comedy Commissioning, Television: £207,000
Philip Almond; Director, Marketing and Audiences: £210,000
Jenny Baxter; Former Controller of Production, News: £130,212
Isabel Begg; Head of Commercial and Business Development: £136,000
Zai Bennett; Controller of BBC Three: £219,900
Philip Bernie; Head of TV Sport: £161,200
Nick Betts; Controller of Business, Drama, Films and Acquisitions: £217,800
Anne Bulford; Managing Director, Finance and Operations: £395,000
Richard Burdon; Human Resources Director, Corporate: £144,100
Karl Burnett; Human Resources Director, News Group and Radio: £128,900
Colin Burns; Executive Creative Director, Future Media: £175,000
Shirley Cameron; Finance and Business Director, Radio: £130,212
Kieran Clifton; Controller, Strategy, Future Media: £135,450
Andy Conroy; Chief Operating Officer of BBC Future Media/BBC Online: £159,300
Ben Cooper; Controller of Radio One and 1Xtra: £169,400
Richard Dawkins; Controller, Strategy, News and Radio: £145,665
Leighton Davies; Director, Finance Centre of Excellence: £150,490
Claire Dresser; Chief Adviser: £114,233
Phil Fearnley; General Manager, News and Knowledge; £199,700
Tessa Finch; Head of Development, Television Productions: £161,350
Mike Ford; Director of Risk and Assurance: £160,815
Mark Freeland; Head of Comedy: £234,800
Joe Godwin; Director, Children’s: £169,400
Jim Gray; Head of TV Current Affairs/Deputy Head of News Programmes: £155,000
James Harding; Director of News and Current Affairs: £340,000
James Hardy; Head of Communications, News Group: £105,800
Cassian Harrison; Editor of BBC Four: £160,000
Mark Harrison; Controller of Production, BBC North: £161,648
Kate Harwood; Head of Drama, England: £209,800
Ian Haythornthwaite; Director of Finance: £170,966
Polly Hill; Head of Independent Drama: £179,800
Susan Hogg; Executive Producer, Television: £185,085
Tamara Howe; Controller of Business, Comedy & Entertainment: £187,800
Ian Hughes; Finance Director, News: £128,172
Natalie Humphreys; Controller, Factual Production, Television: £210,000
Sarah Jones; Group General Counsel, Operations: £227,800
Damian Kavanagh; Controller of BBC Daytime: £194,000
Christine Langan; Head of BBC Films: £176,500
Roger Leatham; Controller of Rights, Legal and Business Affairs: £160,000
Ken Lee; Human Resources Director, BBC North: £146,200
Charlotte Moore; Controller of BBC One: £244,800
John Moran; Former Head of Commercial and Business Development: £134,799
Paul Mylrea; Former Director of Public Affairs: £170,000
Sanjay Nazerali; Former Director of Marketing and Audiences, News: £163,340
Lisa Opie; Controller of Business, Knowledge and Daytime: £207,800
Nick Patten; Former Head of In-house Features, Television: £156,300
Richard Payne; Head of Finance Service Delivery: £170,659
Clare Pizey; Head of Factual Entertainment: £149,800
Gautam Rangarajan; Director of Strategy: £162,800
Ralph Rivera; Director, Future Media: £309,000
Nicki Sheard; Former Director of Marketing and Audiences, Radio: £132,801
John Shield; Director, Communications: £144,000
Kim Shillinglaw; Controller of BBC Two and BBC Four: £160,240
Rhodri Talfan Davies; Director, BBC Cymru Wales: £167,800
Katie Taylor; UK Controller of Entertainment Production: £187,800
Ceri Thomas; Head of News Programmes: £166,448
Emmet Townsend; Systems Development Director: £175,000
Charlie Villar; Director of Corporate Finance: £186,500
Cary Wakefield; Director, Marketing and Audiences, Television: £186,800
Jonathan Wall; Controller of Radio 5 live and 5 live sports extra: £142,800
Jane Weedon; Former Director, Business Development: £129,000
Gwyneth Williams; Controller of Radio 4 and Radio 4 Extra: £191,418
Emma Willis; Head of Commissioning, Documentaries: £150,878
Pat Younge; Former Chief Creative Officer: £255,800
The following can be located among the list at http://aftu.blog.com/greedy-bastards/
Lucy Adams
Helen Boaden
Jessica Cecil
Danny Cohen
Dominic Coles
Rachel Currie
Clare Dyer
Graham Ellis
Mark Friend
Paul Greeves
William Greswell
Andy Griffee
Janice Hadlow
Tony Hall
Mary Hockaday
David Holdsworth
Peter Horrocks
Sue Inglish
Peter Johnston
David Jordan
Richard Klein
Mark Linsey
John Linwood
Ken MacQuarrie
Anne Morrison
Roger Mosey
Derek O’Gara
Zarin Patel
Matthew Postgate
James Purnell
Liz Rylatt
Peter Salmon
Bal Samra
Bob Shennan
Barbara Slater
Paul Smith
Ben Stephenson
Emma Swain
John Tate
Beverley Tew
John Turner
Francesca Unsworth
Adrian Van Klaveren
Alice Webb
Roger Wright
Alan Yentob
[These lists were compiled by the anti-fascist commentator Gary Watton; See also http://gw930.blog.com]

