In late July, Huw Edwards pleaded guilty to the procurement and possession of indecent images of children. From now-revealed court documents it is apparent that by ‘indecent images’ what they actually meant was numerous pictures and videos of children being raped and molested, some as young as seven.
Given the authoritarian judicial climate of recent weeks, where citizens are finding themselves sentenced to years behind bars for posting impolite Twitter memes, one might have expected Edwards’ punishment to be equally severe.
But apparently not.
On Monday, Westminster Magistrates’ Court handed Edwards a six-month custodial sentence, suspended for two years. In other words, so long as he doesn’t get caught buying any more child porn by mid-2026, he will never actually step foot in a prison cell. Salt in the wound to the children sexually assaulted for his depraved gratification, certainly; but so too for the general public, increasingly alarmed at the disintegration of British law and order, indeed, of the social contract itself.
What justice is this? One might ask… And what sort of message does it send to any other paedophiles out there wishing to share depictions of their depravity?
The subplot, far beneath that of the horrors outlined above, is the BBC itself. Allegations of a Beeb reporter involved in potential sexual misconduct investigations was first published by The Sun in July of last year. Initially the tabloid kept his identity anonymous, and the spotlight swiftly descended on several likely candidates.
Rylan Clark, Gary Lineker and Jeremy Vine soon fell over each other to insist it was not they, but Huw Edwards' silence became increasingly deafening. A few days later, his wife confirmed he was indeed the subject, and said he was receiving hospital treatment for depression as a result.
Shortly before this announcement, and likely because of it, the Metropolitan Police reported it had found no evidence of criminality, and would investigate the matter no further. The Sun then stated they had never alleged criminality on the part of Edwards, which The Guardian described as ‘backtracking’. The Sun added it would cooperate with the BBC's internal investigation and would not re-publish the allegations unless new evidence emerged.
As the scandal seemingly blew over and dust apparently settled, supporters of Edwards rallied to his defence. Prominent among them was Jon Sopel, who stood in front of TV cameras and said - in a comment that has aged like fine milk - “We now know there was no illegality. So what are you left with? Someone’s private life has come under scrutiny, who is now unwell. I think it would be a crying shame if this is the last we see of Huw Edwards on television when the allegations have turned out to be ‘not that much’. And I think all his friends will be wishing him well at this stage, because Huw commands huge respect in this industry.”
This is the same Sopel who, as the BBC’s North America editor, revelled in any and all allegations of sexual impropriety against Donald Trump, spurious or otherwise.
Upon pleading guilty, after all pretence of innocence evaporated, the BBC begged Edwards to return the £200,000+ of taxpayers cash they’d been regularly wiring him since his arrest in November. Director-General Tim Davie has now admitted he knew much of what Edwards was ultimately convicted of from the start but continued paying his obscenely bloated salary in full nonetheless, right up to the moment of his guilty plea.
Yet apparently Edwards has no legal obligation to return a penny. Worse, various employment law specialists, speaking to mainstream media outlets over recent days, have concluded there is likely no legal basis for the BBC recouping any of Edwards' pension payments either; that is, unless specific exemption clauses already exist within his contract. A doubtful prospect.
The result is that Huw will almost certainly be entitled to a pension paying two-thirds of his £480,000 final salary, every. single. year. until the day he dies… you do the maths. Thus you, me, frost-bitten pensioners and even future generations of Britons yet unborn, will be paying to maintain this disgusting paedophile to live a life of luxury for potentially decades to come.
I would urge the BBC to use this as an opportunity to attach certain addenda to their existing contacts and reformulate future ones. Then again, if being convicted of sex-crimes were to preclude one from the organisation’s pension scheme, then perhaps there would be few employees left to enjoy it.
For, as repulsive as Edwards’ behaviour has been, it should come as no surprise to those familiar with the fetid cesspit the BBC is become.
What many have found more shocking is that a civil servant could be paid such vast sums of public money for effectively just reading lines written by other people from a teleprompter.
Granted, footballers and bankers are provided ludicrous salaries relative to their workload, but at least for them the free market sets its own levels. If Man City stopped paying Haaland his due, there are plenty other clubs to which he could turn who would offer him equally as much (or more) for his services. The same could be said for many high-profile bankers, rightly or wrongly, going to other private companies.
The difference with the BBC is that it is taxpayers’ cash being shovelled into their bank accounts, and with precious few exceptions, they could never, ever demand anything similar in the private sector.
