Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Lord Faulkes: A twat who is fat

Watch this. Apparently, according to the Labour peer Lord Faulkes, those of us who cares about MPs spending money on their swimming pools are undermining democracy.


Lord Faulkes, why don't you put the pie down and get in touch with reality?

33 comments:

BexleyTory said...

£92,000! Shocking

dizzy said...

Hardly, Central London, sitting in front of camera all day. Seems about right to me, and its not really the point is it. She pays tax on that and doesn't get her home paid for out of extras.

dizzy said...

More importantly, what she earns is irrelevant to the argument about expenses, however much it might be.

Anonymous said...

And he can't even do basic mathematics - If MPs earn £64,000 and the presenter £92,000, that is hardly "almost twice as much". It is around one and a half times the same salary.

I suppose this explains the budget...

Can we start to dig out the Cicero quotes about ad hominem arguments being used to distract from the truth of the matter? After all, the truth needs no rhetoric!

Anonymous said...

You have to love his indignation over her wages, so false and just another politician who -like the Speaker yesterday- totally ignores or is blind to public anger over MPs expenses.

Matthew Cain said...

Lord Foulkes may be a fat twat but that shouldn't obscure the fact that a) a no-mark news reader is on a (comparatively) grotesque salary and
b) insinuating that public service cuts are being made because MPs expenses claims cost so much is daft.

mark said...

It is highlighting a couple of important points. One is that the 'old guard' are so entrenched in their ways that they defend the indefensible with what loopks like increasing arrogance, but is probably ignorance and blinkeredness, and the other is that it is becoming more apparent to us the public, that there is a clear divide between moral decency, and moral indecency. In other words, they clearly cannot be objective about their expenses, so we should probably pay them say £120k a year, plus free rail travel and parliamentary provided accomodation in London, and let that be an end to it.

Or, we could enjoy the sport for a few more days..

Anonymous said...

Lord Foulkes, as well as being a Lord is also an MSP, so he earns c.a. £50,000 in his role as a list MSP at Holyrood, plus he has his Lord's expenses on top of that.

BexleyTory said...

So you believe that out of the public purse she should be just outside the top 1% of earners in the country?

dizzy said...

This is a loaded question and a disingenuous analogy. Yes, the BBC is paid for from the license fee. However, the allocation of salary is a matter for the BBC and it will be done for the most part on the going rate and competitive nature of the market for that role. So, if Sky, Channel 5, C4 (part private) et al have those sort of salaries then the BBC has to compete with them.

More importantly though is that the argument is being irrelevantly deflected on to her away form the expenses issues and Lord Faulkes. The BBC pays its staff out of its pot. At the same time, for all we know, this presenter may also work on BBC America which is not funded by public money.

Frankly though, that salary doesn't seem particularly low for someone sitting on live TV doing ad hoc interviews etc for 8 hours a day on a rolling news channel.

dizzy said...

Oh yes, I also don't accept the whole 1% figure. It;s peddled out to try and make out that a small percentage are super rich. It's bollocks.

Bob said...

I think he was being smarmy and disinegnuous. As Dizzy says, this is about Mps not about her.

His asks silly questions all the time about space hopppers and the like.

She should have said her salary was not the issue, the issue was MPs.

BexleyTory said...

But why should we pay for it to 'compete with them.' It is a completely unnecessary tax on the British public and causes unfair competion in the television/media industy. Also she is not on for 8 hours, thats just nonsense.

'Allocation is a matter for the BBC.' Sounds very similar to the MP's defence of 'the system allows it, its the systems fault'

While it is irrelevant to the Expenses issue I admit, there are some parrallels as they are both examples of public money wasted.

CrazyDaisy said...

Dizzy,

He is a bloated waste of space and has done fuck all for the betterment of his constituents or humanity for that matter.

Best thing for him is to have a coronary and not survive - as we say dee us aw a faver and get tae fuck man.

He has a criminal record and is a known boozer, he'd put Gazza to shame.

Crazy Daisy

dizzy said...

BexleyTory, you're now conflating the License Fee and the detailed breakdown of where the BBC chooses to spend that money. I don't support the license fee, I'd abolish it. She'd still be paid that amount though because that is the market in which they compete. Incidentally, you ask why should they compete? Well I guess it comes down to whether you want to have a dribbling retard presenting the news for £5 per hour or not right?

I don't actually think that the parallel is valid either. This is someone who is paid a salary. The other is someone who is paid a salary and to like then can submit and claims for well over the double that amount on extravagant things.

As I say, I don't support the license fee, but at the same time her salary is not outrageous when you think of what she is doing, and it would be that high even if they weren't publicly funded. At which point I'd have to ask would you consider it outrageous if she was paid that much but worked for Sky?

dizzy said...

