BBC DG's £834,000 salary

I heard Sir Michael Lyons on the World at One today telling listeners that BBC Director General Mark Thompson is having his £834,000 salary frozen for 3 years. Poor man, doesn't your heart just bleed for him?

It also came out the Mark Thompson earns 60 times the salary of a junior Grade 2 employee working outside London who'd be on around £14,000.

Once again it makes you wonder about the sensitivity of people in 'high office'. I mean how can Sir Michael Lyons believe that this news about Mark Thompson will elicit sympathy? Or was in any way a good example to justify how tough the BBC is being with its employees.

And how does Adam Crozier sleep at night knowing that he earns £3million a year while his posties - the ones who do the real hard graft - are on so much more lowly wages.

And I feel the same really about MP's spouses who are now creating about the fact they may be banned from working for them in future. If it's true that they've been on £30,000 a year, how come? The average pay for most secretaries is surely much more likely to be around £18,000 so how come MP's partners are entitled to so much more?

What really bothers me is the lack of sensitivity, the lack of empathy. People on huge salaries never seem to stop and think how they come across to the rest of us. They don't seem to feel embarrassed at all. Do you really think someone can believe he is worth £3 million? Particularly when he seems to be so spectacularly bad at people management....?

One can only imagine that their general attitude is that they think they're worth these big salaries; that they think they're somehow special.

I wonder if the thought never occurrs to them that gross inequality matters, that it sends a bad signal to staff and society in general, that it can contribute to bad staff relations and divisions in society?