Sack Lineker and replace with a woman ‘at half the price’, says ex-BBC governor
Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer and Ian Wright should be sacked from Match of the Day and replaced with women “at half the price”, a former BBC governor has said.
The suggestion from Lord Young of Norwood Green sparked outcry from his own Labour benches in the House of Lords.
However, he insisted he did not believe the corporation should be paying Mr Lineker’s £1.35 million salary or Mr Shearer’s £450,000 sum.
He told peers in Westminster: “I tend to echo the view that was made about Gary Lineker and his salary.
“He’s like many people in that position in the past who believe they are irreplaceable.
“You’ll remember that Jeremy Clarkson and the Top Gear team thought that they were irreplaceable and needless to say that Top Gear thrives just as successfully without them.
“So, if I had a solution, and advice that I have conveyed in written form to the director-general, it would be to get rid of the old boys’ club, namely Lineker, Shearer and Wright, replace it with at least one or two women, which we could probably do at half the price and they’d do twice as good a job.”
Several peers, including from his own party, heckled Lord Young after this comment, with one shouting: “Half the price?”
Contribution
Lord Young responded: “I don’t believe that we should be paying those kinds of prices to presenters.”
He added that, if the director-general did fire the Match of the Day team and replace them with lower-paid presenters, they could “save the BBC Singers, which provide a really important contribution to the country.”
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, a minister in the department for Culture, Media and Sport, said: “Decisions about salaries are, of course, for the BBC, but the Government have urged transparency over those payments so the licence fee payers are aware of how their money is being spent.”
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You can’t touch me I’m a Lord of the Unions…until the day I die…
Strip out the half price woman bit and the old Lord has a point. Why on earth is BBC forking out that kind of loot for a handful of talking heads ? The whole thing is well out of hand and needs winding down. I’m sure there’s a strong field of competent men and women who could step in and make the thing a sight more interesting.
You can’t strip it out of his statement hd…
It sure is a lot of money I agree but if the market values the garbled BS of Fat Shanks at several million for, in total, less than a day’s ‘work’ who are we to say…
Well it’s high time we did say something about it. We may be pissing into the wind right now but tacit acceptance of “prevailing market values” is doing harm to the rest of us the vast majority. It’s like Hunt yesterday handing out a pension bonus to any old grifter with a high income while hiding behind the need to remedy the anomaly that affects doctors and the NHS. I hope that MP’s will vote an amendment that will narrow the beneficiaries to practicing medical professionals. Any attempt to include other so called valuable people like senior execs in public… Read more »
We are on the same page here hd…literally and metaphorically…
One thing I will say is this, if BBC News and Current Affairs had been on the side of the licence payer there would have been no Brexit…
For that I will curse them to the end of my days…
Twenty years ago I was on a street in a seaside town in Gwynedd and a young hobo walked into town, calling out in a loud voice that the BBC told lies. He was obviously distressed and he repeated this mantra as his progress took him through town. I wish now that I’d engaged him in conversation so as to discover what had prompted such evangelical behaviour and tell him how much I agreed with him. Now Alastair Campbell makes light of it with his buddy Rory…
Another thing, it is my belief that had that gobsh*te Farage kept his mouth shut Jo Cox would still be alive…
Yet it seems doctors are precisely the ones benefitting from this due to their high pay, and as a result already deciding to continue with their “vocation” rather than taking early retirement.
The modern Tory party, working to take us backwards.
The House of Lords makes the case for its abolition every day. Although, decades after the Equal Pay Act, he does make the point well that we still pay men more than we do women – and no-one can tell me that the differential is about talent
No, they don’t. That’s quite literally illegal and would mean, If true, that not a single man would be working. Women never take into account personal choice of Woking less hours, which done en mass over the course of a year ends up meaning women earn less. It’s not rocket science!
It is rocket science though because the gap is affected by who works as a rocket scientist as opposed to say, a football pundit.
Incredible to believe but over the years when “the bosses” pay was forever growing with generous bonuses thrown in & ” the workers” pay was stagnating, it was always the Tories who would shout from the rooftops that you have to pay the best to keep the best, the pay of the leading bankers & other so called financial hotshots comes to mind first & foremost. To my mind tv. presenters are paid far too much but going on the ethos that paying these sort of salaries to stop the drain to more lucrative pastures home or abroad, why would… Read more »
Watch Credit Suisse get a big loan/propping up fund from Swiss gov, and if that ain’t enough their London arm will tap Hunt & Rishi successfully for a bit more. Top cats at CS will retain their pay & benefits, and anyone who gets the push will fall gracefully at the end of a golden parachute. Nice work if you can get it. That’s a nasty little daisy chain of corrupt Wanchors at work.
What an idiot, cause that’s not going to play into the false narrative that Women get paid less. Talk about scoring an own goal boyo!