"Lucy Adams has resigned and is being required to work her notice period, so she works and gets paid."
What, roughly, is a discredited HR director who has been found to be unable to control her department's expenditure and has been heavily criticised (and, essentially, called a liar) by a parliamentary committee going to do all day? Make the coffee? Expensive coffee, at her hourly rate.
"arrative that every payoff was illegal and purely fuelled by wanting to toss licence fee money around like confetti."
So obviously, if it was agreed to be necessary for the reasons you outline, the BBC will be able to produce the people who made that decision and the minutes of the meetings at which it was agreed, yes? After all, if it was a risk-management issue, there'll have been a process for taking those decisions, and the process will have been followed? Perhaps Lucy could spend the next few months tracking those documents down that she was so unfortunately unable to produce for the select committee?
As I say, I'm looking forward to Monday. We'll see competent, efficient Lucy producing all the documents that show good governance was in place, and we'll see honest, straightforward Mark showing just how well the BBC was run while he was DG. And then they'll go off and count our their money.