Would her salary be grotesque if she was a no-mark news reader on CNN or Sky?

BexleyTory said...

I wouldn't care if she was being paid a grotesque figure by Sky or CNN as you and I would not be paying for it.

Hatstand said...

"I guess it comes down to whether you want to have a dribbling retard presenting the news for £5 per hour or not right?"

Dizzy, this is the BBC, most of them are dribbling retards anyway, and on considerably more than £5p.h.

dizzy said...

So you;re saying you'd rather have a dribbling retard then? I mean look, you can be annoyed about the BBC and its cost, but its there and it has to pay going rates else it won't have the staff.

So what is it supposed to do exactly whilst the status quo currently exists? It;s all well and good to say "scrap the license fee" buu right now those are just words, and you can bet your bottom dollar that if they paid people below the market rate for the roles, what would happen? Well that's obivous, people would be screaming that the BBC was a waste of money because it was employing idiots to present.

Damned do, damned don't

BexleyTory said...

People are already screaming that the BBC are employing idiots, the Andrew Sachs affair showed that.
The BBC clearly needs to at least cut back if not abolished, wages are certainly an area where these cuts should take place.
The fact remains that £92000 is an extraordinary sum for a two bob presenter to earn out of the public purse.

dizzy said...

The fact remains that £92000 is an extraordinary sum for a two bob presenter to earn out of the public purse.No it's not.

BexleyTory said...

Is too
http://images.inmagine.com/img/digitalvision/dvs061/dvs061289.jpg

:-)

dizzy said...

Hah!

E.A.Blair said...

Lord Faulkes, why don't you put the pie down and get in touch with reality?

The simple reason he doesn't is because he's a fat useless cnut of a twat who's been sucking on the public tit for far too long. He's always going to back up one of the fellow members of his cosy little club. Out of touch with reality, but unfortunately not out of sight on our tv screens or out of earshot on the radio waves.

Samwise said...

Is it just me who sees a resemblance to this guy?

Hatstand said...

"Out of touch with reality, but unfortunately not out of sight on our tv screens or out of earshot on the radio waves."

I settle for the f'ckers getting their hands out of my wallet.

talwin said...

£92,000 or whatever. It's crap interview technique to be suckered into making yourself and other newsbods/presenters into the story and so let that twat Foulkes off the hook.

Unsworth said...

What does Foulkes have to say about Jonathan Ross then? What a complete idiot. Does he not understand that 'ripping off' the taxpayer is not the same as being paid an agreed salary - never mind what that salary may be?

He's obviously decided that everyone should make up their own 'rules' and live accordingly. Well one of my new 'rules' now is to hunt down and inflict severe physical damage on people like Foulkes. Is that OK?

omegan said...

Foulkes appears to have gone to the George Galloway Media Training School. That said, Gracie shouldn't have answered the question and definitely shouldn't have launched into the nonsense about making calls from her own telephone.

Anonymous said...

I quite like watching Labour & BBC laying into each other!

logdon said...

She was an idiot to answer. This is about exes not salary. However I agree that £92k is a lot for a third rater like her who rises to his bait. Maybe a double cull would be in order.

Rebel Saint said...

"her salary is not outrageous when you think of what she is doing". Now that's the funniest thing I've read in a while. Or what is it she does that the rest of us don't know about but you do?

That has got to rate as one of the crappest interviews I've heard in a long long while - and I listen to local commercial radio sometimes. If he didn't make inflated, bogus expenses claims there'd be more in the public purse for schools & hospitals?!! Letting him interview her?!! And they only pay her £92k?!!

Chris Paul said...

We don't know for sure what her exes regime is. No second home perhaps but humungous relocation and per diem exes (she was a foreign correspondent and will have accumulated a pile).

By chance I had a former TV News editor (Beeb and commercial) staying last evening. £92,000 is the basic entry level market rate for presenters and they do have a very toothsome expenses regime.

Foulkes is not a particularly pleasant man but interrupting in the first few seconds of an answer and repeatedly is (a) fucking rude (b) counter-productive and (c) asking for it from any feisty interview subject.

GF is certainly one of those. And I think he would have reacted the same whoever had done this to him. Very interesting too that the Hon Stephen Fry made virtually the same point and has escaped any criticism.

There are arguments both ways but I personally don't think MPs are overpaid and think that the ACA could be grossed up and added to the basic salary. Still leaving them well short of most Town Hall CEOs, celebrity journos, weekly pay of Ronaldo, city kids and so on.

There's a link to Fry in my post on the subject.

As a footnote I think that Cameron's Route 1 solutions are obvious and only mean anything if he is defied by some greedy yahoo and has his mettle tested. And he should turf any exception sleazers out whether they pay the money back or not. Ditto Brown and Clegg.

Adams and McGuinness have already agreed to expel themselves immediately.