Chris wins

Poor old Chris (Christina Burns). In the good old days of May last year, before the imposition of a Do Not Resuscitate sign on local radio, she was bullish, as Head of Audio and Digital, BBC England, about the future - and nice Rhodri Talfan-Davies asked her to help with a pension matter. 

The BBC has to continually support a generous/burdensome pension scheme, and thought it might be a cute idea if it could chisel something off the amount it contributes to the Old Benefits scheme, which delivers bigger pensions than the later Defined Benefit Schemes, on the grounds that this was unfair. Fronting the case to staff for this wheeze were Rhodri Talfan-Davies, Director of Nations, and Gautam Rangarajan, Group Director of Strategy and Performance.  They needed an upstanding member of the Pension Scheme to be party a High Court action to test the law, and, crikey,  invited Chris to act as  Representative Beneficiary. 

Yesterday it was announced that the High Court had decided that BBC's preferred tinkering route is not ok. A 'victory' then, for Chris - though perhaps it had more to do with her legal team from Stephenson Harwood LLP (chosen by the BBC) and two specialist pensions barristers, all paid for by the BBC.