Thursday, September 5, 2013

It could have been worse

The note provided to the BBC Trust Unit about an exit strategy for Mark "Gold Commander turned Silver" Byford as Deputy Director General shows that Mark Thompson devoted some considerable thinking time about how to swing it. The big idea was to suggest that, however enormous a pay-off of more than £1m might seem, "historic custom and practice" would have cost more.

Reading between the lines "historic" might actually mean "recently". Guessing what lies beneath the black blob now becomes an important game for BBC staff and the PAC.










In this, Thommo deflects attention from an important new rule for execs, capping redundo at one year's salary, in play in 2002.  For ordinary workers, this used to be capped at two year's pay (now under Lord Hall capped at £150k) - so the whole "custom and practice" of 12 months notice for the exec evolved post-2002 to give them back what they thought was theirs. The interesting thing about Mark's departure is that, so far, it seems a genuine redundancy -and Lord Hall is doing his best to keep the word "deputy" out of circulation. .

It's harder to argue that for Jana Bennett - she was Director of Vision, and there still is a Director of (Tele)Vision. Did she agree to the new opportunity offered in 2010 of "President, Worldwide Networks" (including significant international travel) offered by John Smith at Worldwide because of the challenge, or the fact there was a healthy redundancy pot, unachievable at Vision, at the end, if it didn't work out ?

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