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Is BBC business editor Robert Peston now running the UK economy, or merely ruining it? I ask this having endured watching him droning away on The Ten O’Clock News and reading this latest entry on the BBC news portal. He hails the Brown £50bn bail out as our banking system is partly nationalised, suggesting that it will make the banks stronger and more ready to lend. It’s been interesting to see a lot of criticism across the blogosphere directed the BBC’s way over the hysterical financial grandstanding by Mr Peston and his apparent admiration for Labour. We are not alone.
The BBC has nothing to lose from ill-informed reporting.It’s not as if they’ll ever go out of business for getting things wrong is it?
BBC news is as good as most BBC output. It’s as good as Eastenders, Top Gear and W*nker Ross.
Peston is a fucking moron. However, what’s even funnier is watching the BBC trying to defend the EU which as we all know has been an utter failure.
Now I hear that the fat one eyed jocks bail out plan has got to be approved by the EU???
I can’t see the Germans, French or Italians bothering about what the EU thinks.
Where’s the European central bank in all this?
George Bush looks like he’s doing a good job compared to the fat one eyed asshole in Downing Street.
and on newsnight right now is
vince cable.. again…
and of course Robert Peston is nowhere to be seen.. considering that he made the markets decline by several billion..
ah – to be a beeboid and to not have to answer for it.
Archduke 10:52
“Peston is nowhere to be seen”. That’s funny, every time I switch on the BBC, his stupid face seems to be there.
It seems an incredible coincidence that he broke the following stories :-
1. Northern Rock.
2. HBOS
3. This week’s bank rescue.
It really is too much of a coincidence.
And Ken Clarke. Cable knows his onions you know. He is a pretty serious economist by training.
And has Newsnight got for us? Four Lefties in search of a clue. Not a genuine free-market opinion to be heard.
Ken Clarke? He no lefty. Free-marketeer to his boots
Nationalise everything… let’s take the final step and put a wall around the whole of Europe. The Soviets did it with East Germany back in the 50s.
Oh, wait… they don’t want a wall. We need a solution which lets millions of people in and none out.
‘He is a pretty serious economist by training.’
WWL – Check iain dales blog for an example of how cable hasn’t a clue.
whitewineliberal reveals his respect for the clueless yet again. Cable is an inconsistent fool, switching opinions (in true LibDem style) almost daily.
Guido had him nailed, a month ago.
http://www.order-order.com/2008/09/over-rated-vince-cable.html
Economics PHD, ex chief economist at Shell. Like Clarke, he speaks from a position of knowledge; even if you don’t agree with him.
“…and on newsnight right now is
vince cable.. again…
and of course Robert Peston is nowhere to be seen..”
Your not suggesting that Peston and Cable are the same person are you? LOL
whitewineliberal: What a wanker you are. Why would someone pack in working for Shell and end up in a third rate turd hole called the Lib Dems?
And who gives us our expert opinion? Everyone’s favourite music-loving, economically-ignorant, sycophantic Trotskyite Newsnight “Economics Editor” Paul Mason. Another typical Beeboid- totally ignorant, politically over-active, and incapable of providing centered journalism.
It’s despicable that the BBC’s flagship current affairs programme has someone covering the credit crunch and complex economy issues who has not even studied a relevant issue to degree level. Jobs for the boys, methinks. Bring back Randall…
whitewineliberal | 07.10.08 – 11:08 pm |
He is a politician of the left – therefore his “breif” is to push for his political agenda. They should have an independent economist to “analyse” the present predicament – now would’t that be novel.
Last night, newsnight had Lamont, the German ambassador and some old chief economist geezer from UBS discussing the EU’s response. Good enough for you?
No, WWL, I want balance every night.
If your chums at the BBC insist on the right to dip their greasy hands in my pocket, then I demand that they represent all shades of opinion – not just those of Islingtonistas like you and tonight’s Newsnight panel.
whitewineliberal: Perhaps you’d like to tell us the EU position on this mess? The BBC won’t.
If there is one good thing to come out of this its showing up EU unity for what it is, a total fiction.
If Gay Gordon takes it to the EU and the EU say Niet then that will be the final straw.
When the shit hits the fan no other country in this fictious union gives a fuck what the EU says.
