Well another day on “Today” and another guest appearance by Vince Cable. I’m wondering how Vince has any time for his constituents given his numerous visits to the BBC? How they love to hear Lib-Dem words of wisdom, this time on the imagined great evil of “short-selling“. Vince, as per required script, put the boot in on the “dangerous” short-sellers. I wonder if the BBC has lost George Osborne’s telephone number as it would be nice to know what Her Majesty’s Opposition thinks about this?
THE CABLE GUY
Bookmark the permalink.
I was listening to 5 Live on Monday lunchtime and he was being introduced as a potential Chancellor in a “Government of National Unity”.
I guess that the BBC’s view of a GNU would be anyone who agrees with their line, so Vince would be the ideal condidate.
Steve 9:06
I suspect that the BBC’s nuLab masters have ordered them to float this idea to prepare the public for Labour refusing to call a General Election on the grounds of “National Crisis”/ recession/ terrorism etc.
Shove a few tame Lib Dems like Vince in the cabinet along with a few spineless Tories and, Bob’s your Uncle, job done.
Stalinist Brown will do anything to avoid an election and to cling to power.
Cable is NEVER off the BBC. Thing is the man is full of shit and hasn’t got a clue. Very ‘BBC’ I guess then.
I live in this man’s constituency SW London and I can tell you – if any of my friends and neighbours are anything to go by – that they can’t wait to give him a kicking in the next Election. He is associated with a very unpopular LibDem council of eco bullies, car haters and who mistakenly believe that we all read The Guardian and are there to serve them, rather than the other way round.
Vince Cable has inherited Menzies Campbell’s crown as king of the BBC’s microphone.
And is equally clueless.
Immediately in the wake of the 1997 election, the BBC took a decision to award a huge increase in coverage to the Lib Dems. It was as if someone had thrown a switch.
I imagine it was part of a ‘let’s bury the Tories forever’ programme – much as was then being promoted by ZaNuLabour gauleiters, Mandleson and Campbell.
It continues to this day, with Lib Dems being given airtime out of all proportion to their electoral significance.
I don’t agree that VC is completely clueless. He knows an awful lot about ballroom dancing. Maybe he could take over from “doddery” Bruce Forsyth as the next host of Strictly Come Dancing.
cable was going on about the short selling that put HBOS in a mess.
He obviously didn’t know that the short selling transactions (which have to be declared) were for only 3% to 8% of the HBOS shares.
Not enough to make a difference.
In fact, I am certain that the fsa only banned short selling in order to be seen to be doing something (anything!) and to distact attention from their multiple, culpable failures to act as regulators. brown jumped on it and therefore the beeb is obliged to keep the lying pantomime going.
La Cumparsita 12:59
How about Vince partnering John Sergeant in ballroom dancing ? That should pull in the viewers.
I have to say cable is pretty sound some of the time – but cant they get a decent “expert” who isnt an mp????
No?
Thought so……
Grant
What a mental image that conjures up!
Still, could do with a laugh in these difficult times…….
He did dance with Alisha Dixon on TV
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=TS3cSXigmLM
“He obviously didn’t know that the short selling transactions (which have to be declared) were for only 3% to 8% of the HBOS shares.
Not enough to make a difference.”
Are you joking? 8% of shares being shorted isn’t enough to make a difference??!!
Shorting as a transaction isn’t a bad thing at all, in a perfect world it would just add to the efficiency of the market. Unfortunately in order to be efficient the market needs to react to fact rather than dubious rumours leaked to make somebody a killing and it’s very hard to regulate against this sort of thing, particularly in a hysterical bear market.
Cockney | 06.01.09 – 2:00 pm
You didn’t make your case – you’ll have to do better that a string of !!!!s.
Activity on only up to 8% of shares couldn’t have brought about the downfall of HBOS – something else was going on.
Short selling can only have been a symptom/indicator not a cause and not a very reliable indicator at that.
My main point remains: the fsa imposed the ban as a form of misdirection from their incompetence and brown and (therefore inevitably the beeb) gratefully jumped onto the bandwagon.
Radio 4 this morning excelled in its support for Labour – even by their standards.
The newspaper review carefully selected all they anti-Tory stories, we got the Guardian, Independent and Daily Mirror responds to Camerons tax proposals – all extremely negative of course.