Losing My Religion

It would be more apt to state that my faith [what's left of it] is hanging by a thread. Everything has been going wrong for far too long now. I'm on an almighty [or should that be Almighty] losing streak. I actually have nothing left to live for, so it is becoming increasingly difficult to be motivated. It seems that everything that I touch turns to shit. To quote one of many examples, my Blackberry broke down in November. After a labyrinth of attempted repairs and time-wasting and money-wasting, I had little choice but to buy a replacement 'phone. I chose a Nokia Lumia 520 [reduced from £160 to £80]. Well, I can scarcely afford to be making such luxury purchases. [Some people probably consider this a cheap acquisition, but that's where they are financially that they can think along such condescending terms.] Well, this not very clever, smart 'phone was bought at the end of January and by the end of March it has broken down, a bit like its owner. I've paid eighty pounds for two months' use. This scenario, for me, is the norm rather than the exception. I had to write my last car off for scrap and am still tramping about the streets of my smalltown, hometown on both feet. Tis good for my improving fitness and athleticism, yep, but definitely not a good step [excuse the pun] to wards any remaining street credibility. To live in the smallville of Cold Rain and not possess a car is akin to pauper status. It further undermines any pretension or delusion about presenting myself as 'the catch of the century'.
Anyhow, I digress. I have had it up to here [here being the top of me bonnet] with the big Fella above. He has been a monumental disappointment to me, and God knows [He probably does] that I've been equally a monumental disappointment to Him! Well the difference is explained thus. Whereas I am led to believe that 'God smiles when He thinks of you', well I certainly don't smile when I think of Him. Actually I frown, big style. His followers amongst the doo-lally, happy clappy, middle-class churchgoers only serve to undermine my evaporating faith further. Some like to harp on [or cling to] the notion, sourced from the Book of Jeremiah, that God has big plans for us, plans to do us good, and not to do us harm. Well, this is not a blueprint for a positive outcome to everyone's existence, be they believers or non-believers. Ya see, this is an ideal, an aspiration. The notion that this is a concrete promise from an accountable God is just mischievous. What happened after all to God's great plans to the nation of Israel [i.e. the Jews] when they were carted in their millions like tins of sardines to the gas chambers and death camps in the early 1940s? Did God go on holiday for several years? Was He on a sabbatical perhaps? Did he go on a holy retreat, while the rest of humanity wholly retreated from the satanic horrors of Nazism? Where is God's great promise for my life [and for yours?]. Is it on the bottom of the pile of his 'To Do' list? Incidentally, is the return of Jesus Christ still on the 'To Do' list? Funny how we were assured in various passages of the New Testament that Christ will be "coming soon". Soon?! Well, two thousand years is not my idea of "soon". Are you coming round to my house? Yes, I'll be there "soon". When is my bus coming? Oh it will be along "soon" - like maybe in over two thousand years time - that kind of "soon". I have to concur with Stephen Patrick Morrissey when he asked 'How Soon Is Now?'
Oh no, but that would be too soon. You see, I get the impression that God likes to play with us, His cretinous creation, and that He plays us a little too well. Have you had many prayer requests accepted and granted recently? Is your prayer perhaps held in a queue? Your prayer is very important to us and one of our agents [or angels] will deal with it as soon as possible. Is a prayer to God equivalent to a call to a contact centre? It certainly feels like it. My prayer supplications have all got one terrible thing in common - they are constantly snubbed. It is very difficult to proceed when one feels under a curse and that God refuses to grant any of my requests. My requests incidentally are quite reasonable and tend to be far removed from any demands for world domination. Maybe I'm not praying in the right tone of voice, maybe I am not prostrate enough on the floor. Maybe my attitude stinks. Maybe I never donated enough money in the Sunday collection plate.
