Once again you have to ask serious questions about the BBC’s news bulletins which reduce a story to the very minimum in such a way that the facts are so distorted that they give the listener or viewer a very misleading idea of events.
Welfare minister Lord Freud has been heard to say that ‘disabled people aren’t worth the minimum wage.’
I was listening in the car to the BBC news and surprisingly managed to keep on the road as my eyes were rolling rapidly in amazement at yet another Tory foot-in-mouth balls up.
And yet…I had an entirely wrong view of events and of what he had said, the full context that gave meaning to his words. being missing.
Even the BBC agrees the BBC is wrong……
The BBC’s political editor Nick Robinson said it was important to understand the context of the conversation and that Lord Freud was not arguing for a new policy of routinely paying people less than the minimum wage.
He said one interpretation of Lord Freud’s comments was that he was “thinking aloud” but suggestions that the minimum wage could be undercut would seem “heartless” and come back to “haunt him”.
But as I write this the BBC has this on their front page…
Lord Freud: Disabled people ‘not worth full wage’
This is the entire report on that page…
A welfare minister said a small group of people are “not worth the full wage” and could be paid £2 an hour.
And though there is a fuller description yet again it fails to produce the full wording.
Damon Rose, from the BBC’s disability blog Ouch! having read the full transcript can make up his own mind and says in his analysis:
It’s perhaps understandable that Lord Freud might want to think outside the box to allow desperate disabled people to shine and get a real job with a real (if low) wage which for some may be preferable to remaining at home, isolated, looking forward to a life on benefits. ……Lord Freud sounds like he was raising an important debate, but has muddied the waters with what sounds like disrespectful language.
So perhaps Lord Freud may have a point….it’s just that his phrasing, ‘not worth the minimum wage’, was thoughtless and crass.
In fact the BBC on PM with Eddie Mair (17:07) did cover this story in depth, asking ‘Does Lord Freud have a point?’
It was only on hearing the full story that I was able to understand exactly what Freud had said and what it was that he in fact meant by it…..unfortunately the programme had on a very hardcore disability campaigner who had no interest in nuance or a measured and reasoned response…but she was kicked into touch by the second guest who explained the issues in a more rational way that put things into perspective…..a perspective missing from BBC news bulletins which went more along the path that the campaigner took.
Here is a transcript (From the Daily Record not the BBC) of what went on at the meeting when Lord Freud ‘mis-spoke’:
In a recording passed to website Politics Home, Lord Freud is heard discussing the plans.
The conversation took place between Lord Freud and a Conservative councillor from Tunbridge Wells, David Scott [who asks if ‘mentally damaged’ disabled persons need to be paid the minimum wage….]
“You make a really good point about the disabled. Now I had not thought through, and we have not got a system for, you know, kind of going below the Minimum Wage.
“But we do have … You know, Universal Credit is really useful for people with the fluctuating conditions who can do some work – go up and down – because they can earn and get … and get, you know, bolstered through Universal Credit, and they can move that amount up and down.
“Now, there is a small … there is a group, and I know exactly who you mean, where actually as you say they’re not worth the full wage and actually I’m going to go and think about that particular issue, whether there is something we can do nationally, and without distorting the whole thing, which actually if someone wants to work for £2 an hour, and it’s working can we actually.”
After he finishes speaking the two carry on their exchange, with Mr Scott telling the peer that “no-one is willing to pay the Minimum wage” for disabled people to work.
Scott: “They particularly want to work because it does add so much to their lives…”
Freud: “Yes.”
Scott: “…being able to do something. And actually being employed in a job actually gives them so much self-esteem, but nobody is willing to pay that Minimum Wage. And then we’re supporting them massively financially, but we also want them to work, for their own self-esteem and everything else.”
It is quite clear that the disabled people Freud is talking about are people who are severely disabled and unable even to do the same work as less disabled people and therefore might find themselves completely unemployable in the normal course of events, and that in order to give them a more fulfilling and interesting life it might be necessary to offer them a job where they do what they can with the employer paying what they can afford whilst the government tops up the rest.
So Eddie Mair and PM did do a good job in finding the answer to the question ‘Does Lord Freud have a point?’. Unfortunately all that good work counts for little when BBC news bulletins strip away all the context and produce a barebones report that not only is misleading but is enormously damaging. Something that all too often the bulletins are prone to do.
Time perhaps to retrain its bulletin writers and even lengthen the bulletins if a story merits a longer, more nuanced explanation as this one certainly does considering the ramifications.
Only shows it depends upon, what a news editor of the bBC decides to do with the story. The ambush already laying in wait for Ester Mcvey by the politics show; or the Eddie Mair show where a more considered view is taken.
I was surprised that PM took the time to investigate the ‘story’ more thoroughly but not surprised that the news bulletin immediately following reinstated the Labour party line.
It is a well-tried format, often used on Andrew Marr’s programme where a politician’s words are almost instantly stripped of context/nuance and fed out by the resident news reader.
