THE BBC has spent more than £22million on staff “gagging” pay-offs over the last six years – But who and what were they trying to silence?

The BBC yet again proves to be one big cesspit of cover-ups and self preservation.

Most of the deals included clauses preventing leavers from criticising the corporation.

Out of more than 500 pay-offs, 36 were over £150,000, 62 over £100,000 and two were more than £500,000. The gagging clauses have been criticised for preventing whistleblowers from coming forward.

New director general Lord Hall is dropping them and capping pay-offs at £150,000. He said yesterday: “We should be looking at the way we spend the public’s money as if it was our own.”

The report shows that total BBC turnover topped £5bn for the first time last year, with revenues reaching £5.09bn in the year to 31 March 2012, up from £4.99bn. Of this £3.6bn came from the licence fee, with 25.7m households due to pay the £145.50 compulsory annual levy.

So who and what are the BBC trying to silence ?

In the light of the recent Jimmy Savile ‘revelations’ the BBC has been warned it could face a multi-million pound legal bill if the hundreds of women that were abused come forward with compensation claims. These claims could be devastating for the BBC, not just for its finance and legal departments and its future reputation but also for exposing the BBC’s secret and long dark past 

This article is not about Savile. The real story is about the BBC and its appalling actions to try and save its reputation. In October 2012 The BBC said it found NO evidence that its management ignored any allegations of wrongdoing by Savile. Really? We simply do not believe you BBC!

Jimmy Savile – 450 victims contacted police, real abuse total could top 1000 victims. One of the most shocking findings of the report into Savile was that his youngest victim was just five years old. A further eight of his victims were aged nine or under, with mostof his crimes committed against teenagers aged 14 to 17. The figures showed 95% victims were female and 5% were male. Many children were abused on BBC premises. 

We now know that at least 10 BBC employees – DJs, presenters, singers and staff/cameramen were involved in paedophile and rapist Jimmy Savile’s sex ring. Though the real number is probably many more. But we are still getting conflicting messages from the left-wing, permanently-biased BBC. Some people admit that the paedophilia and rapes were a well-known ‘secret’, while BBC bosses claim that nobody knew nothing.

At the centre of the scandal is a certain Esther Rantzen. She now admits that she had ‘heard rumours’ but was powerless to do anything. Pull the other one Esther. At the time of Savile’s sexual predation, Rantzen was one of the most powerful women in British TV and was married to Desmond Wilcox, Head of General Features at the BBC from 1972-1980. A cynic might conclude that Rantzen was just a selfish, publicity-seeking hypocrite, eager to cover herself with glory and get a peerage or OBE or whatever it was she was after for her work with Childline to protect abused children, while she turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to what her friends at the Beeb were up to.

As for the BBC’s former Director-General, George Entwistle, despite about 19 years at the BBC, he apparently ‘knew nothing’ and was been ‘horrified’ by the revelations. Hold on George, you were once editor of Newsnight and it was Newsnight which did an investigation into Savile’s paedophilia and rapes – an investigation that was never broadcast. But you knew nothing! I believe you George Entwistle, but others might not.

Also a REPORT looking into the shelved Newsnight expose into child sex abuse by Jimmy Savile has revealed emails were sent to the director general warning him of the TV presenter’s infatuation with children. BBC chiefs told director general George Entwistle of Jimmy Savile’s sordid past before the pervert died, a damning report revealed. But the corporation chief claims he never read the warning sent in a 2010 email by then head of events Nick Vaughan-Barratt.

However, the repulsive paedophile and rapist Savile may have done us all a favour. His antics have exposed the BBC as a rotten, bloated, self-serving bureaucracy, paying massive salaries and pensions to its managers and ‘stars’ and always out to protect its own. I believe the BBC has lost sight of its purpose – to provide a public service. The BBC should not be trying to compete for viewers with the commercial channels. They are there to produce ratings-obsessed trash. The BBC should be complementing commercial channels, not duplicating what they do.

Perhaps it’s time to halve the bloated BBC’s budget. Then the BBC can close the rubbish BBC3, sell off its ‘hit shows’, let its multi millionaire ‘stars’ go and work for the commercial channels and refocus OUR money on quality news, current affairs, documentaries and drama. It’s time to cut the bloated, paedophile-protecting Beeb down to size and stop it wasting our money.

THE BBC has been urged to remove from its headquarters a figure of a naked boy, created by a sculptor who sexually abused two of his daughters – But they refuse to!

Eric Gill’s statue over the front entrance of BBC Broadcasting House – We have cut the picture of the statue short at the waist for obvious reasons

The carvings of a man and a naked child were the creation of Eric Gill, one of the most respected artists of the 20th century when he died in 1940.

But his diaries, published in 1989, revealed he had sex with two of his daughters and the family dog. His 1932 statue Prospero And Ariel, from Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, stands on the BBC’s Broadcasting House in London as a metaphor for broadcasting