Those BBC workers had a point

I suppose the labour movement should be very happy that the Tolpuddle Martyrs were not led by BBC newsreaders.

This week’s strike has been called off following the intervention of extremely high paid corporation stars such as Fiona Bruce and Huw Edwards urging their badly paid colleagues not to down tools. They were worried that a strike during the Tory conference might be perceived as a slight against the party. Quite – it would be unspeakably awful if the BBC were suddenly thought to have a left wing bias, a real shock to the system.

In general, BBC strikes are a bad idea because a) most people don’t like the people who work for the BBC, and b) assume they are very well paid any way. This is partly because they sound so middle class on the picket line. You cannot stand around a brazier sipping Evian. Or at least you can, but you look a fraudulent idiot.

But they have a good point, the workers who wished to strike. In the main they are appallingly badly paid and usually on very short term contracts. This latter development militates against producers feeling “ownership” of programmes and was almost certainly a contributory cause in all those phone-in scandals of a couple of years back.