Remarkable to see the BBC leading it’s main news with the fact that Tesco have clocked up record profits. Not so much focus on the international scope of the Tesco performance but hey, when the role of the State Broadcaster is to hype up green shoots of recovery, every little helps, right? Lord Leahy anyone?
TESCO -EVERY LITTLE HELPS, LABOUR.
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Yeah – and during the reports the BBC has gone back to referring to the Recession as ‘the Economic Downturn’ — its a bloody recession you nitwits – and close to being a DEPRESSION at that…
‘Telegraph’
Roger Bootle offers some limited, pre-Budget advice, not BBC ‘green-shoots’ hype:
“Just sketch out the route ahead, Mr. Darling, that will be scary enough”
[Extract]:
“The trouble is that a realistic sketch would involve either such stringency on Government spending or such hair-shirt policies on taxes, or both, that his boss next door surely would not stomach it.
“Instead, as the Chancellor stands up on Wednesday, we are likely to get another episode of the usual Westminster pantomime. ‘Behind you!’ we should all shout. The figure who will be behind him then has been behind it all.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/rogerbootle/5183061/Just-sketch-out-the-route-ahead-Mr-Darling-that-will-be-scary-enough.html
And I always thought “Sainsbury Socialists” hated Tesco ?
Interesting business news, but it was also an interesting choice for top of the day.
I am surprised that, a la Messrs King/Rose/Bond they didn’t have Mr. Leahy surrounded by this week’s offers and allowed to pitch how their customers are really liking this at xxp, and this at…
Meanwhile, Let’s get this straight.
The latest leaked (maybe this should be ‘whattheyaretellingustheywillbesaying’news’@bbc.co.uk) big budget idea is to accommodate the growing population being encouraged (how is that working out, as one doubts these folk will consume much less) is… build more council homes. Concrete. Driveways. Water for washing cars and running off to drains. Lots of extra A+, but still energy sucking devices. And as a bit of free feedback to help that multimillion £ research, I suspects bees don’t thrive when the greenery is paved over. Just a thought.
It’s many things (lots of lovely voters). But let’s give up any pretence of it being green. And remind me, what are the fuel consequences of grinding around all (school zones for sure worthy) urban areas at 20mph?
Dead right Peter.
Peter,
no, but the bees have that doughty champion of the rural scene, hillarity benn, stepping forward to take the credit for defending them ! An uttery supine beeboid hack, let this worthless Hoon witter away unchallenged on the farming commedy slot. The only thing she forgot was the standard beeboid line , ‘is there anything you would care to tell us minister’.
Contrast this clown’s lack of interest , or knowledge of the countryside, with the interview the excellent ‘Countryside Channel’ showed with D. Cameron. Cameron talked intelligently and knowledgably about farming issues and particularly the cost to British agriculture of the defra control mania .
Hey, where’s the “excessive profits” angle? They’re slow off the mark today.
I actually think that the state broadcaster has a role in bigging up the economy given that it theoretically exists for the benefit of Britain and that public perception can contribute to vicious or virtuous economic circles. In any case it’s not spreading complete fallacies as various sane economic voices have started to suggest that there’s light at the end of the tunnel (the FT has had several such articles this week).
The tricky bit is decoupling that from support for the government, cause there’s defo nio benefit for Britain in having Brown and Darling around any longer than we have to…
The BBC went back to calling it a downturn quite a while back.
The BBC suddenly want Tesco as a friend. Apart from its green shoots efforts the BBC infortunately don’t understand this inflation mullarky. The BBC report on the inflation figures shows us a nice bunch of tomatoes with the caption “Fruit and vegetable prices fell in the year to March. Not so BBC, the prices fell from February to March 2009, but are 10.5% up on the year (that’s part of the reason why the CPI is still running at almost 50% above target).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8009718.stm
Click to access cpi0409.pdf
And if BBC News didn’t give prominence to “massive British company does extremely well, given the circumstances” then you’d accuse it of not being in touch with the commercial sector, blah blah etc etc.
Why do you decide on your “BBC conspiracy” first and then try to shoe-horn it (sometimes pretty desperately) around the output?
