DOING BROWN’S BUSINESS…

So, the BBC finally discovers the Conservative shadow chancellor George Osbourne exists (He is interviewed just before an item on chair design, natch!), and then headlines the interview with the proclamation “Shadow Chancellor George Osbourne says he cannot promise to reverse the 50% top tax rate.” Now then, we know that Brown set this outrageous tax increase as an elephant trap for the Conservatives – damned if they don’t undo, damned if they do. That’s how Brown works and I can understand why Osbourne refused to give the BBC fresh blood this morning.

However, there are clear ideological reasons why punishing those who create wealth in this country is wrong and quite frankly, if a Conservative cannot articulate these in a reasonable and convincing manner then what exactly is the point in being a Conservative? The BBC seem excited about the proposed “squeezing till the pips squeak” tax hike , as one would expect from committed socialists , and of course Darling’s continued and indeed even increased “investment” aka proligate spending in the public sector gets a pass with no tough questions being posed. It is at the point where Labour are desperate and drowning yet the BBC are determined to spin this in such a way that it damages the Conservatives. Truly, they do Brown’s business.




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48 Responses to DOING BROWN’S BUSINESS…

  1. frankos says:

    a very clumsy trap –most of the people in that tax bracket know that the Tories would attempt to take UK to an attractive tax environment as soon as possible.
    Thatcher had to put up taxes in 79, but most people knew taxes would drop when viable.
    The most worrying thing is Darlings growth forecasts and his magic trick opf cutting 15 billion off govt spending but increasing public sector spending? Paul Daniels he aint

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  2. Peter says:

    Vaguely on-topic.

    I still play on Nic Robinson’s blog because it’s fun getting stuff past the moderators that then gets hauled off when a supervisor calls up Aunty reads it and tells them to haul.

    Otherwise it does get tiresome being removed all the time from an entity I co-fund simply because it doesn’t meet their world view, but hence at least adds to my file come the court case.

    One good one is the use of ‘comments now closed’, which seems to happen rather arbitrarily, based on no measure I can assess save it’s all going pear-shaped and its favourite funding collector has told ’em to pull the plug.

    Take this gem…

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/nickrobinson/2009/04/worthy_or_waste.html

    Maybe you just wait ’til the rebuttal squad or nutter gets four in a row (151 -155) and then pull the plug on a high note?

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  3. James says:

    OK – it’s not the BBC, I know, but Jon Snow yesterday on C4 news gave the boy wonder Yvette Cooper a ridiculously easy ride then laid into Ken Clarke for no apparent reason.

    I have to say that he is one of the worst culprits in terms of bias, probably more overtlty flagrant than the beeboids. But don’t forget, C4 also get public money!!

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  4. James says:

    sorry – to correct, C4 is publicly-owned but self-funded (by big brother).

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  5. Kegs says:

    After watching some of the Beebs coverage yesterday and Newsnight I think they did a pretty balanced job of the Budget. I think everyone is a bit shell shocked including the Beeb as to the serious mess we are in. After all the Green shoots, Gordon saved the world hype over the last few weeks reality has come crashing down like a ton of bricks.

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  6. Peter says:

    Speaking of final polishing of Trabant Urban Recycling Drive-ins, I am still trying to get the notion of ‘Brown’s Business’ out of my head.

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  7. The Cattle Prod of Destiny says:

    This is such an obvious case of bias it is a bit of an open goal.

    This budget does not soak the rich as it is aimed at the poor and middle earners – they are the ones who contribute the most tax. Most high earners have accountants who, if they are worth employing, will minimise this tax hike to the point at which it not only is unnoticed but counter-productive. No doubt it will take more to administer than it eventually raises.

    But do the BBC do the maths? No. They trumpet the 50% rate because that is what Brown tells them to do.

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  8. Cockney says:

    I can see perfectly reasonable arguments for and against the 50% tax rate, but in the grand scheme of things its a pretty trivial detail. However the amount of effort the Beeb have spent trying desperately to get Conservatives to disagree with each other on it is ridiculous.

    We had Boris (in sensible mode) yesterday being bullied endlessly on this point despite trying to raise other more important issues. Eventually he reasonably conceded that he personally was against the hike but that Cameron could decide for himself – cue “Tories divided” hysteria.

