Harriet Cass and Charlotte Green to leave R4

[DracoM]

My immediate thought on reading this news was a flicker of hope that Clemency Burton Whatsername and Katie Derham could be seduced into taking their places on R4.


Pleeeeeease!

[umslopogaas]

Like I suspect many others, I feel I know these two, but of course I dont, I am just very familiar with the sound of their voices. In so far as the BBC has suffered an unexpected loss of two presumably valued staff, I think it has fallen foul of the same redundancy trap that two organisations I used to work for also fell into. Redundancy payments are based on years of service and final salary. If both numbers are large, the payment can be very large indeed. As a result, when the organisation imposes a redundancy scheme to reduce the wages bill, it finds that some experienced and senior staff that it didnt expect or want to lose turn around and say "yes please, that will do nicely." You cut out some dead wood, but at the expense of also losing some valued people.

On the positive side, if senior people do take the money and run, it opens up promotion prospects for more junior staff, which in hierarchical organisations can be frustratingly rare. This depends of course on whether the organisation can find the money to pay them.

[Lateralthinking1]

Like I suspect many others, I feel I know these two, but of course I dont, I am just very familiar with the sound of their voices. In so far as the BBC has suffered an unexpected loss of two presumably valued staff, I think it has fallen foul of the same redundancy trap that two organisations I used to work for also fell into. Redundancy payments are based on years of service and final salary. If both numbers are large, the payment can be very large indeed. As a result, when the organisation imposes a redundancy scheme to reduce the wages bill, it finds that some experienced and senior staff that it didnt expect or want to lose turn around and say "yes please, that will do nicely." You cut out some dead wood, but at the expense of also losing some valued people.

On the positive side, if senior people do take the money and run, it opens up promotion prospects for more junior staff, which in hierarchical organisations can be frustratingly rare. This depends of course on whether the organisation can find the money to pay them.

I note your comments. However, the BBC is a public organisation which like all others is undergoing reform.

I had accrued rights to compensation of 25 years. Gordon Brown tried to ignore them and was told by the courts that he was acting unlawfully. The Coalition was elected and immediately changed the law.

The sum of money that I took at the end of 2010 was based on my salary. However, it made absolutely no difference how long I had been there. 2 years or 40 years service - they were treated as the same.

[cloughie]

My immediate thought on reading this news was a flicker of hope that Clemency Burton Whatsername and Katie Derham could be seduced into taking their places on R4.


Pleeeeeease!

Or maybe offered redundancy!

[amateur51]

Or maybe offered redundancy!

They'd be fine on Radio 2 and then I wouldn't have to hear either of them again

[umslopogaas]

#18 Lateral Thinking, that's interesting, obviously not all organisations are the same. In one case at one of my old employers, a friend who was not particularly senior, but had been with the organisation for a very long time, was offered voluntary redundancy and found the offer too good to turn down. Ironically, after a year of failing to find another job and with the redundancy pay-off dwindling, she re-applied to the same organisation for a different job, and after some muttering in the HR department, she got it.

[Lateralthinking1]

#18 Lateral Thinking, that's interesting, obviously not all organisations are the same. In one case at one of my old employers, a friend who was not particularly senior, but had been with the organisation for a very long time, was offered voluntary redundancy and found the offer too good to turn down. Ironically, after a year of failing to find another job and with the redundancy pay-off dwindling, she re-applied to the same organisation for a different job, and after some muttering in the HR department, she got it.

Yes - That was my position, the fact that the years counted, until June 2010. The "voluntary" scheme was introduced less than a month later. The two facts are directly linked.

There is a length of time that one officially has to wait before reapplying. But while I could work under Thatcher, Major, Blair and Brown, I could not work for this Government.

There has never been a time when I have agreed with zero per cent of Government policy. That has been the case in the past two years, other than in the areas when it has been forced to backtrack.

I will be voting Labour for the first time ever in a General Election.

Anyhow, good luck to Harriet and Charlotte. I see that Moira Stuart was too old for a while and now she is believed to be the best paid woman news reader on BBC radio.

The decision on her pay must have been taken because Thompson had his burgundy socks on or it was a Thursday.

[Resurrection Man]

Depression can't be helped. Rudeness can. I don't like your rudeness.

The thread did not start on a positive note. Perhaps you might read things more carefully.

Person X gives person Y £5 if he leaves "voluntarily" now. X also says that he could make Y leave next month and give him 50p. That isn't voluntary. It is a threat. It is happening to a lot of people. It happened to me. And there's nothing positive about it.

This is particularly true when only a month earlier, X was legally obliged to pay Y £15 if he left. That happened to me - and it is happening to many others - too. (For 50p, £5 and £15 - read whatever figures you wish).

If we don't dance around merrily naturally, perhaps you might like to vote for those who will order it.

No doubt you voted for this kind of thing anyway. If you did, thanks for the burglary.

No need to be patronising. The thread started with the announcement that they are taking voluntary redundancy. It then expanded on to how highly they were thought of and how much they will be missed. That is reasonably positive in my view. You then brought your own set of value judgements into play.

But how do you know that that is what happened?

Has it been reported in the press?

Were you present at the meetings?

If so then I apologise unreservedly. If not then while I sympathise with your own personal experience, I do not see why everything you write about has to be always about doom..doom and gloom and how the nasty Right is doing this and the Nasty bosses are doing that.