The story also illustrates another constant of leftist politics, the re-definition of words, in this case ‘worth’. If one worker can do a better job in half the time then by any common meaning of the word that worker is ‘worth’ more; that the employer has to pay the same wage or that all workers are ‘equal’ under the law is neither here nor there.
It is common to blame the politicians for the state of politics in the UK today, and they are to blame, but only because they let the media dictate the often false agenda. It isn’t the “Yah, Boo” in parliament that annoys me, it is all this trivia that the media feeds us. For example a politician only has to address a formal dinner, “Ladies and Gentlemen…”, and a host of special interest groups are mobilised to complain about ‘offence’ and ‘unacceptability’. None of them actually heard the remark or were aware of the context but that doesn’t stop the media feeding the frenzy without regard for the consequences.
The most important consequence is that no sane politician dare stray from the approved PR-vetted policy and that means no debate and no connection with real life. Damn the media.
Seems like a clear BBC/Labour ambush scenario otherwise why sit on this for weeks until PMQ day? Of course, Miliband cocked up the denouement, as one would expect, but the Beeb had the Freud recording ready to roll, which is suspicious. I was very sorry to see Andrew Neil playing a part in this, though.
Be careful with this, because the BBC news first reported what Millipede had claimed at Prime Ministers Questions. Cameron made a complete hash at answering it, talking about the minimum wage, and then becoming very angry and falling back on his usual excuse, his disabled son.
In the absence of further statements, and further information, they reported what they had, and I’m not sure that falls under the heading of bias.
Twice in recent weeks the PM has lost it…over this and Labour’s appropriation of the NHS (and their collective amnesia over Stafford – Cameron was a Tory candidate for the Stafford Constituency before he was eventually elected)
His emotion was genuine. When people speak about uncaring conservatism, he is entitled to evidence his values with his own genuine experiences. It’s not as though he goes out to find a real person on Hampstead Heath…or he thinks that he needs to mug up on Eastenders to learn what ordinary people are watching (without watching it himself).
Guy Fawkes has an interesting follow up story to this…
Pots and kettles?
http://order-order.com/2014/10/15/labour-backed-4-a-day-pay-for-mentally-disabled/
This is typical left wing agitprop, and it is thus not surprising that the BBC is a willing co-conspirator.
Anyone with any knowledge of economics can tell you that if you set a legal minimum price for labour, then any person whose labour is not worth that arbitrary price will not be able to sell their labour. If anyone disagrees with me on this then I trust they would be willing to buy five pound notes from me for a tenner. If not, they can hardly complain that employers are not willing to enter into the same bargain.
Quite right. I don’t think there should be a minimum wage. Of course if all the communist/socialists/fascists/marxists/progressives/greens et al wish top up the wages of what they might call the deserving poor, from their own pockets then I wouldn’t dream of trying to stop them. Conversely, I object to these same people presuming to dig into my pocket to fund their fantasies.
It’s typical of the beeb to make a huge issue out of this event, the whole saga stinks though. Why did labour wait two weeks before exploiting the conversation? Why have the media totally misconstrued Freud’s comments, thus giving the average watcher a totally distorted view? North Korea would be proud of the beeb’s biased reporting! This guy used to advise labour! Coincidence they have ‘outed’ him? Someone in that paedophile loving party must have known his feelings on the subject.
They have made him look like the sort of person who would kick a disabled person out of his wheelchair out of pure cruelty. As for Milipede, what an embarrassment he is to UK politics..and that’s saying something! To shout ‘nasty party’ at a man who’s deceased son and father were disabled is about as low as you can get.
There was actually a guy on who mentioned that there are plenty of other countries who pay the disabled less than the minimum wage for the type of work that they do and that it made no economical sense for a company to install all the H&S equipment needed for each different type of disabilty and then have to pay them the same wage as an able bodied person who’s work output would be higher. It makes sense to me.
I’m all for helping disabled workers to be able to contribute so I’m looking forward to milipede’s plan to employ them in a hugely bloated public service where, along with every other shirker..sorry..worker, ethnic minority, illegal immigrant, gay or lesbian, etc,etc. they will receive a 10% pay rise every year. How happy the bbc will be.
“Why did labour wait two weeks before exploiting the conversation?”
Because it takes that long for Ed Milliband to make a decision?
Because labour are the nasty party. Always have been, always will be.
So you seem to be saying the BBC provided full and informed coverage which allowed you to come to your own conclusions. Well done
The bulletins are by their nature necessarily brief of course but we’re not told what they actually said are we? Links to everything but. And if you came away from it with a particular perception, is the bulletin to blame?
Yes it is the headline pushes one line edited out of context if you think that is acceptable then your are an fool !
Mat, not certain how you managed to reply to Jerry Fletcher. I could not find a single intelligible sentence in the whole of his entry.
Channel 4 also gleefully gave it a good airing last night, with a disabled “activist” laying into Freud, supported by a “film-maker” who seemed to me to also be a leftie activist.