    The Beeb itself says that this is a naked attempt by Labour to dig a hold for Cameron, then it runs screaming to do their work for them????!!!!

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  9. d says:

    Champaign socialists (which includes BBC employees), hate capitalism but love the lifestyle it affords them.

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  10. Gerald Brown says:

    Listening to the Toady programme the budget was the subject of several items. Then came the time for the headlines from the newspapers. With the dishonourable mention of the Mirror, the headlines were uniformly dismissive of the Chancellor’s fantasy world. Strange, but then perhaps not, to say that the general ridiculing in the print media was in no way reflected in the BBC coverage.

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  11. Gerald Brown says:

    Apropos the BBC attempting to make a story out of the “50%” with the Conservatives the BBC’s LD favourite Vince openly said yesterday that public sector pensions would be near the top of his shopping list of savings, but no questioning of that by the interviewer.

    Anybody hazard a guess what would lead the news if Osborne or Clarke suggested that.

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  12. Twizzle says:

    Kelvin MacKenzie was reviewing the papers on Sky last night. His answer to our peoblems: –

    Gordon should do the honourable thing for the first time in his life. Get a brandy and a revolver and retire to a quiet room and blow his brains out.

    The anchor nearly had kittesn on the spot! But she didn’t say he was wrong!

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  13. ukipwebmaster says:

    Happy St George’s day to all of your readers:

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  14. Gerald Brown says:

    The Chancellor announced public spending to grow at inflation plus 0.7%. As public sector inflation, rather like pensioner inflation, tends to exceed standard inflation he effectively announced a substantial cut in public services without of course saying so. I wonder who will get the blame for that.

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  15. Bloody Brilliant says:

    Well the top earners at the BBC won’t be able to incorporate some dodgy accountant to lower their incomes, because they’re not self-employed.

    So it’s reduced take home pay all round for the BBC elite!

    Hurrah!!!

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  16. TheCuckoo says:

    ukipwebmaster | Homepage | 23.04.09 – 1:25 pm | #

    It isn’t St Georges day, you fool. If it were, the BBC would have it plastered all over its output – just like they do for St Patrick, St Andrew and St David.

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  17. yossi says:

    I haven’t heard any mention of St Georges day yet on radio 1, or five live. when its Saint Patricks day they won’t shut up about it.

    Why are the English forced into being quiet about their national pride?

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  18. hippiepooter says:

    Apologies if this is considered ‘off-topic’, but could not a little St George flaglet be flying on this site on this most august of days for proud Englishman (in deference to my Celtic Brit compatriots, this is of course could be done on all the National Days of the Home Nations?)

    To mark the occasion I will share one of my favourite quotes from the World’s Greatest Living Englishman, who is in fact a woman:-

    “Our history shows that when evil rises in the world Britain will bear arms to oppose it”

    Margarat Thatcher, valedictory speech to the Commons as Prime Minister, 1991 if memory serves right.

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  19. Cassandra says:

    The BBCs job from now to the election is to hammer away at ‘Tory cuts in services’ and ‘Tories slash spending’
    and of course ‘Tory splits,rifts and policy differences’ etc.
    The BBC have their brief fully updated and they are ready to strike at the hated Tories, we have already seen the airbrushing out of the political picture of Cameron by the comrades at the BBC.
    From now on you will see newlabour first and the libdems second(they may be heretics but at least they are nearly socialists)the Tories will be isolated and limited to highly managed appearances where the beeboids can either lure them into cul de sacs of inane detail or trap them into mistakes.
    You see, the BBC dont just invite the class enemies to get a balanced picture oooh no, they first plan an ambush/bear trap/sabotage then they invite a Tory fitting their profile of who will make an error or who thay can rattle.
    The very last thing the BBC want to do is actually hear what their ideological enemy has to say, every researchers phone call to a potential Tory guest is highly planned with the above principles in mind.
    The prime directive is going to be, ‘can this person be tripped up?’ and ‘will this person do a good job or a bad job of answering our trick questions?’ you see how it works now?
    The government/BBC axis means to destroy the Tories, they care nothing for the onrushing catastrophe about to engulf us all, newlabour and the BBC have nothing in their minds other than spite and hatred for their ‘political enemies’ the nation means nothing to them and the people mean nothing, all they see now are the hated class enemies now and all they can think about is how to destroy them, we see the true face of the newlabour/BBC axis!