Well, I marvel at how good God is to the heathen sons of bitches and assorted low-life around me. There are copious amounts of people, past, present, and future who are richly blessed with all manner of possessions and abundant company and opportunities by Yahweh but none of these pagans give a hoot about their Creator. Why does he shower such riches on people who don't love Him? Is He trying to buy their adoration? Is there any chance that he might buy a little affection from me with several belated, long overdue opportunities and blessings in my desert of hope? No doubt the preachers will butt in and remind me that Jesus bought my love when He died on the cross because I am such a horrible person. Look, Your sacrifice on Calvary is outstanding and remarkable in the extreme, but do you really think that I am going to praise you night and day, whilst I have nothing else going on in my life of any meaningful or positive value? Shall I just lie in bed ad nauseam and fondly reminisce upon Jesus' painful death on my behalf?
Oh come on God. If You've really given me a life, then let me lead one and stop snubbing all my hopes and dreams, while allowing other bastards to flourish. The injustice of it all makes me angry and bitter in the extreme. This is not how I want to go forward as a human. Keeping me alive just so that I can continue to be an embarrassment is downright cruel. If You're not going to help improve my sad existence, then take me out of this world now, today - away from a dysfunctional family and a disapproving neighbourhood and a greedy society full of selfish swine who earn disproportionate and obscene amounts, while the rest of us paupers must feed off the remaining scraps? Thanks be to God!
The more I hear Christian bullshit from various voices, the more I wish to flee in the direction of the haven of logic from the late Christopher Hitchens.
It's all very well stating that God "can" take a broken person and restore he or she to a thing of beauty. It's all very well stating that God "can" heal. I have never doubted His abilities and never will. What I doubt is his willingness, not his potential or his capabilites. After all, not everyone gets healed. Not all prayer requests are granted. I mean, don't you think that maybe at least one or two of the poor souls being transported to the extermination camps in the early 1940s might have called out to God to intervene and rescue them? You see, God intervenes whenever He feels like it. His interventions don't appear to be consistent or constant, or fair. He does what He wants when He wants. That appears to be His will. To suggest that God perpetually heals each and every person and restores all broken lives on request is very much open to question. I am beginning to wonder if the Depeche Mode song is close to the truth: "I don't want to start any blasphemous rumours, but I think that God's got a sick sense of humour, and when I die, I expect to find Him laughing."
I have stuck up for my 'Father' in Heaven when people have scorned or questioned his existence. I've sang to Him in church. I've pleaded to Him in private. It seems to have been all in vain. It's like the other great Christian line about 'ah you might suffer in this life, but in Heaven you'll have luxury and great times every day forever and ever'. Is that another Christian untruth or exaggeration? I mean, there are so many billions of people, past, present, and future all apparently going to Heaven from Joe Stalin to Jade Goody to Frank Lampard's mum that there is not going to be much else besides massive overcrowding! Oh but God's got that all figured out, right?
I'm left to echo what Elijah remarked when he teased the prophets of Baal when they called out to their gods. Maybe God in Heaven is daydreaming? Maybe I need to pray louder? Maybe God is busy relieving Himself? Well, I don't know but I'm heartily sick to the armpits and beyond of promises, promises. Perhaps this illustrates the very essence of our lives on earth - the problem of managing expectations and how we react to unfulfilled expectations. It seems to me that I and others have expectations of God that He has no intention of realising. This only serves to reinforce the fact that God's promise as embodied in that passage in Jeremiah is not a blanket pledge to all humanity. The bottom line is that God is selective. He heals who He wants to heal. He intervenes when He wants to intervene. For any Christian daydreamer to suggest otherwise is pure mischief-making and only serves to drive the rest of us far from the kingdom of God. God help us.......though He seldom does.

