Justice is one of the cardinal virtues which we are enjoined to practise: and surely the highly paid men at the BBC have acted in a spirit of justice by agreeing to take a pay cut to their salaries, with the aspiration of just and equal pay for women.
These virtuous men include Huw Edwards (salary: £600,000), John Humphrys (up to £650,000), Jeremy Vine (up to £750,000), Nicky Campbell (£450,000) and Nick Robinson (£300,000). James Naughtie, Jon Sopel, Eddie Mair and Andrew Marr were also in line to take a wage cut.
Bravo. Doing the decent thing should always be applauded, and these chaps seem to have done so with good grace.
We understand that other fellows – including Gary Lineker (BBC income £1.5 million) and Chris Evans (£2.2 million) – will not be asked to volunteer a cut in their wages. These sports and entertainment stars are designated “untouchable”.
So here’s the dilemma about the question of fairness, equality and justice: who sets the rules?
If a corporation has an agreed scale of what is fair, equal and justice, then everyone adheres to this matrix. But once there is a “star system” of remuneration – whereby the star celebrities get paid more because they attract audiences – then it gets more difficult to say what is fair and just.
The BBC – like many big corporate entities, from universities to local authorities – can’t decide whether it’s running a public service or a Hollywood star system. For most members of the public these sums of money being airily tossed around seem gigantic, titanesque, gargantuan, colossal, and monumentally enormous.
I’m not saying that esteemed performers aren’t “worth it”. But I am asking: what is a “just” system of remuneration when there are huge sums involved for star performers, while many employees doing diligent and necessary jobs may be on salaries of a 10th or a 20th of those at the top?
It is hard not to conclude that the gap between top pay across a range of public services – including university vice-chancellorships or local government bossess – has become yawningly disproportionate. And I’m not sure if the folks at the top quite get this.
Those men who have taken a pay cut – as a gesture towards equality for women – have done the right thing. But the broader issue of the gigantic disparities in incomes has a long, long way to go.
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Traditionally, the bride was the toast of a wedding party, but did not make a speech herself. The main speech was usually given by the best man, and I think most of us have sat through some cringingly embarrassing examples of this performance.
Meghan Markle plans to change these protocols by making a bride’s speech herself at her wedding to Prince Harry on May 19. She would like to use the occasion, we are told, to thank all those who have made her nuptials possible, and Prince Harry is entirely supportive of the idea.
Wedding practices don’t have to be set in stone, and if brides wish to speak at their own wedding, they are fully entitled to do so. But Meghan is stepping into a royal circle much scrutinised by the public. There are members of the public she still has to win over, and who may have some bias against Meghan on grounds not of race but of nationality: is this American gal setting out to alter our royal traditions? It will be a testament to her charm if she manages to carry off such changes successfully.
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A new biography of Mikhail Gorbachev by the Russian historian William Taubman describes his birth in a peasant village in the North Caucasus in 1931. His grandmothers, and his mother, insisted that he be secretly baptised into the Russian Orthodox Church. This was in defiance of the brutal suppression of religion that was part of enforced communisation. Two of his uncles and an aunt perished in the famines caused by coercive collectivisation. Both his grandfathers were despatched to the gulag during Stalin’s great terror.
He tried to humanise the political system that he entered. In the atheist Soviet Union, he said, “the grandmothers passed on the faith”, as the women were indeed often its custodians.
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