Unsettling

There are still many contradictions in the BBC Executive's position on Carrie Gracie's pay.

We learned yesterday that, after James Harding 'had gone on bended knee' asking Carrie to be China Editor in December 2014, it was left toFran Unsworth, Head of Newsgathering, to agree terms. Fran said Carrie asked for £150k; they settled on £130k, which was £2k more than that paid to  then North America Editor Mark Mardell. This reads like an acceptance that the jobs are of the same scale and scope.

By April 2014, Fran has moved from Newsgathering to be Director of the World Service group and deputy to Mr Harding. Mr Mardell is moved to presenting on Radio 4 (where his salary still doesn't break the £150k disclosure rule). The salary for new North America Editor Jon Sopel is set by new Newsgathering Editor, Jonathan Munro. No agent was involved, and Mr Sopel transferred to the post on his existing salary, sanctioned by a remuneration committee chaired by Anne Bulford.

Ms Bulford didn't seem to quibble at the case, which put a spread of around £100k on the five international editors.

The argument as to why Jon should have retained his previous salary is entertaining and now wrong. Lord Hall, with Carrie and her two children sitting in the row behind, tried to argue that there should still be a hierarchy of Editors, paid at different rates but within a narrower band. Ears in various solicitors' offices will have pricked up when the DG said 'different amounts' of work were involved.

'Impact' was also an issue for Lord Hall, which had Ms Gracie bridling. Does Jon Sopel have more of this than Mark Mardell ? Does a two-way on the Ten (audience c5m) have more impact  than a feature on the Ten, World Service and World News (audience up to 100m) ? And how many correspondents are there to share the load in Beijing and Washington ?

And we learned yesterday that Ms Gracie's grievance was heard by David Holdsworth, departing boss of News  in the English Regions (departing or redundant with the transfer of his fiefdom out of News ?).  Carrie described his findings as 'nine pages of spin and error'.