This will be my last piece for The Independent. The BBC is offering a pot of up to £2 million to journalists to ‘compensate’ them for not writing, and I quite fancy some of the action, so I’ll no longer be writing. Cheerio.

What’s that? Oh, I’m sorry. You’ll have to put up with me a bit longer, I’m afraid. It seems I’ve got the wrong end of the stick. The money, it appears, won’t be made available to just anyone. In order to be paid not to write, you have first to be a BBC employee. Welcome to the BBC money pit once again.

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. The likes of John Humphrys, Andrew Marr and John Simpson, who write regular newspaper 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 jobs. They will have to exist solely on the meagre workhouse rates which 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. On their heads be it.”

Mr Marr’s words seem to have a struck a chord with the BBC. The Corporation has realised quite how unreasonable it is being, and 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. 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. The words ‘gravy’, ‘train’, ‘British’, ‘Broadcasting’ and ‘Corporation’ go together like…well, like ‘fleecing’, ‘the’ and ‘public’. Let’s not even talk about the poll tax which forces you and I to pay for the mindless crap which the BBC serves up most nights of the week, and to have its world view thrust at us by some reporters who seem to more interested in pushing a line than reporting as objectively as possible. Let’s leave that one alone for now.

Instead, let’s say hello to Kirsty Wark. Ms Wark is a fine, accomplished broadcaster. 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 she is yet another example of the BBC’s arrogant, sod the public mindset.

As well as being co-founder of Wark Clements, the independent TV production company, Ms Wark was a member of the panel which selected the design for the new Scottish Parliament. How convenient, then, that the company chosen by BBC Scotland to make a fly on the wall series about the building of the Parliament was…yes, you guessed it: Wark Clements. There were allegations before a frame was even shot of a conflict of interest, since Ms Wark could hardly make an objective film about her own decision.

As the project has descended from farce into one of the greatest wastes of public money in history – what was estimated to cost £40 million and be built by 2001 has, so far, cost £400 million (yes, you read that right) and is still not ready – so the allegations have deepened. Ms Wark, you see, has refused to co-operate fully with the inquiry which started investigating the mess in October.

Ms Wark’s company has contemporaneous taped interviews with all the main figures, including Donald Dewar and Enric Miralles, the architect. Since both men are now dead, those interviews are of critical importance. And guess what? BBC Scotland is refusing to allow the inquiry access to the tapes, claiming that it is protecting sources. Since all the interviews were conducted on the record for transmission, and most of the interviewees, and Miralles’ widow, have said that they are quite happy for the interviews to be used in evidence, such a stance is bizarre.

Or, rather, it would be if there was not already so much evidence of the way the BBC behaves.

Think this one through: Kirsty Wark’s company is producing a film for the BBC about a project which for which she was responsible - a project which is obscenely extravagant in its waste of public money - and she and the BBC are refusing fully to co-operate with the investigation into that waste. Nasty smell doesn’t even come close to describing it.

Stuffing two million pounds down the throats of BBC employees to reward them for doing their job, and not doing others too, might indeed be a grotesque waste of public money. But why on earth would anyone be surprised?