Mark Andrews: Huw Edwards' pay rise, and Zarah spreads the love

Due process has to take place, and everyone should get a fair hearing. The time to sack him is when the allegations are substantiated, and not before.

What I don't understand is (a) why the job of reading the news warrants a salary of £479,000, three times that of the Prime Minister. And more pertinently, (b), whatever was the justification for giving him a near 10 per cent pay rise?

Are they so out of touch that they can't see how this looks to the millions of licence payers earning less than the £40,000 Edwards got just as a rise? Or do they think people in the private sector get 10 per cent pay awards too?

Yes, we all know inflation soared following the Ukraine crisis, and many found themselves struggling to make ends meet. But, I would suggest, Huw Edwards was not among them.

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"The enemy of the working class travels by private jet, not migrant dinghy," says Zarah Sultana, the, ahem, controversial MP for Coventry South, presently suspended by the Labour Party. Good to see somebody is working hard to soothe the tensions then.

It never occurs to people like Miss Sultana, who seems stuck in the mindset of the student-union debating society, that viewing people with a different outlook or background to yourself as 'the enemy' is exactly what fuels unrest in the first place. An unhealthy obsession with class warfare doesn't particularly help, either.

I don't see anybody as 'the enemy', well not many people, anyway. Rather, I see differences of opinion and problems that need addressing.

Which is what I thought was what MPs were paid to do.

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It comes as little surprise to learn that Miss Sultana is quite prolific on social media. And her list of perceived 'enemies' does seem to be on the lengthy side.

The Tories, obviously. And Nigel Farage, and 'Zionists'. But it's the list of people on her own side she has a grievance with which is surprising.

This week she laid into 'sneering' Ed Balls, Labour grandee Jack Straw and former shadow cabinet member Jon Ashworth. A few years ago, she said she would celebrate the death of Tony Blair.

Reminds me a bit of the episode of The Likely Lads, when Terry Collier summed up all the different groups he had an aversion to. His mate Bob concluded the only person Terry really liked was Terry Collier.