So, just how DO you compare chalk with cheese?

The equal pay for equal work row currently embroiling the BBC is very, very intriguing as it raises an interesting, and very important, issue – how DO you compare chalk with cheese?

I don’t mean to be flippant as people doing the same job deserve the same rewards. And this is relatively straightforward with straightforward jobs.

For example, when I started out in journalism as a junior reporter, we all earned the same weekly wage.

After two or three years training, upon reaching the heady heights of senior reporter, you all went onto the same pay - whatever your gender.

Thereafter the playing field was not quite so level as jobs basically the same paid different salaries depending on location, size of publication, what you could negotiate etc. etc.

But, in general, pay in the same organisation was equal when it was easily measurable.

The equal pay for equal work row has been simmering at the BBC for some time but only really hit the headlines when China editor Carrie Gracie resigned after discovering she received considerably less than male BBC editors in other countries.

But how do you compare the role of editor in China with editor in the USA? What measurements are being used? And which is chalk and which is cheese?

Is the male counterpart being paid too much or the female not enough?

My view is that the top salaries paid at the BBC are way too high and there should be a cap.

Discuss.

Flew with Jet2 for the first time this month on a quick visit to see some friends who now live in Cyprus.

What a pleasurable experience compared with another airline I may have mentioned in previous rants. In particular the customer service.

On arrival to check in both in the UK and Cyprus there were excellent Jet2 customer service reps on hand.

When we last flew Ryanair, to Berlin in September, check-in for the return journey was chaos.

Just one desk open, with no indication of which flight was being checked in, several hundred passengers for three or four flights queuing, passengers being sent to the back of the queue when reaching the desk as their flight was NOT being checked in.

It comes to something when a passenger (yes, it was me) has to act as Ryanair customer services by finding out which flight the one desk WAS checking in and then relaying this to the massed crowd to avoid people having to go to the back of the queue.

You couldn’t make it up.