When Ricky Gervais first started working at the BBC studios while making The Office, he described it thus - “It’s amazing, there’s just so many people who sit in their offices and been in there for decades, but no one really knows what they do. The only thing I can liken it to is how Australia was isolated from the rest of the world for millions of years, so evolved all these weird and wacky creatures that had no natural predators... They don’t have anyone coming in to say, ‘What are you doing?’ ‘How long have you been here?’ ‘How much are we paying you!?’ It’s actually hilarious.”
Gervais could have just as easily described NHS management, local councils and indeed, all public institutions. After all, it’s not their money.
Yet even Huw’s salary pales in comparison to Gary Lineker’s, who last year earned £1.35 million, all at the expense of Joe Public. This despite his habitual flaunting of the institution’s impartiality rules, as when he recently accused the (then) Tory government of being Nazis for their pitiful attempts at border control.
Granted, the resultant public outcry forced the BBC board to half-heartedly investigate the matter, but in the end concluded Gary had no case to answer, and effectively apologised to him in a feeble public statement.
The usual suspects then revelled in gaslighting social conservatives with a free-speech defence, which Tory leadership parroted; missing (as ever) the entire point that had Lineker been as vocally supportive of right-wing policies as left-wing ones, the BBC would undoubtably have sacked him in a heartbeat. 
Speaking of sports commentators, a close family member of mine who worked at the corporation for many years as a broadcast journalist, informed me it was an open secret amongst BBC staffers that a big-name host was renowned as a lecherous, predatory cad, whom one should never leave young, female 'runners' alone with for any length of time.
Naturally these are just grape-vine rumours from the naughties, and if true then it's likely they’ve since cleaned up their act in the post #MeToo environment, otherwise such allegations would probably have surfaced by now - even withstanding the egregious defamation laws in Britain, which places the burden of proof on the defendant. But in my honest opinion, it certainly wouldn’t be surprising.
After all, it is often the most sanctimonious, virtue-signalling ones in public who turn out to be the vilest of creatures in private: à la Bercow, Jenus, Saville, and indeed, Edwards himself. All of whom were championed by Auntie because, in the words of Meryl Streep when first asked to comment on Weinstein’s own depredations, “But he supports such good causes!”
This is at the centre of the BBC debate. I suspect public attitudes toward these offensively high salaries would be tempered significantly if only the BBC complied with their mandated obligation of ‘free and fair’ reporting, but it has been a very long time since they even pretended to be impartial.
The defence I often hear from BBC staff themselves (I happen to know several) is some variation of the following - ‘We get hate by both sides of the debate so we must be somewhere in the middle.’
In reality, when one looks at the substance of these complaints, it becomes clear that the right criticises them for being too left-wing, while the left criticises them for not being left-wing enough.
People who support the BBC often ask me to provide specific examples of its bias, and such a thing is surprisingly difficult to do. Rarely will the BBC explicitly state their partisan views, rather it tends to be more covert and subtle; how they frame the debate itself, the way questions are asked and who they ask them to, which stories they choose to promote and which they bury in local bulletins.
The BBC are obsessed with all kinds of diversity except the only one that truly matters: diversity of opinion. Tragically, they cannot see their own bias, just like how fish can't see water, it is what surrounds them 24 hours a day. If the only people you ever talk to, in public or private life, have the same left-wing, politically correct attitudes as you do yourself, then one stops thinking of them as ‘politically correct’ and starts to think of them simply as ‘correct’.
I have learned to read between the lines of the BBC woke-filter for many years now - when they say ‘Asian’ they invariably mean ‘Muslim’, unless it’s a positive story of course, in which case they will always specifically say ‘Muslim’ - when they say ‘migrant’ they actually mean ‘illegal immigrant’ - when they say ‘diverse’ they really mean ‘less white and less male’ - when they say ‘London youths’ they mean ‘black gang members.’ And of course, when they say ‘far-right’ they really mean ‘anything that’s not far-left.’
Many white, English people outside of London hate the BBC just as much as it hates them. They also despise the fact they are forced to fund their own flagellation for fear of imprisonment, which is why so many bravely refuse to.
Talk of reform is completely absurd, you’d as well try to reform a boa constrictor into adopting a strictly vegan diet. There is no way to dismantle the extensive Marxist scaffolding that now runs to the BBC’s foundations, without tearing down the whole rotten edifice.
They simply need the lavish state funding to be cut off, if people want to pay for their politically correct propaganda, then more power to them, but the rest of us shouldn't have to risk prison time because we do not.
The BBC is corrupted to the very core, even if they could be saved, which they cannot, they no longer deserve to be. On the contrary, they deserve to have their studios razed to the ground and the earth upon which it stood ploughed with salt so that nothing can ever grow there again. Carthage style.
Only then would true justice be served.
Demosthenes