Working lunch or two

Busy Friday in the BBC Press Office - Controller BBC 1 is Danny Cohen, to which we will return. But there are also bits and bobs to mull over on salaries and expenses.

The annual disclosures of top salaries are out (as at August 2010) but there's no helpful spreadsheet to make easy comparisons. The spin is that by September, the headcount of senior managers had fallen by 7.4% against a target of 20% to be achieved by the end of 2011, and the senior manager paybill was down 12.2% against a target of 25%.

In the expenses disclosures for the first quarter of this year, Mark Thompson flew to Sun Valley for around £4,800, and popped into Le Meridien, Dubai for £160. Mark Byford flew to Washington and New York, for £3,800.  Alan Yentob was less mobile, but a flight return to Nice for £822 must have cheered him up. Lunchs/drinks over the quarter run at a meagre 8, but he's taken to reporting taxis on a weekly basis. Stops the list looking very long.......

When did the "long knife" planning belong ?  HR head honcho Lucy Adams claimed £187 for a "succession planning working lunch" in April, followed by £164 for "lunch hosting senior leaders on succession planning" in June.  We'd have to find what was written on the napkins at the time to prove it, but I bet the official plan didn't include taking Lucy off the Executive Board.