Told you!!

So now the BBC is scrambling around trying to justify the salaries it is paying to its top earners (see last Friday's post).  What a mess!  A little surprisingly perhaps, the main problem has turned out to be the disparity between what they are paying their top men and what they are paying their top women.  Now if you are working a machine which churns out widgets or whatever, then clearly you should be paid for what you produce, irrespective of gender, but I'm not sure that such a simplistic system applies to TV presenters. Should Gary Lineker and Clare Balding, for example, be paid the same because they both introduce and host sport programmes?  Not so simple - and that's not to suggest Lineker should be paid more - perhaps Balding should be paid more - but I don't think you can necessarily equate what they both do. Lineker is Lineker and Balding is Balding.  The labourer is worthy of his or her hire. As I said last Friday, knowing what other people are earning is simply a recipe for friction and discord.