YP Letters: No excuse for vast salaries of TV stars

After watching on TV the salaries being paid to some of the so-called personalities I, along with many more viewers, will be shocked and asking why? Every viewer in the country should be asking “why is all this licence money being wasted on people whose main job is to read off an autocue”?

There is no wonder we are being served up with programmes dating from as far back as the 1940s, 50s and 60s. Stop paying them these extortionate salaries. If they are not happy, let them go, there are thousands of people out there who would jump at the chance of one of these jobs and would do a equally efficient job, these so-called stars are not worth these prices.

Let the BBC be the training ground for the industry, we don’t want these people being paid more in one year than many working class people will never be paid in their lifetime, if they want the wage gender gap to come down, then pay these greedy male employees less and give us value for the licence fee.

Top Gear should have taught the BBC that high wages is no proof of a programme’s success.

From: Dai Woosnam, Woodrow Park, Grimsby.

One has to admire BBC Director General Tony Hall for deflecting the absolutely justified outrage at these crazy salaries, by bringing in the smokescreen of the gender gap, so that he can appear to be the knight on a white charger who rides to the rescue of the fairer sex.

No my dear DG, we do not need more women earning obscenely high amounts: we actually need fewer men earning more than the Prime Minister. And indeed come to think of it, every Prime Minister in my lifetime has been overpaid too.

And paying anyone a penny more than a hard-working London bus driver for the undemanding job of reading an autocue (like Fiona Bruce or Gary Lineker), is an outrageous waste of taxpayer funds. Indeed that tax on televisions – known as the BBC licence fee – must surely now soon join Nicolas Ceausescu’s typewriter tax, in the dustbin of history.

From: John Eoin Douglas, Spey Terrace, Edinburgh.

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

Heavy price of library cuts

From: John Wylie, Stannington Road, Sheffield.

Voluntarisation of Sheffield Library service on is having an impact both on staff and library users.

Many library users, to whom library staff were trusted friends, have seen friendships and trusted working relationships between ruined, all for short term savings the council could have found elsewhere.

Sheffield councillors and library volunteers seem unaware of the added strain of job insecurity, stress, anxiety, and depression on Sheffield’s remaining library staff, who have to work knowing that decision makers thought nothing of replacing colleagues at 16 branch libraries with volunteers.

It is a tribute to Sheffield’s remaining library staff that despite all they have had to put up with in recent years, they continue to do such a wonderful job. They must be under so much strain. My heart goes out to them.

Beckham at the Palace

From: Peter Teal, Thorne, Doncaster.

I have recently read a report where the ex-footballer, millionaire David Beckham, was allowed to use part of Buckingham Palace to hold a party for his daughter’s sixth birthday.

It is suggested that the Queen would not have been very pleased to put it bluntly. I personally would beg to differ.

Although it will not be revealed I believe one of two things occured. Firstly Her Majesty actually gave permission. Perhaps Beckham ‘chipped in’ towards the cost of refurbishment due to take place at the Palace. Or secondly, she turned a blind eye to it, in view of the fact that apparently her son the Grand Old Duke of York was behind it all and it would appear that whatever he says goes?

Outwitting greedy gulls

From: D Powell, Thornes, Wakefield.

With reference to Mr Roy Dresser’s letter,(The Yorkshire Post, July 18) re: seagulls taking food from children’s fish and chips.If you eat ‘al fresco’ stand with your back to a wall or building. This denies the gulls room to manoeuvre. It does work I’ve tried it out!