Readers' letters - July 24

Obscene pay for celebs reflects BBC's judgement

It comes as little surprise to find the once great institution of the BBC being dragged further into controversy with recent events.

The obscene salaries paid to mediocre personalities is a sharp reflection of its judgement and its sense of balance.

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The disparity between gender pay is offensive to the many millions of women who buy their TV licences with their hard-earned cash.

The BBC’s feeble excuse that it is a competitive industry and they have to compete with other companies is nonsense.

Who cares who presents Match of the Day?

I could name half a dozen recent presenters of the programme who have done a decent job on less than a third of Lineker’s salary, so what are we exactly paying for?

More than 22,000 people pay their licence fee every year to cover Radio Two presenter Chris Evans’ annual salary. No more needs to be said about that.

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We live in an age of greed and a complete lack of empathy with the poor and needy.

These bland personalities on our radios and television, most of them millionaires many times over, bleat on constantly about government policy, immigration, welfare cuts and the like and usually take every photo opportunity to be seen holding a hand or wiping away a tear, before it is instantly posted on bland book, dull tweet, or insta-boring gram.

These people should take their lead from the great philanthropists of the past who gave back real help to the needy in the form of homes, medicine and public parks.

Cameron Fleming

via email

People will lose their homes

Re: proposed HS2 railway.

Our Government is borrowing billions each year just to keep us afloat, yet they clearly don’t think we are skint enough to turn down the building of HS2 which will plunge us even deeper into debt.

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The prime factor of course is the money involved. Not only the money this largely unwanted rail link will cost taxpayers at a time when we can ill afford it, but the money to be made by investors and contractors, and the benefits to those at lower levels with fingers in the pie.

They all preach that this rail link is needed, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth.

It is not needed.

Is it really worth spending billions on a rail link that will take you to London 20 minutes faster? Those behind this mad scheme flippantly disregard the fact that many people will have their lives disrupted and lose their homes (many of them only recently built) and miles of beautiful countryside blighted by this profanity.

Jean Norfolk

via email

Recruit from West Indies

I am spectacularly under-concerned at the level of the BBC’s remuneration

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of popular entertainers whose programmes are, no doubt, marketed by the corporation at a profit.

What is hard to stomach is the proportion of my licence fee being spent on mere newsreaders, when surely such ‘talent’ can be sourced cheaply from regional programmes.

Even better, with Brexit in prospect, the BBC should look to recruit more broadcasters from our former colonies in the West Indies where wages may be low but the standards of literacy and spoken language seem infinitely superior to those currently obtaining in this benighted land.

John Eoin Douglas

via email

What about the young people?

Re: State pension age to rise from 67 to 68 in 2037.

This is disgusting. How are young people going to get jobs?

This country is going backwards. Everybody should retire at 60.

Vivien Almond

via WP Facebook

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