bbc

apparently the bbc are reading our blogs.
i have no problems with that, other than the fact they never leave a comment here if they do read mine. if they don't read my one why not (more than likely spending too much time over at cliff's...)

you have to be impressed with the beeb (and bear in mind that most of what i now know about the beeb comes from it's website, radio 5 and what people in the office say as i have not watched bbc television in several years).

radio 5 used to wake me up with the terrible tones of digby jones on their breakfast business show - he was never challenged by the guy who used to present the show. and digby never failed to annoy. sadly digby has left the cbi, with luck we will never hear from him again.
then there is the morning show with nicky campbell, who i have finally warmed to, and the lovely voiced shelagh fogarty. there is a chemistry between the two presenters, but you feel that shelagh wants to get at the more meaty stories which normally fall to nicky.
i also like victoria debyshire and anita anand (althogh anita has a tendancy to dote of old tory grandees). i don't get to listen to it as much as i would like but the drive show with peter allen and jane garvey also benefits from a nice interplay between the presenters.

for all of that though radio 5 also uses too of the most annoying presenters of all time in alan green and stephen nolan. both men can make my blood boil.

(there are also a bunch of sports presenters such as arlo white, mark pougatch, vassos alexander and others who sound remarkably similiar, so much so you can't always tell who is presenting the show until someone mentions their names..)

recently i posted on the obscene amount that the beeb were going to be paying jonathon ross. as private eye (i believe) has pointed out what a great wheeze that was as it has helped to sweeten the pill of the fact that there have been several large pay increases to senior managers of something like 8% this was while cutting jobs and telling others they would have a small pay rise.

it has always intriqued me that bosses think that somehow their over the top rewards while the rank and file staff are getting no or low pay rises or are being made redundant are not going to cause resentment. perhaps they think it will motivate people. even worse is that they think that they deserve it, and will justify it to all around them. it always seems odd that they do this when their company seems to be losing money. mmm we have to make people redundant, lets do that but lets give ourselves a big payrise.
mr. thompson - let me tell you it is a wrong thing to do. but hey ho i am sure the nearly £700,000 you earn makes it easy for you to sleep at night.
the real shame is that the beeb is paid for by public money and it really shouldn't be a case of having to pay someone the mythical "going" rate. frankly if you can't find someone to do the job well and properly and willingly at £500,000 then it just shows what a lot of greedy bastards there are out there in media land (hey what am i saying.... ) but my point stands when you move into the commercial world it seems so easy for the top management to (over)reward themselves while letting people go, when a big company needs to shed staff there never seems to be compulsory redundancies at the board level. no they can keep trousering their dosh, while going on about how workers can't compete with the third world blah blah.
my feelings on that is if you can outsource a call centre to india then you can outsource the senior mangament team as well. think what the savings would be (and the improved productivity...) (ah but i am guessing that would be the case in this instance - that is a step too far in out-sourcing...)

we had a visit from one of our american vps a few years back and they commented on how the staff in the hotel were the same people as the year before. we were told this wouldn't happen in america as people are always moving on looking for better jobs and the need to improve themselves... what was left unsaid was that pretty much all the senior management in our company has been in place for over 10 years.

i have moved into rant mode so am going to call it quits.

now i wonder will the bbc read this ?