One week into his job as director general of the BBC and Lord Hall’s problems are mounting.
Industrial action is threatened over compulsory redundancies at the bloated corporation; the Jimmy Savile scandal refuses to die down; and Tories are increasingly angry at the continuing Left-wing bias in the Corporation’s news coverage.
The party was appalled that one of Hall’s first acts was to appoint former Labour Cabinet minister James Purnell as the £295,000 director of strategy. Now they are out for revenge.
Backbench Tory Alun Cairns has drafted a Bill that would require the BBC to make public online any expenditure of more than £500 in the way that town halls, who already make such information available, were forced to by Communities Secretary Eric Pickles.
Cairns, the Vale of Glamorgan MP, believes the BBC should be more open about how it spends licence-payers’ money, not least on ‘stars’ with highly inflated salaries.
Bizarrely, the National Audit Office, the public-spending watchdog, has to request permission from the BBC Trust before it can investigate specific areas of BBC spending, a privilege denied to all other publicly funded bodies.
Cairns says: ‘The licence fee is the most regressive tax in Britain so the BBC should be subject to the same scrutiny as other public bodies. We should have the same transparency for expenditure across all public organisations.’
On the Lib Dem Voice website, co-editor Stephen Tall takes issue with an article in The Guardian that describes the make-up of the Commons as ‘more remote’ than ever. ‘Really?’ he writes ‘Let’s have a look at the evidence.’ He cites the 22 per cent of women MPs compared with 3 per cent in 1979. And how many are Lib Dem? Just seven out of 57. And how many Lib Dem women have been promoted to the Cabinet? None. He also cites the fact there are 27 non-white MPs compared with none in 1979. And how many are Lib Dem? None. More... Oh dear Prime Minister: Cameron leaves in his Jaguar in 30-minute bay for nearly THREE hours... following his Chancellor parking in a disabled space JAMES FORSYTH: Labour go to war on welfare - but they'll never win Osborne was right about Philpott, says Cameron, as storm rages on over benefits Is Campbell too repulsive?The Tories have stolen a march on Labour by selecting the popular local councillor Simon Marcus to fight Hampstead & Kilburn at the next General Election. It’s the most marginal seat in the country.
Labour’s Glenda Jackson, whose Parliamentary life never scaled the heights of her Oscar-winning acting career, is standing down after winning by only 42 votes last time. Labour’s ruling NEC has imposed an all-woman shortlist, which torpedoes the chances of cross-dressing comedian Eddie Izzard and blogger Dan Hodges, Glenda’s son.
Alastair Campbell’s partner, Fiona Millar is now a Labour frontrunner. But will Campbell’s presence in Millar’s corner repel the champagne socialists in the well-heeled constituency?
The Iron Pope Outspoken: This week actor Jeremy Irons suggested gay marriage could mean fathers and sons marrying to avoid inheritance taxQuote of the week: After the actor Jeremy Irons suggested gay marriage could mean fathers and sons marrying to avoid inheritance tax, the equal rights group Stonewall retorted: ‘Sadly, his comments do seem to indicate he’s taken his role as Pope in The Borgias a little too seriously.’
French President Francois Hollande has slumped to an all-time low in personal approval ratings after France’s Constitutional Council rejected the 75 per cent top tax rate as unconstitutional. To add to his woes, his finance minister, who is tasked with clamping down on tax avoidance, quit last week after it emerged he had a £500,000 offshore bank account. So where is his great champion Red Ed Miliband in all of this? Last year he was cock-a-hoop when Hollande visited him before he saw David Cameron. ‘This new leadership is sorely needed as Europe seeks to escape from austerity. And it matters to Britain,’ Ed proclaimed. Today, there is only a deafening silence from the Labour leader.
Which political leader is taking the austerity drive most seriously? On a personal level, I mean. The latest edition of the register of MPs’ researchers and secretaries shows that David Cameron has a modest team of three assistants in the House of Commons (dozens more in 10 Downing Street of course). Calamity Clegg has an entourage of 12 — while the tax-and-spend maestro Ed Miliband has no fewer than 27 parliamentary researchers and secretaries at the Commons.
Has anyone seen Lord Rennard, the corpulent Lib Dem peer, who has not voted or tabled a question in the House of Lords since the middle of February, the same time Channel 4 broadcast a series of sexual harassment allegations against him by female former party staffers?