UK is the only one who has ever played by the rules and we always lose because of it.
whitewineliberal | 07.10.08 – 11:14 pm
The answer is No – it is not good enough. I don’t want to hear one sided opinion no matter who spouts it – I want balance – you know the stuff that is in the BBC Guidlines about impartiality. I want to hear all sides one after the other so I can make a judgement. It is not the BBCs job for people like Peston and Harribin et al to give their opinions – I don’t care what they think.
Niallster: Couldn’t have put it better.
Peston has a apparent admiration for people that do as they are told, and follow the correct agenda. Labour are currently doing very well at the moment in this regard so why would anyone at the BBC wish to not support Gordon Brown?
The agenda is getting us into the Euro, kicking and screaming if needed, apart from other things.
Economic collapse is not on Pestons agenda as he knows it is as inevitable as Monday following Sunday. Mainly as he was clearly told it was, possibly years ago. So how on earth can he now make the situation worse? He is most likely thinking.
All the BBC really has to carry on doing is hiding up the identity of those who are behind the situation. Which is the same people who run the BBC and this site it seems.
The Bank of International Settlements which controls the almost the entire worlds money supply, is a PRIVATE bank owned by a very small amount of almost infinitely powerful people.
These chaps employee the best minds in the economic field money can buy. The best minds do not make elementary economic mistakes, that is why they are the best minds.
These people clearly have the control over the system already. They don’t need more of it and they certainly don’t deserve or need a bail out from the tax payer.
What we need, but will not get under any circumstances or what ever assurances we may be given.
Is a new NATIONAL currency TOTALLY free from private hands, and governed under strict constitutional regulations fully open to independent accounting and not easily manipulated, mob rule control.
It may sound difficult or indeed impossible, but it has been done before in free countries to make them MORE FREE. In theory it could happen within a week and would most surly save the world from a fate worse then death.
Free market economics dictates that virtually the worst thing that can happen to the correct functioning of a wealth producing economic system is MONOPOLIES of all and any kind. We do not even have to have a single currency whether it is called a Pound Euro or anything else. We could even trade in barter if it where not for the tax man.
If we are to have private banks at all they must all be able to issue and circulate their own notes if they wish. Or the system is effectively already a Monopoly Communist/fascist one, or is one waiting to soon happen.
Given the above Adam Smith type logic.
Do you not think it strange that Conservatives that are supposed to believe in a free market. Go on the media at a time like this without mentioning that monopoly banking laws, as ALL MONOPOLIES are NOT in anyway good for anyone at all except the monopoly holders and the politicians they can easily afford to buy, whatever the cost?
Niallster | 07.10.08 – 11:29 pm | #
Although my friend I fully understand why you believe everything you state is true. Europeans see things a very different way. They see the problem as being us the British, and our corporate capitalist, acutely imperialistic, banking disease.
They of course fail to understand that although the British establishment are the largest players the European establishment is very powerful as well and totally in on the deal.
I regret to say that IMO divisions at the top of the EU pyramid are generally stage managed events with predetermined outcomes. As a close look at what has actually happened in reality as opposed to what was said to be going on, by the BBC , would clearly show.
We are where we are now, a little late maybe, but here all the same. Which shows that it was all inevitable, however impossible we once thought/hoped it would be. We are going through a time when many seemingly impossible things are already happening, with I fear, plenty more to come.
My mother spent some of her time living under one of Hitlers bombing runs. Some of my family took a shower and never came out alive again. So I may be above sensitive about these sorts of matters, and spent far too long studying them.
But I still think it wise that you trust the BBC about as much as you would trust the worst of the mafia about anything at all. Please try not to just believe the bits you want to.
The BBC is all essentially lies, propaganda and disinformation. The best way to never get anything right about what is actually going to happen in the world. Is to base any opinion at all using mainly only information promoted on the mass media, the BBC especially.
For example
If you used advice from the BBC to help make any type of good investments anytime over the last 70 odd years, you should be just about as broke as it is possible to get by now.
Cable is the only person who actually has some ideas on how to get out of this mess. He actually understands economics (unlike most of the bankers).
These Bank CEOs who we are told are paid vast salaries because they are so clever, yet not one of them has come up with a solution to this crisis.
And why would they? They get big fat bonuses even if they fail, so they make no effort.
The City and Wall Street operate according to politically correct nostrum of rewarding failure. We see this in the disgusting behaviour of AIG’s top brass; failure is rewarded.
