Any one witnessing the recruitment of the Director General at the BBC would have thought the pantomime season had started earlier than usual. When George Entwistle was appointed at a annual salary of £450,000, Lord Patten said “George is a creative leader for a creative organisation”. Alas events the grave and the past were his undoing , that, and an interview with John Humphrys on the Today programme. Entwistle beat his BBC colleague and the corporation’s chief operating officer Caroline Thomson to the job. Ed Richards, chief executive of media regulator Ofcom, was also shortlisted. However the post of Director General was not re advertised but Lord Hall chief executive of the Royal Opera House was appointed. No recruitment adverts carrying the phrase “previous applicants need not apply; equal opportunities legislation and the BBC’s own rules flouted. If you were a believer in the conspiracy theory you would say that this was a stitch up by the arts/media elite of the “Infernal Wen”. Real life suggests that conspiracy theories are nothing but cock ups – the CIA trying to blow up Fidel Castro with his cigars always springs to mind – in this instance a first class example of bungling incompetence. Hall cannot start the job till march so why was their such a rush that made the Gadarene Swine torpid in comparison. Then there is the matter of remuneration. Hall’s salary at the Royal Opera House was £392,361 stated in the opera house’s accounts to August 2011, so a nice 14.7% increase to £450k. If the post had been re-adevertised then that would have been the advertised salary. Patten ploughed on with out any thought that licence payers might get fed up with the antics of an over paid Chair of the BBC Trust and his equally overpaid trustees. For a full report on their expenses and fees please paste and click to access the following link: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/about/trustees/2012/report_oct11_mar12.pdf Trustees earn between £32k and £37k per annum and Patten is on a nice little earner of £110k for 3 or 4 days a week – the BBC cannot even nail down the time Patten is being paid for. I along with a few others vented our ire in The Guardian.
“This is no way to run a national institution – a whelk stall maybe. What signal does this give to future applicants for any job at the BBC?………………”
To read more please paste and click on the link below to access the correspondence
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/nov/23/disquiet-appointment-lord-hall-patten