Good point BJ
*falls over with surprise*
They used to attack the Tesco over its “gross profits”; but different political priorities for Labour and its media master now I guess
Snooze 24 is spot on there, Tesco was a prime target for the BBC comrades who took great pains to tell us how evil and cruel this capitalist monster was, Oh how times and attitudes change when the comrades require a narrative confirmation, from monster to hero just when newlabour need a greenshoots narrative.
Funny that eh?
What the BBC dont tell you is that past a certain critical mass, a company can easily shield itself from the cold winds of economic depression for at least a while, the analogy of a fat man in icy freezing water survives longer than a skinny one.
Tesco suppliers desperate for custom are stripping their prices to the bone, this works for a while untill the suppliers go belly up, then watch Tesco profits fall.
Seeing how this capitalist monster is so good at getting people to spend their money with it, why can’t we have something similar for broadcasting? Tesco doesn’t exact a poll tax from its customers, but still provides people with what they want and makes money.
I see McSnot has decided to have some change in expenses next week. Hmm, perhaps to divert attention from the ‘real budget’ which as we know takes a few days to come out after the spin of Wednesday?
Gives a chance for the BBC to divert attention again.
Tesco’s results are for the year to 28 February 2009, so don’t tell us much about the recession. Next year’s will be a better indication.
It’s funny because it’s true…
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/politics/politics-headlines/i'm-not-even-trying-any-more%2c-admits-darling-200904201711/
As Cassandra rightly points out, Tesco succeeds by intimidating British farm suppliers into dropping their prices and uses its political links to nulab to prevent the competition commission doing anything about it. Tesco’s greed will help to put a variety of growers and producers of fruit and veg out of the market, thus reducing the country’s level of food self sufficiency and condeming the tesco customers to eat the most tasteless easiest to produce global crap – untill they give up and just live off junk food, which tesco love, because it has a higher margin !
Tesco are also largely responsible for decimating small country town high streets, causing many of the shops to close by their unfair competition. This naturally has a knock on effect in dragging down the local economy.
(There is a solution, a fixed council £5 per vehicle access road charge to each tesco superstore, with the money going straight into a ring fenced local regeneration and rate reduction fund.)
Is it just me, or are the Beeboids going out of their way to portray the US economy as doing worse than the UK?
First it was Karen Nye’s poor effort about New York, now Matthew Price is continuing ” his journey across the US to assess whether there are any signs of economic recovery.”
So where does he go?
Homeless struggle in Atlantic City
Whereas it’s a great ride for them elsewhere. Dopey Beeboid sub-editor.
Atlantic City isn’t Blackpool. It used to be, maybe forty years ago, but hasn’t been for a long time. It’s the one little strip of casinos with the accompanying boardwalk (again, not like Blackpool or Brighton; it’s just another means to get to the next casino), with the rest of it being a run-down, broken town just like the rest of that part of New Jersey. Atlantic City was a dump and a rough town last year, the year before that, and the year before that.
Yes, business at the casinos is down, but it won’t come back until the economy is largely recovered. Checking the action at the slots is not an intelligent way to check for green shoots of recovery. It’s dishonest to use a town where a luxury is the only viable industry (other than the drugs and prostitution) as any kind of example of the beginnings of economic stability in the country at large.
It’s ridiculous to go to a place like this on the pretext of checking for signs of economic recovery. May as well go to Finsbury Park to see how Christianity is coming along in Britain.
Next stop on the BBC’s tour of the US to find hopeful economic signs: Allen, South Dakota
this is the most remarkably pointless bbc biased article ever. Tesco is reporting record profits, and the BBC is reporting it. Problem? Oh, you suppose they are linking that with a supposed economic recovery orchestrated by Gordon? The BBC never claimed anything like that, that is ENTIRELY what you have read into the story. This site is laughable in it’s assumptions and make-believe bias.
“Atlantic City isn’t Blackpool.”
“Atlantic City was a dump and a rough town last year, the year before that, and the year before that.”
hang on??
Biased BBC is Biased,
Oh dear, have we upset you?
Take a full refund and visit a blog more in keeping with your er…uhm…high editorial standards.