Then we had Nick Robinson parroting the Labour party line about the Tory tax cuts, i.e. claiming it would results in a huge reduction in public spending. This in BBC eyes is always automatically a bad thing of course. Strange how the BBC never bother to analyse Labour Party announcements – e.g. Gordon Brown’s recent pledge of “100,000 new jobs” simply sounded like the BBC was reading out the Labour press release.
Labour has announced countless billions of increased spending (more accurately taxing) in recent months, no BBC analysis deemed necessary. Yet when the Tories announce proposals costing £4 billion the BBC are up in arms. Their line so closely follows the Labour Party attack strategy that it’s hard to imagine they are not working together to destroy the Tories.
1000 jobs to go at Marks & Spencer, and the BBC is furiously putting a positive spin on it. “It’s vital to set this in context” announces Robert Peston; “only two per cent of the workforce”. All other gloomy economic information gets the same treatment. So plummeting shop sales are “not as bad as feared”, collapsing pound means “good news for exports”. Always looking for the silver lining in any cloud – I’m sure it keeps Labour Party HQ very happy.
“Vince Cable at the LibDem Conference
“The Government must not compromise the independence of the Bank of England by telling it to slash interest rates and generate another dangerous inflationary ‘bubble’.”
Vince Cable on Sunday
“What is required is for the chancellor to write to the governor saying that on a temporary emergency basis the committee should assume a central role in countering the crisis with a large cut in interest rate.”
http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2008/10/weathervane-politics-of-vince-cable.html
Vince Cable is just an old doddery slap head twat. He changes what he says every day.
No one takes his seriously except the tosspots at the BBC.
More Labour spin, faithfully reported by the Beeb.
“Hospital mobile bans can be eased”
Which in BBC-Land is more important than;
“More than 3,000 people have died as a result of patient safety incidents in just one year in England, figures show.”
Language Martin. Cable is certainly a twat, and that is condemnation enough, but your choice of adjectives was gratuitous and offensive.
I am an old, doddery slap head (although I deny being a twat), and there is nothing wrong with that.
Bodo 2:54
Nice point about Peston’s 1000 jobs only 2% of the work force. And the economy is only set to contract by 2% this year, so nothing to worry about there, then.
He is so stupid , he doesn’t realise that if a blue chip retailer like M and S is making redundancies already ,we are in big trouble. What signal does he think it is sending to the markets ?
Cable has a background in economics (he was economic adviser to Shell) and, if Wikipedia can be trusted, was an adviser to . . . John Smith (the “lost” Labour leader and, by all accounts – now that he’s dead – the political equivalent of Jesus Christ) in the 70s. So Vince should know what he’s talking about but, as previous contributors to this thread have remarked, he’s a politician: nothing he says is disinterested. Accordingly, that he says one thing one day and the reverse the next is not only unsurprising – it’s part of the job. That he talks rubbish at least half the time makes the BBC’s use of his talents (as an economics “expert”) even more meretricious.
Umbongo | 06.01.09 – 4:49 pm
John Smith (the “lost” Labour leader and, by all accounts – now that he’s dead – the political equivalent of Jesus Christ)
Yes – and don’t forget he wasn’t good enough to be preferred before even kinnock.
Don’t really know much about Cable but he’s got to be better than the majority of Nu Labour idiots. there are so many Labour MPs right now that by the law of averages there should be at least half a dozen good ones that slipped through the net.
I suppose Jack Straw can be okish, and Woolas seems to talk a fair amount of sense but can’t think of any others, and certainly no decent female Labour MPs like there used to be years ago.
Banks given another opportunity to bankrupt themselves and Britain –
“A ban on the short-selling of financial shares will be lifted by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) this month, but compulsory disclosure will remain in place for a further six months, the regulator said”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/markets/4127829/FSA-to-lift-ban-on-short-selling-but-disclosure-rule-will-remain.html
I think the issue is why does the BBC ‘balance’ Labour party views on economic matters with Vince Cable.
Who makes this decision? What is the justification?
I think there needs to be some independent scrutiny of this and same stats collected.
Surely the default position should be to engage with the official Opposition, the Conservatives.
How much of this is the Tory’s poor media handling vs. BBC bias? I suspect the later.