This week a British MP has been in the spotlight for employing his son as a “researcher,” when it seems the young man did nothing for his money. But the issue of him not doing anything has been lost amid wider sniffing at familial employment.
Even a mighty oak like Microsoft trying to buy Yahoo fell beneath this £17k bonsai public scandal.
Newsnight ed Peter Barron asks if the Beeb gave too much time to it.
Well, look at it another way.
I don’t know how many family members are employed at the BBC but I wonder if there might be more than — say — a handful. I wonder too if BBC journalists would like to be filling in timesheets to account for their work. Nick Robinson discussed such sheets the other day, describing those who didn’t want to use them as “old-fashioned.” Er, right Nick — and whose desk is your timesheet sitting on?
The MP, at least, had a five-year accountability clause built in to his office, called an election. Voters could kick him out.
But when someone negotiates Jonathan Ross’s next salary increase from the public purse, licence fee payers can only hope that they get a ticking off at their appraisal.
The difference, surely, being that Jonathan Ross turns up to present Film 2008, Friday Night and his Radio 2 while taking his salary, and isn’t at University on the other side of the country while he’s drawing down his cash.