Cockney | 21.04.09 – 3:51 pm |
hang on??
Outside of the casino and tourist area, it’s bleak, no better South Orange or Paterson. I’ve been there two or three times, but not in the last two years, and even when the economy was strong it wasn’t a pretty sight a few blocks away from the casinos. Hasn’t been for years.
Atlantic City’s homeless shelter is not a useful economic indicator.
The point here is that the BBC, the day before the Budget in which Mr Darling will tell us that the worst is over, chose to LEAD it’s global news with Tesco performance. THAT is the point. No one denies this is not a news story but is REALLY the single biggest news story in the world today? I suppose it would be if you are wanting to imply that booming profits at Tesco are indicative of a resurgent economy. I await the next time a retailer releases under performing accounts and see if this gains number one news position on the BBC.
David I was taking the piss out of Blackpool rather than questioning your opinion of Atlantic City 😀
Also David the BBC line with multi-nationals results is to suggest that they benefit only “fat cats”, that the public is being ripped off, that they are killing competition etc. No mention usually of this sort of stuff from today’s introduction to “Have uour Say”
He said that the company was paying a billion pounds in tax, paying dividends, had a defined benefits scheme and was still creating jobs
The BBC report also includes managed to increase both the number of customers coming into its stores and the average amount they were spending.
That latter fact made easier by food price inflation of over 10% in the last year.
There’s no overt bias in the Tesco report, except for making sure Leahy got in a mention of how “It looks as if the consumer is stabilising at least, so you’re not seeing the situation worsening.”
But that’s nothing; he was bound to say that, even if the BBC hadn’t asked. Robert Peston managed to use this to wave the flag, though.
On either measure, it’s a solid performance in ghastly global economic conditions.
So the results are a reminder that even in a recession, the British and world economies are very substantial indeed.
The British economy may be contracting, perhaps by almost 4% this year, but that means the UK’s output will diminish to the level of three or four years ago – when we weren’t paupers.
See? It’s not so bad. Gordon’s doing well.
What’s striking is that British consumers are still playing a disproportionately important role in fuelling the economy: they are spending a good deal of the cash put in many of their pockets by cuts in interest rates;
Imagine that: consumers spending the extra money they pocket due to rate cuts. One hesitates to think what they’d do with the money saved from real tax cuts.
What the figures show is that British shoppers are not partying on the Titanic, but nor are they battening down the hatches, hoarding the cash in the mattress and only eating tinned baked beans.
See? It’s not so bad. Consumers have confidence. Gordon’s doing well.
Biased BBC is Biased! | 21.04.09 – 3:34 pm
I seem to remember not long ago when the Oil companies were making profits – did the BBC hold this up as a shining example of Gordon Browns premiership – or did they get very angry and invite Vince Cable and his mates on to call for windfall taxes.
You like all your other BBC mates just look at one example of a news story and try and tell everyone that there is no bias. But if you try and look for consistency in reporting you will find none. Every story the BBC leads with is to fullfill its agenda of keeping their friends in government and their paymasters in ignorance.
David Vance 4:07
That is exactly the point. Why was it the lead story and why didn’t the BBC attack the greedy grocers’ bonuses ?
David, I read Biased BBC almost daily with agreement and enjoyment, but there’s one fly in the otherwise high-quality ointment that undermines my pleasure and your authority, which is the fact that you spell the possessive prounoun its as it’s. The pronoun (his, her, its) doesn’t need an apostrophe because it is not an abbeviation of ‘it is’.
I haven’t seen the possessive pronoun mis-spelt.
The only instances recently of “it’s” were shortenings of “it is” where the apostrophe is of course required.
Besides which – who gives a monkey’s ?
Tony,
I am indebted to your grammatical exactitude and will try and remember when blogging at 100mph!
David, I read Biased BBC almost daily with agreement and enjoyment, but there’s one fly in the otherwise high-quality ointment that undermines my pleasure and your authority, which is the fact that you spell the possessive prounoun its as it’s. The pronoun (his, her, its) doesn’t need an apostrophe because it is not an abbeviation of ‘it is’.
Go feck yourself’s
lol
If Tesco are so successful perhaps we should have them running the country?