Bonkers BBC
£207,000 a year is one hell of a salary - more than the chief executive of Glasgow City Council receives - more even that the Prime Minister of the UK with all of the many responsibilities held by that great office of state.
So you would think that someone with that kind of salary package would be devoting 100% of their energies to their day job - not moonlighting as a cafe owner at the same time.
Yet according to Roland White's Atticus column in the Sunday Times, the BBC's controller of Business, Knowledge and Daytime - LIsa Opie - is doing exactly that although for how much longer remains to be seen.
Only at the BBC you might say, but when so many Westminster MPs are allowed to do the same - it's not easy for the House of Commons to lay down the law to everyone else.
By Roland White
You’d think that, being paid £207,000 a year, Lisa Opie would be working flat out on her job as the BBC’s controller of business, knowledge and daytime (whatever that is). But no, she has also found time to launch a cafe business near her home in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire.
No wonder she blogs that she’s exhausted. “It’s been non-stop,” she writes: “18-hour days, rapid phone calls squeezed in between proper job meetings, hurried decisions about banquettes and stressy calls to the VAT man on the train.” At the Beeb, Opie, 53, is responsible for cutting red tape (yes, Lisa, good luck with that).
Next month Lord Patten, chairman of the BBC Trust, faces questions from MPs over the BBC’s “second jobs culture”. Perhaps Lisa could advise him. Failing that, she could probably do him a nice packed lunch.
Coming up next on the British Billionaires Corporation . . .
Why is the BBC so careless with our money? According to a former governor, the usual suspects are to blame — bankers. Baroness Ruth Deech wants bankers barred from the BBC Trust and its financial committees. “The sums they are hardened to are not ones appropriate to the BBC,” she says.
The former Oxford don once asked why the BBC offered bonuses at all. She was told: “You academics are so badly paid. You’ve no idea about money.”
Next on Blue Peter, how to turn a BBC career into huge piles of cash.
No wonder she blogs that she’s exhausted. “It’s been non-stop,” she writes: “18-hour days, rapid phone calls squeezed in between proper job meetings, hurried decisions about banquettes and stressy calls to the VAT man on the train.” At the Beeb, Opie, 53, is responsible for cutting red tape (yes, Lisa, good luck with that).
Next month Lord Patten, chairman of the BBC Trust, faces questions from MPs over the BBC’s “second jobs culture”. Perhaps Lisa could advise him. Failing that, she could probably do him a nice packed lunch.
Coming up next on the British Billionaires Corporation . . .
Why is the BBC so careless with our money? According to a former governor, the usual suspects are to blame — bankers. Baroness Ruth Deech wants bankers barred from the BBC Trust and its financial committees. “The sums they are hardened to are not ones appropriate to the BBC,” she says.
The former Oxford don once asked why the BBC offered bonuses at all. She was told: “You academics are so badly paid. You’ve no idea about money.”
Next on Blue Peter, how to turn a BBC career into huge piles of cash.
