The BBC, expenses, and the golden age of journalism

The likes of Sleigh, Heath, Addy, Unsworth and Inglish can only stare in admiration, and perhaps envy, at the remuneration of the BBC's top brass, led by Director-General Mark Thompson, whose pay packet is £664,000, or £834,000 if you include pension entitlements.
And since the BBC is so clearly out of touch with the public mood as far as pay is concerned and so over-staffed it comes as no surprise to learn that executives are giving MPs a run for their money when it comes to claiming expenses. Mr Thompson, we discover, feels it necessary to claim 70p a time to feed parking meters, even though he has his own chauffeur-driven car when on BBC business.
In what could turn out to be a last hurrah for public sector excess, 107 BBC executives managed to claim almost £175,000 in expenses in just three months, an average claim of £1,632. Hotels, flights, drinks, dinners, lunches and taxis were liberally represented on the claim sheets.
I must, naturally, declare an interest. Or, more accurately, a dim and distant past interest.
In the golden age of journalism, circa 1976-1990, the expenses culture was alive and kicking, helped along the way by family-owned newspapers making more money than they knew what to do with and poor managers happy to depress annual wage rises in return for a nod-nod, wink-wink attitude that hacks could make up their money on expenses. And, oh boy, didn't we do well.
On my first day as a trainee reporter I was instructed in the black arts of expenses, being instructed not to forget to claim for a "lunch" if out of the office between 12 and 2 and a tea between 4 and 5. You didn't have to eat anything, in those days lunches were normally in the liquid form, or produce a receipt. Entertaining "contacts" was another easy earner, no receipts necessary as long as claims were kept within reason. No need to name the contact, either, since it was always possible to give the impression of secrecy and clandestine meetings in the manner of Watergate.
And so it went on. Dry cleaning bills could be charged to expenses along with the hiring of dress suits and dinner jackets. The cost of using a call box to file copy, years before mobiles appeared, was another lucrative source of income. Travel by train to London was always first class, justified by the excuse that you couldn't possibly be expected to do any work while slumming it in cramped seats in second class.
National newspaper journalists we came into contact with often boasted, truthfully, of banking their large salaries each month and living off expenses
It couldn't last, of course, although younger colleagues are amazed to learn that it remained possible, even in the early 1990s, for regional newspaper journalists to claim expenses without producing receipts. The gentlemen of the press were trusted to be honest, or at least not to be silly, until penny-pinching accountants took control of newspapers.
BBC staff should enjoy the largesse while they can. With the public sector about to come under the toughest spending cutbacks for years, the Director-General will be lucky to hold on to his car, never mind claiming 70p for a parking meter.