Tabloid money… the NHS sponge soaking up our pay packets

⬤ The new register of external interests is “deeply unpopular” with the BBC’s “newsreading stars”, who regard it as a “gross invasion of privacy”, says Alison Boshoff in the Daily Mail. It is causing a “brain drain” of presenters defecting, with “twinkle-toed” Dan Walker (pictured) the latest to walk out the door. “All will no doubt be relieved that they no longer have to confess how much they have earned, and from whom.” Walker has shown a keen interest in “’moonlighting’ – adding to his BBC riches with lucrative corporate gigs”. The register shows that, since records started in 2020, Walker has undertaken six “corporates”, each worth more than £5,000. Walker, who took part in Strictly Come Dancing last year, is thought to be adding at least £50,000 to his £295,000 salary by joining Channel 5, “and he can look forward to filling his pockets on the rubberchicken circuit without anybody poking their nose in”.

⬤ “You can analyse our present economic crisis… until the cows trot up the garden path, but it comes back to one problem – energy,” says Frederick Forsyth in the Daily Express. If we had ample energy, we could “plunge our prices and pay off our debts”. But the “fiasco of our Covid-handling” and 20 years of government “bone-idleness” has scotched that. Britain should be looking into wave power, geothermal energy, shale oil and gas, and carbon capture. Instead, “we have devastated our landscapes and seascapes with hideous wind turbines and covered green acres with black sheets”. We have gone cap in hand to the Saudis, and plunged ourselves into near bankruptcy. The energy crisis is not on the horizon –it’s here.

⬤ “Cash-squeezed” taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for the “bureaucratic parasites” of the NHS, says Trevor Kavanagh in The Sun. “What do NHS diversity managers do all day for their £40,000 salaries? Are ‘equalities chiefs’ actually worth their bloated £90,387 a year?” The money should instead be spent on more doctors and nurses. “The NHS has exploded from a cradle-to-grave healthcare system into a gold-plated monster guzzling ever-increasing chunks of our wages in return for ever-declining healthcare.” The “clapped-out colossus” of the NHS is now “perpetually on the point of collapse”. The chancellor has “snatched” another £13bn from our pay packets in tax. “The extra billions will simply be absorbed by the vast NHS sponge.”