[Resurrection Man]

Thanks. You are right. I really don't like the personal attacks that are occasionally made here. Some can't seem to focus on the issues and the decision makers. Perhaps there is a type who enjoys the fact that it isn't face to face.

I believe I said that "supposedly ten of the twelve news readers on R4 are remaining. That most don't stand out, as in jarring, is a good thing". That was my position on the current remaining news readers on R4 yesterday. And it's my position today.

Yes and nothing wrong with that. However you then went on to add this little gem...which is based purely on hypothesis and your own worldview

Harriet and Charlotte can't have been paid much. It is the cheap ones who are axed in "voluntary" arrangements. Those with the dulcet tones of a Moylesie stay on. They show that the BBC still attracts the sophisticated. Their pay is obviously linked to the deep concern that they will flounce off to Radio Honolulu (Best of the Eighties) Gold FM 94.9.

As I said, how do you know how much they were paid?

[Sparafucile]

Evening,
I shall miss Charlotte's creamy tones very much.
I recall with delight an episode of The News Quiz from a few years ago when Alan Coren said how much he enjoyed hearing Charlotte read a news-item that had the word 'penis' in it

A News series of The News Quiz has just got under way this evening, repeated at 12.30pm tomorrow. I expect both Charlotte and Harriet to receive a good send-off!

[kernelbogey]

Reverting to, ahem, the thread topic. I don't agree that the other newsreaders are unmemorable: Neil Sleat, Kathy Clugston, to name but two, are excellent. And I always find Peter Donaldson outstanding in timbre, pacing and above all pronunciation: one of the few people on Radio Four who never elides syllables - 'secretary', for example, always a four syllable word with a nice rolled 'r' into the bargain! He reminds me of John Snagge who was always wheeled out to read the news when something really devastating had happened - the king dying, for example .

[Lateralthinking1]

No need to be patronising. The thread started with the announcement that they are taking voluntary redundancy. It then expanded on to how highly they were thought of and how much they will be missed. That is reasonably positive in my view. You then brought your own set of value judgements into play.

But how do you know that that is what happened?

Has it been reported in the press?

Were you present at the meetings?

If so then I apologise unreservedly. If not then while I sympathise with your own personal experience, I do not see why everything you write about has to be always about doom..doom and gloom and how the nasty Right is doing this and the Nasty bosses are doing that.

I probably write about as wide a range of topics as anyone here. You will find constructive contributions on both arts boards, world music, the proms, jazz, the Radio 3 schedule, the Rajar figures and more. So the statement "everything you write about has to be always about doom..doom and gloom and how the nasty Right is doing this and the Nasty bosses are doing that" is actually untrue.

I don't intend to go into the politics here in detail but as you mention "the Right", I have written on the forum about the person I consider to have been the best Prime Minister in my lifetime. It's Harold Macmillan. I also opened a tribute thread on the death of Norman St John Stevas. And I have been pretty thoughtful on Ron Paul with whom I don't tend to agree but think is noteworthy for having a distinct philosophy. The best Prime Minister in my view since 1979 was Margaret Thatcher. I also consider that she was the worst Prime Minister by far between 1945 and 1990. This too is documented. Actually she treated Civil Servants well.

So it seems to me that you have a view on my politics that is not accurate and I have to ask myself why you have especially seized on the posts about recent politics. Might it be that you have some irritation that there are people - I would say many - who think that the Right is now nasty and the bosses are now nasty to an unprecedented extent but you yourself don't agree?

We will have to differ in our interpretation of the initial post. Neither of us knows the detail. There is no more reason why Charlotte Green should be ecstatic about leaving than there is that she should feel dismal. But I thought that the tone of the original post reflected the poster's own view of sadness or regret that both newsreaders should be leaving. On that basis - a listener's point of view - I concluded that the news as initially presented in this thread wasn't wholly positive.

If there has been no substantial reform of compensation in the BBC, then the BBC will have escaped the fate of the Civil Service, Local Government, the NHS, the Police and the Armed Services. I doubt that seems very likely. And just as I will comment wherever I happen to be for years to come on MPs whose first instinct was to grab as much taxpayers' money as possible, so I will bring to light the realities of this Government's disloyalty to servants of the country and the disloyalty of Gordon Brown before it.

One Conservative MP spoke last week about tearing up a long-term agreement with the words "it's just a stupid contract". We could all follow that example and bring the private sector to its knees within weeks but contracts tend to be in the wider interest too. The fact that we continue to pay our bills is no longer that we all believe in two-way decency but that the country would otherwise collapse. Time will tell if those who require our money will deserve to be honoured as consistently. They need to change.

Are you yet in a position to acknowledge the factual information I provided on planning permission?

[gurnemanz]

I still pine for Patricia Hughes who I once glimpsed in the flesh doing the announcing for a BBC Lunchtime Concert at St John's, Smith Square several decades ago.

[amateur51]

I still pine for Patricia Hughes who I once glimpsed in the flesh doing the announcing for a BBC Lunchtime Concert at St John's, Smith Square several decades ago.

Same here :sigh:

[kernelbogey]

I still pine for Patricia Hughes who I once glimpsed in the flesh doing the announcing for a BBC Lunchtime Concert at St John's, Smith Square several decades ago.