Vueling Flight VY6307 1350hrs Bilbao to London Gatwick Airport

I've been having strange dreams these past two nights, dreams I can't really remember a great deal about. One involved Mulder from the X Files appearing from inside one of those office water coolers, that was a bit weird, I can tell you. There were others, but I can't recall them exactly. None of them were fretful. It must have something to do with being ultra-chilled out last night in the hotel (see previous post). I really must make a point of reading more often instead of watching television. In fact, I haven't looked at any television or, for that matter, newspapers, since Sunday last week. In that sense, you could say that I've been minding my own business and simply getting on with the business of getting through the days, travelling from city-to-city by train, checking into hotels and engaging with various people along the way. That's probably why I'm so chilled out. I haven't been subjected to media crap, be it television news bulletins, talk radio shows like LBC or chat shows or awful programmes like The One Show with it's horrible presenters and guests. Already, you can see that by just thinking of them all, I'm getting a little ratty. That said, my current chilled out state of mind saw me sail through security without getting irritated and now, at 1100hrs I'm sitting in Giraffe on the air side of Bilbao airport sipping tea and eating, yes, I know, a chocolate croissant. I didn't want any of it, but I needed somewhere to sit down so that I could pass the time of day for a little bit. There's not much here to be honest, only Giraffe as far as I can see and couple of high-stooled bar operations. 

I awoke early and then fell asleep, waking again at 0724 or something along those lines. I showered and headed downstairs for another great breakfast and then I returned to my room to start packing away. This didn't take me long and then I headed for the airport in Taxi number 232. It was only around 20 minutes.

Outside, the skies are blue, which is nice to see and, oddly, I'm sitting in roughly the same place I was sitting the last time I flew out of Bilbao. How do I know that? Because there are four conifers that were there when I was last here a few years ago. On that occasion, I'd been further west along the coast at Aviles, green Spain they call it and it is green, not sun-scorched and barren like down in the south.

I'm flying back with Vueling and I have a window seat, seat 17F, that's on the right hand side of the plane. They're a good airline, I've flown with them once, possibly twice before. I do need to find out what gate I should flying out from, that should be on the notice boards soon I hope, in fact, I might go and look now just to see if I'm in the right place, I'm likely not to be. Hold on... I can't find anything that gives the flight details, it's not even on my boarding pass, although it might be Gate B10. I'm in Boarding Group Two and we start boarding at 1310hrs, that's a good two hours from now.

It's amazing how there are blue skies on one side of the airport and grey cloud on the other side. And guess which is which. Yes, you guessed it, the air side where the planes take off is the cloudy side. Of course it is! 

That Bilbao airport has a Giraffe restaurant is great news, but I won't be using it for more than that tea and croissant and I won't be having any in-flight snacks either. The fact that I'm flying into Gatwick means (hopefully) no circling over the airport for hours until a slot to land becomes available. It also means I'm down the road from where I live. Well, not down the road, but it's much easier than Heathrow. I'll probably get the train to East Croydon and cab it from there.

I might come back here once I've established that my plane will take off from a "B" gate. There's a crappy 'jazz' version of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen playing and it's not at all festive. I want my Christmas carols sung properly by a choir, not some second rate jazz band.

Christmas beckons. One more week at work, which should be pretty chilled, then I'm off and I can relax and not think about work stuff. I'll certainly be reading, as I've found a new author, although he's not that new, his name is Eric Ambler. He's old school, his novels feature people who sport a pince-nez and the last time I enjoyed a book of this ilk it was way back and it was Graham Greene. I love Greene, Our Man in Havana, A Burnt-Out Case, Ministry of Fear, The Quiet American, Stamboul Train, The Heart of the Matter, there's many of them and I've read most of them. Ambler writes along similar lines but without the obsession with Catholicism.

I'm going to take a wander, but might well come back here later to either add more to this blog post or to have something to eat, although I very much doubt the latter; more likely I'll be back here updating this post, but in all honesty I can't think of what I would add, I was clutching at straws anyway.

The flight home was fine, no turbulence and, once above the clouds, clears skies and even clearer skies as we approached the UK. We flew over Brighton and I could see the pier clearly and then, within a few minutes we landed. I was so engrossed with Eric Ambler's Epitaph for a Spy that I was the last person to get off the plane, well, almost. I found a Pret a Manger, ordered tea and an avocado and egg mayo baguette (my lunch) and finished it before catching the train to East Croydon and a cab home.

For all of my Spain posts I'll sort out photographs on my return to England as for some reason I had a technology meltdown in the hotel room and now I have to 'browse as guest' to be able to access the blog.

