Earnings

A crowd-pleasing judgement from the employment tribunal looking at Samira Ahmed's claim for equal pay: she wins because the BBC didn't prove to the tribunal's satisfaction that the jobs presenting Newswatch and Points of View were really different, and therefore should have been equally paid. You'll note that the judgement doesn't set any new principle here; just that the BBC's legal team were not convincing enough.

The BBC’s legal team claimed that Points of View relied upon Jeremy Vine’s ability to have a “glint in his eye” or to be “cheeky”. The panel dismissed this argument, stating: “We had difficulty in understanding what the respondent meant by a ‘glint in the eye’ and how that translated into a ‘skill’ or ‘experience’ to do a job. How does one acquire such a skill or experience? In any event, the light hearted tone and any cheekiness were achieved primarily by the script being written in a particular style. The attempts at humour came from the script.”

So now Samira can look forward to nearly six years' worth of back pay. She's calculated it at £700k.

Perhaps if the BBC had argued that the two jobs were different in scale, exposure, risk and reputation, the case would have been better made. Otherwise stand by for a rash of claims from non-league football managers claiming they're doing the same work as Jorgen Klopp.

Not a good run for the BBC's Group General Counsel, Sarah Jones (£278k p.a.) - losing expensively to Sir Cliff and now this....