She is also a leading member of what’s known as the Scotia Nostra – the Scottish establishment, which appears to exist first to scratch and then to cover each other’s backs. And you can get it if you go to work for the BBC.But how are we, the poor readers, to be compensated for our loss? How will we cope without our weekly fix of what Mr Marr described last week as “wittering on about Chopin and Attlee”? I am bereft.Not that anyone should be surprised by any of this. This will be my last piece for The Independent. The BBC is offering a pot of up to £2m to journalists to “compensate” them for not writing, and I quite fancy some of the action, so I’ll no longer be writing Cheerio

This will be my last piece for The Independent.

Let’s not even talk about the poll tax which forces you and I to pay for the rubbish the BBC serves up most nights of the week, and to have its world view thrust at us by some reporters who seem to be more interested in pushing a line than reporting objectively.Instead, let’s say hello to Kirsty Wark Ms Wark is a fine, accomplished broadcaster. The words “gravy”, “train”, “British”, “Broadcasting” and “Corporation” go together like .. well, like “fleecing”, “the” and “public”. But there are 100 times as many people with HIV in South Africa – 5 million as opposed to 50,000 here. It is in South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Zambia that the global emergency is most acute.Nor does HIV in the future primarily threaten Europe: it is looming over the rest of Africa and then India and China, where the refusal of the authorities to face the facts is contributing to a dangerous situation.Saturday’s concert in South Africa was an important event, and declaring today World Aids Day should help to spread awareness throughout the world in the increasingly global culture. On their heads be it.”Mr Marr’s words seem to have a struck a chord with the BBC The corporation is offering “compensation” for … for what, exactly? For not moonlighting? For not doing another job? For going home when they’ve finished work? Nice work (nice not work, I suppose) if you can get it.

They will have to exist solely on the meagre workhouse rates that the BBC pays them.The poor dears! How could the BBC be so unreasonable as to hire people to do a job, pay them well for it, and then refuse to allow them to do another job on top?As Andrew Marr put it in his column last week: “The Marr finances are evenly balanced: the first proclamation of austerity will mean the food supply for our blameless, respectable and somewhat nervous guinea-pig, Mr Snuffles, being instantly stopped If they could only see the expression in his trusting eye But, enough. The likes of John Humphrys, Andrew Marr and Jeremy Clarkson, who write regular columns – for which, one imagines, they receive healthy remuneration – in addition to their day jobs, will no longer be able to share their thoughts with us outside of their BBC work. In order to be paid not to write, you have first to be a BBC employee. Welcome, once again, to the BBC money pit.After the fiasco of Andrew Gilligan’s allegations against the Government in the Mail on Sunday, the BBC has decided to bar its employees from freelance moonlighting in the papers.