Banks who get bailed out by the taxpayers, their CEOs should be forced to live on the minimum wage.
You cannot be in favour of bailouts and opposed to regulation without being a hypocrite.
Grant | 07.10.08 – 10:57 pm |
It seems an incredible coincidence that he broke the following stories :-
1. Northern Rock.
2. HBOS
3. This week’s bank rescue.
It really is too much of a coincidence.
Yes, especially since Peston has been suggesting #3 all week long on his blog. He even soiled the name of Walter Bagehot, by claiming that Mr. Brown is doing anything resembling Bagehot’s dictum to lend at a high or “penalty” rate as a way to mitigate moral hazard–that is, to help maintain incentives for private-sector banks to provide for adequate liquidity in advance of any crisis. (this last bit from here)
To be fair, he did call it “nationalisation by stealth”, but then goes on to say how necessary it is, and all those merchant bankers whining about Mervyn are the ones who just don’t get it.
Small wonder he’s endorsing it now.
I have been trying to grasp the function of debt working successfully in capitalist/banking driven systems.
Seems it can, though I have always personally operated on a ‘don’t spend it if you cannot afford it’ model.
But it seems this mysterious mechanism is mirrored in many ways with our media… at least some of it.
So much I hear is what I ‘will’ be told, derived from the gossip of ‘reputable’ sources, interpreted by ‘serious’ commentators who may or may not know the ‘right’ folk and/or be able to assess what they are saying is trustworthy.
Hence we seem to be in an era of news futures.
What if the PM did not end up saying what I was informed he ‘would’?
Is it not more sensible to have news that goes out based on what ‘is’ as opposed to what, at best ‘might be’?
Are the pols and some media so inter-twined that meeting a broadcast deadline seems to require making things up to avoid dead air: pre-PR PR?
In my business there is a saying: ‘better to get it right than in a hurry’.
Though, so far, I am seeing neither promptness or accuracy from the politico-media establishment.
With the only victims being those whose pay and pensions are not under slightly different, and more secure systems.
I have also just had to write to the BBC Breakfast News to make a small but, to me at least, important point following an empathetic statement from Sian Williams:
That’s ‘…how much MORE money the taxpayer is stumping up’.
I seem to recall we have already had our pockets dipped into already.
And Mr. Brown would be well advised to remember that they are not bottomless.
George Osbourne on bBC breakfast. Oh how differntly he got treated to Darling and Cable.
As soon as he said “We’ve not here to tlak about how this Government got us into this mess…” and Bill Turnbull but across him in an indignant way.
Just a thought (as I learn that ‘we’ are guaranteeing savings in Icelandic banks as their government isn’t – can I get compo for my investing in a Zimbawean veteran’s collective a few years back as they were offering 1000%?)…
If a major plank from our major planks is the principle that you don’t give bonusses out as a matter of course to senior executives for overseeing p*ss-poor performances, might one wonder if that applies across the board?
Quangos, Local Authorities… a certain competition-free, yet commercially-active, publicly-funded, national broadcaster…?
James Landale outside Downing St has blamed city banks for the speculation driving the market down.
ie not the wankster R.Peston or J.B.Brown
Daily Mail on Peston:
“Does this BBC man have too much power? Reporter blamed for helping trigger shares fall”
[Extract]:
“The BBC’s Robert Peston was accused of helping to trigger the tumultuous fall in UK bank shares on Tuesday by breaking news of a private meeting between the Chancellor and bank bosses.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1072549/BBC-reporter-Robert-Peston-blamed-helping-trigger-shares-fall.html
I wonder how Peston will explain the continued fall in the FT 100 and banking shares today, so far ?
Doesn’t look as if the market has much confidence in the New Labour “bail-out”.
“Economics editor Robert Peston, whose BBC blog has some of the best and most insightful credit-crunch coverage”. Biased BBC a few weeks ago. It could be worse – it could be that terrible chap on Newnight.
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/celebrity/robert-peston-transformed-into-pure-energy-200810081310/
Mr Peston has many fans….
Peston transformed into pure energy;
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/celebrity/robert-peston-transformed-into-pure-energy-200810081310/
Disraeli | 08.10.08 – 12:18 pm | #
Is there a link to that, please?
I’m trying to figure out if that is or is not to a comment on this open blog by a person.
