Carrie Gracie resignation

Carrie's principled stand has earned her a huge amount of respect within the BBC (amongst men and women alike), and a large number of people will care about her future treatment, as it is indicative of how they may be treated.

I don't think nobody cares about this situation. There are people out there, and not a lot of them are in our community, who are really passionate about this equal pay issue. But there is a certain lack of enthusiasm generally when it relates to the BBC, and high profile people. There's a level of "meh"-ness about this story.

Where the passion really is is at lower pay levels, mainly minimum wage up to around £30,000 a year. Once you get over £100,000 a year, the enthusiasm about the situation just isn't there.

Yes I think that's absolutely right. Fair enough if people on lower incomes are being paid unequally for the same role - but when you're talking in the hundreds of thousands it smacks of greed. The fact that someone who is already paid handsomely by a publicly funded institution has demanded and received a massive uplift (regardless of the back pay going to charity) will not gain much interest or sympathy with the public. Not when you've got public servants of all genders on low incomes whose wages have been frozen for years, or at best have received below-inflation wage rises. It just shows how out of touch some of these people are.

I think in this case it has just all come across as someone with an overinflated ego when it comes to her own self importance. Yes, that might be common in the industry but I just can't see the logic in the two roles being seen as comparable, and that is before you add in the higher profile Jon Sopel (and Jeremy Bowen, who as a result of this is surely due some back pay too!) had before they took on the role. In many ways it is exploiting a wider genuine issue for personal financial gain.

I agree - it is very difficult, if not impossible, to make the comparison between two different editor roles. The only way this whole case would have been plausible is if Jon Sopel and Carrie Gracie were both North America Editors and she was paid less than him. The actual situation would be the same as comparing two nurses working in completely different departments. Not having worked in the NHS, I'm not sure, but one would imagine a nurse working in A&E would probably be paid differently than a nurse in another department, for instance.

Add in cost of living comparisons and your money goes twice as far in China as it does in the US. Not sure where tax is paid if you're an international correspondent based in one country but the tax rate is slightly higher in the US too.

Nurses are paid equally throughout the NHS on the basis of the seniority of the role and the proportion of out of hours work done. A&E is often staffed by a greater proportion of more senior nurses, but should any of those nurses move to an equally senior role with equal out of hours work in another part of another hospital, their pay would be the same. The same is true of doctors employed by the NHS (and, for that matter, Civil Servants).

All as a general rule, obviously there will be odd exceptions around the edges that prove the rule.

Some nurses / doctors / Civil Servants leave for better pay in the private sector, others stay out of a sense of public service or loyalty, some stay because they don't have the talent to compete in the private sector, some stay or leave for a smorgasbord of other reasons.

In some ways, the question for the BBC is whether it wants to apply that "public sector" model of grades of equal pay with minimal flexibility (and if people want to leave for a better rate in the private sector then sobeit), or whether it wants to compete more directly with the commercial sector and pay "market rates" and use financial incentives to retain specific talent.

I understand why she did why she went public and am glad it seems things worked out. But on the other hand I don’t think I would be taking six months off so soon.

Edit : I will say it was nice that she donated the salary difference (I am of course wondering how much it was) and this also is a lesson that to get things in writing.