Tags: bullshit; exaggerations; lies; promises

An Invisible Man

A few years ago, a Christian friend of mine gave a Sunday morning teaching session at his church in which he talked about the story of the rich man and Lazarus. He entitled his piece ‘The Invisible Man’. He stated that the poor man, Lazarus the beggar, had been at the gates of the rich man’s house on many occasions, but that the rich man had
completely ignored him. He was almost literally ‘invisible’ as the rich man consciously or unconsciously chose to overlook the beggar. Of course, when the rich man died [so the story goes], he looked up from his fiery pit and exhorted the former ‘invisible man’ to go to his brothers and warn them of the awful fate that awaits them if they don’t repent. Funny how the formerly ignored man suddenly became an individual of extreme importance!
Anyhow, this isn’t intended to be a Christian sermon, but I can certainly relate wholeheartedly to the plight of the invisible man.
Time and time and time again I have tried to engage members of the media and received the cold shoulder from ‘busy’ people who just don’t have the time nor the basic courtesy to reply to my emails. If I am extremely lucky I am treated to the occasional terse response. Even allowing for the fact that members of the media are snowed under with emails, it is an act of bad manners to ignore this poor man, just as Lazarus the beggar was overlooked.
I am moreover slightly amused about the print media’s refusal to accept regulation, declaring that they can manage themselves and that they have learnt their lessons from the self-inflicted wounds of the ‘phone hacking scandal. I don’t see many lessons having been learnt. I find editors and their assistants to be unresponsive to the likes of me, but they would drop their newborn baby if an important personage sent an email or if there was a scandal or breaking story that they could get their teeth into. Perhaps liaising with the media is akin to swimming with sharks. I have had to reach the view that journalists are just not very nice people, a consequence of the culture of their profession.
Fool that I am, I have tried to engage the media in an effort to being appointed with one or two assignments that would make use of my expertise, an expertise that in many instances far exceeds that of their own staff. I incidentally receive £71 state pittance per week while lesser talents earn that amount or double that each day. How fair does that sound? It’s hard not to feel bitter when confronted with such injustice.
Last summer, the Independent’s Neil Robinson strung me along on the possibility that I could/might contribute to the Independent’s coverage of the Ashes series. Mr Robinson had even suggested the amount that I would receive, which I had agreed to. Well, no such undertaking came to pass. That was the latest in a litany of shabby treatment from the British and Irish media.
Again, this year, as a psephologist and elections numbers cruncher, I have attempted to engage various media outlets in the hope that they would recruit me to assist them with their election coverage, whether that merely be the election results and analysis of the forthcoming European poll. Well, again, Lazarus here is confronted with a wall of
silence. I am offering to help and add value and I am not even treated to an answer. I feel genuinely like the youngster in the school playground watching the other children play and not being permitted to join in the game. It’s bloody cruel.
I have much to offer as a knowledgeable and engaging writer, whose expertise can be filed under ‘sports statistician’ or ‘psephologist’. I have a nerdish attention to details and am extremely literate and numerate. Yet for all my apparent abilities, I am constantly snubbed while lesser talents prevail at various media organisations. A relative suggested the other week that I was “depressed”. It would be nearer the truth to declare that I am demoralised, as opposed to
depressed.
It’s a real tragedy, not just for me, but for others in the print media that my talents are not being utilised. Maybe I should finish with a famous bit of biblical scripture again: “The stone that the builders refuse turned out to be the cornerstone.”
My abilities can be scrutinised at the following sites:
http://whocomments.org/wiki/Gary_Watton
http://gw930.blog.com
http://psephologist.blog.com
http://sporthistorian.blog.com
http://ireland.rugbynetwork.net
http://yorkshire.cricketnetwork.co.uk
http://chelsea.thefootballnetwork.net
from: Gary Watton; invisible man

Britain's Dreadful Legal Shitstem by the commentator Gary Watton [http://gw930.blog.com]

In the light of the miscarriage of justices that brought Nigel Evans MP to near-bankruptcy and all but ruined the names of Michael Le Vell and Bill Roache, may I humbly propose the following two suggestions.
First of all, there ought to be legislation [aside from libel and slander laws] which ensures that false accusers and false witnesses are penalised. It seems scandalous that anyone can denounce someone to the law and the CPS [the Crown Persecution Service] and such individuals get away with their half-baked accusations scot free, while the accused must suffer enormously during the pre-trial period as well as during their court ordeal. Nobody wants to deter witnesses or anyone speaking up against criminal activity, but by the same token there needs to be a mechanism in place whereby anyone who wrongly accuses someone is penalised with say a £1,000 fine if the accused is acquitted in a subsequent trial. It simply won’t do for all and sundry to be afforded carte blanche in future to accuse anyone on the back of dubious charges and flimsy evidence.
Secondly, I think that solicitors have a lot to answer for. Many solicitors are at least as reptilian as the much-reviled bankers and expenses-claimers. It strikes me that solicitors mischievously ‘egg on’ their clients to pursue legal action [irrespective of the potential outcome] safe in the knowledge that he or she has a big payday coming their way. It seems to be in the monetary interests of many mercenaries within the legal profession to pursue legal cases because they are a “nice little earner”. Again, some form of regulation is belatedly overdue to ensure that solicitors don’t gain enormously from other people’s suffering. At the opposite end of the spectrum, we frequently find solictors advising clients whose chances are clearly hopeless to plead not guilty and contrive to engineer a costly trial which is a drain on the public purse while solictors and barristers laugh all the way to the bank.
Just as there is a real need for regulation of bankers, and of newspapers, and of parliamentarians, so there is also a need to review and legislate against abuses and injustices in the law.