And hence really not quite this odd collective entity ‘Biased BBC’ some keep trying to conjure, and that keeps cropping up for some reason.
Just watched 1 1/2 hours of “The Daily Politics” and it was a complete Peston-free zone. Could this be the beginning of the end ? Of Peston, I mean, not the recession.
Funniest bit was when Nick Robinson pointed out that even the BBC pay bonuses and Andrew Neil quipped “A lot of people out there would like to see the end of them “.
Just a thought but, couldn’t the Government fund part of the bank “bail-out” by flogging ( I mean selling off) the BBC ?
Also scrap the licence fee, thereby delivering tax cuts.
Desperate times call for desperate measures.
Cogly 12:52
Thanks for the link, nice one. “Peston’s atoms are now woven into the fabric of the Universe”.
Oh, if only !
Now Robert Peston is sagely explaining why HBOS shares are going up while other bank share prices are falling. He says it makes perfect sense because of confidence from the £50 billion, and because HBOS’s imminent doom was prevented. Meanwhile, others, such as Barclay’s, have to go find expensive capital. So it’s only natural.
All the comments I could stomach were praising the master, almost like students around Socrates in a bad re-enactment on some history program.
The rise in HBOS shares wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that their price has been artificially low because your idiotic scoop caused them to tank, now would it, Robert? Then when Lloyds saw the opportunity to do the acquisition they had been working on since July….oh, sorry…once Mr. Brown recommended that they come in and rescue HBOS, obviously the share price would go back up. Which it has been doing for days already, I think. Yes, Robert, I’m quite sure the deal is looking better for Lloyds by the day.
Nice one, Robert Peston. Tank a stock by spreading insider information, then use your position to explain it all away.
If anyone here did this they’d be busted by yesterday.
David 3:58
Thanks for the link. I just read Peston’s blog with mounting incredulity, then had to laugh out loud when he writes “this may sound like gobbledegook”.
Well it does , Robert, because that is what it is.
I would love to see Peston’s personal, family, trust and associates share dealings over the last few months and , especially, the last few weeks !
Grant: Do you really think he’s bright enough?
I am aware of the pitfalls of Wikipedia, but would recommend the entry for Robert Peston, for a good laugh if nothing else.
Highlights :-
1. Son of Labour Peer, Baron Maurice Peston.
2. Worked “briefly” as a stockbroker before becoming a journalist.
3. Comment by Alistair Campbell, “Another question from the Robert Peston School of Smartarse Journalism”.
All- in- all, the entry makes it pretty clear that Peston is totally steeped in the Labour party, so surely too biased to work for the BBC ?
Grant | 08.10.08 – 4:20 pm |
All- in- all, the entry makes it pretty clear that Peston is totally steeped in the Labour party, so surely too biased to work for the BBC ?
He’s the biographer of the Prime Minister, and his last book was about Mr. Brown’s economic prowess. Peston has insider connections in The City from his FT days and previous, as well as obviously being able to place a phone call to No. 10 when necessary.
His position is a dangerous one, and today’s blog post shows him covering up his own dirt.
David 4:20
I was being a little tongue in cheek with my comment Peston “too biased to work for the BBC ” !
In reality , he has the perfect credentials.
Anon 4:19
Peston is probably not bright enough, but there may be some one pulling his strings, saying something like ” Now Robert, this is what you say today on the BBC and in your blog. Don’t worry about the share dealings, we’ll take care of that for you. “
Michael Howard has complained to the FSA about Peston. Have a look on Guido
http://www.order-order.com/
Peston’s job is like that of Moses in “The Ten Commandments”, he comes down the mountain to give us poor ignorant people the words of Almighty Gord.
Think of him as “Charlton Peston”.
Susan 5:00
Great news, thanks for the link.
Maybe Peston will have to change his name to “Pissedon” !
DV’s post is the first one mentioned in this Guardian News Blog post about Peston:
Robert Peston’s interest rate rises
This blog has been ahead of all of them, including Guido.
David 5:28
Good for the Guardian and David Vance getting a mention. Shame they didn’t say it was on “Biased BBC”.
On New24 last night the presenter said something like: ‘that was the influential Robert Peston’ and then turned to another business correspondent and said to her, before asking her any questions: ‘No loose talk, now.’It seems to be an in-joke with them. On Guido they think he may be getting it all from Darling’s press secretary.