BBC salaries fiasco – and what a fiasco!

How terrible that some BBC presenters are getting paid ridiculous sums of money for jobs that are not in any way important in the greater scheme of things. How can it be right, for example, that Alex Jones and Claudia Winkleman are earning more than, say, a heart surgeon, or any surgeon for the that matter.

Winkleman

Now, before anybody gets on their high horse and starts berating me for not dealing with the bigger issue (that the lion's share of the big Beeb salaries are taken by male presenters) I don't want to get into the gender arguments; I just want to discuss the whole value equation because there must come a time when the sum of money paid becomes meaningless. Take yours truly, for example. If I was paid £500,000 per year based on my current lifestyle, there's no way I would get anywhere near to spending it all. I'd be able to save a good £400,000 per annum if not more because, let's face it, who really needs more than £100,000 per year? I get by on far less and I've got all the outgoings of most people: kids, mortgage, bills, the usual stuff.

My opinion is this: there are people, like Andrew Marr, Andrew Neil, the big political journalists like Laura K, Nick Robinson, John Humphrys, Emily Maitlis, Kirsty Wark and so on who bring something special to the party. They know their stuff and can be called upon to give our politicians a good grilling when required. And there are, of course, other experts, people like Chris Packham, but outside of that, the big salaries for television presenters are obscene and shouldn't be paid. Not to somebody who is simply presenting a programme like The One Show or Strictly Come Dancing.

Look, I'm not saying that Alex Jones and Claudia Winkleman are doing a bad job, they're not. They are probably good at what they do, competent presenters, they've been trained up, they know what they're doing, but surely £450,000 to £500,000 per annum is simply too much for what they do.

The BBC could save a lot of money if they employed me to present The One Show. How much would I demand salary-wise? Well, let's say, at the top end, £100,000, but certainly no more, and I'd be happy to take a much lower starting salary, let's say £75,000 all in. But not just me, there must be people out there working in, say, regional television, that need a big break and would be prepared to do the job for far less. It simply can't be that difficult! Certainly not difficult enough to command a £500,000 salary. The One Show is basically a series of small reports by the likes of Gyles Brandreth, Dominic Littlewood and others, broken up by a live studio guest or two, somebody like Michael Palin, who might have a new book to publicise, and Baker and Jones make small talk in between the outside broadcasts from the aforementioned journalists. It's on for about 30 minutes tops and yes, I'm sure there's prep work to do during the day before the show airs (knowing the running order, knowing who the special guests are, working out some sensible questions to ask them) but that is not rocket science and if it was you can bet your bottom dollar that a rocket scientist is paid far, far less than Baker and Jones.

Alex Jones of One Show fame

In short, the BBC are wasting licence payers' money and I for one would love to know how they arrived at such big salaries for Winkleman and Jones and some of the others. I mean why did they pay Jonathan Ross around £6 million per annum and why are they paying Chris Evans a couple of million per year? He presents a radio show! He has enough money already! I'd love to present a radio show for two or three hours a day, but hey, no more than £100,000 per annum. Nobody needs more than that.

What was going through the minds of those charged with the task of deciding salaries? What formula was in play that enabled them to arrive, without flinching, at some of the salaries that were revealed last week? Somewhere, did somebody say, "Right, well I reckon £500,000 per annum would be a fair salary for Alex Jones, and as for that Winkleman woman, she can have the same – or thereabouts." And everybody in the room nodded affirmatively, somebody stamped a piece of paper and the rest is history.

As I write this I'm watching Would I Lie to You?. Winkleman is on David Mitchell's team and they've got to the bit where a live guest is invited on the programme and all the panellists make claims that they are in some way truly connected with the person. Winkleman says that the man standing to her left is her builder and he dropped round to Winkleman's house (which he built) because Winkleman thought he might be able to help her fix the television. The end game was that there was nothing wrong with the television – the remote needed new batteries, that was all. And this woman is earning the best part of half a million quid every year. It's incredible! Even if she earned HALF that amount it would still be too much.

And before anybody says that Winkleman isn't really stupid, she's got an Oxbridge degree, I know, I KNOW!!! But that's not the point. The point is that she (and Alex Jones and many others) are doing a job that simply doesn't command such a high salary. There are so many other professions that would command that sort of salary, but not television presenting.

One of these days there's going to be a revolution: corrupt politicians fiddling their expenses, journalists hacking the mobile phones of murdered school children, zero-hour contracts, the empty  promises of our political leaders, the list is growing and now we can add BBC television presenters – they're not corrupt (perhaps some are), but some of them are earning far too much for what they do. Somebody, sort it out! Think of the money that could be saved.