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  20. nrg says:

    Beeboid strategy will be to make a bit of an effort to report the facts straight on the day of the budget • when there might even be a few decent journalists and editors who believe in objective reporting. Then they will cherry pick the issues that fall out of it over the following week to get the full bore socialist spin, particularly in the programmes that fall below the top tier of news and current affairs.

    Generally this will reach a crescendo over the weekend, when the experienced hacks are at home and the Che T-shirt wearing lunatics are left in charge of the asylum.

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  21. Cassandra says:

    Bloody brilliant,

    I am sorry to have to inform you that the beeboid high command will certainly not suffer from a pay cut because of the tax hike, even now they are planning to raise their income levels to compensate for the tax hike, paid for by the taxslave of course.
    Their pay grade structure will be altered on the QT and Bobs yer uncle no beeboid will lose out.

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  22. David Preiser (USA) says:

    Evan Davis pointed out to George Osborne that the Government’s promised restricted spending growth after 2011 will be even stricter than under Margaret Thatcher.

    That sounded very familiar because I’ve already seen it here:

    Public spending is still growing in actual numbers, but that 0.7% average growth rate is lower than the economy is predicted to grow and less than during Margaret Thatcher’s government.

    here:

    The chancellor has said that the growth of public spending will be limited to 0.7% for up the three years after 2011, a bigger squeeze than occurred during the Thatcher years.

    and here, the very last comment of the BBC’s “As it happened” live-text coverage of the Budget announcement.

    The BBC’s Steve Schifferes says: The chancellor is squeezing public spending in the future by saying it will grow by only 0.7% per year from 2011 – a lower growth rate than when Mrs Thatcher was in power. Despite this the public finances will only balance by 2018.

    Narrative, anyone?

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  23. It's all too much says:

    Just looked on the BBC Views web page. Almost impossible to find the opposition opinion of the disastrous political non budget. Camenos speech is there, but under “BNP defends race policy”. Nice conflation

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  24. Emil says:

    None of the media seemed to have picked up the fact that it’s actually everyone earning over £100K who will be stung with removal of personal allowances. They also ignore the tax on jobs (aka NI) that will hit businesses as well as anyone earning over £19K.

    Our entire media is now just as complicit in only towing the state line as the former Soviet bloc countries that we used to laugh at.

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  25. Peter says:

    A poster to my eco-blog just wrote in:

    The budget made me laugh, new investment in green technology for car development ! How can that be green ?

    Eon’s name is being bandied around to start burying the CO2 under the sea using Carbon capture technology for coal fired stations .

    Hang on !-isn’t Gordon Brown’s brother one of the directors of Eon …. hmm, and who said the CO2 will remain under the sea.

    Electric cars for London , that will course create more C02 than current petrol and diesel [actually an email I had from WhatGreenCar gave pause for thought, and led here: http://www.whatgreencar.com/news-item.php?WGCs-recommended-car-scrappage-scheme – all grist for the mill. Love the Halo URL contraction BTW]

    Useless ! they haven’t a ~~~#ing clue [don’t think his name was Martin:)]

    I too was laughing, but some in the vicinity said it sounded a tad manic.

    I thought they had no clue, but now I am not so sure. Having had an ethics by-pass the one thing for sure is they will all get paid, and pensioned, on the ashes of our kids’ futures.

    I am now erring more on declaring a FATWa… ‘First Against The Wall.. when the revolution comes!’

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  26. logdon says:

    Off topic but I just heard PM trying to equate 9/11 with Zionism. Apparently, according to the Einsatsgruppen at al-Beeb, Mohammed Atta and his merry men emulated the tactics of Irgun who were supposed to have hatched a scheme of bombing London from the air. Is there no length these people will go to in besmirching Israel?

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  27. David Preiser (USA) says:

    logdon | 23.04.09 – 6:19 pm |

    What a coincidence. Just the other day pounce caught this little gem from Beeboid Jew Tim Franks about that exact same idea in his Jerusalem Diary.

    Agenda? What agenda?

    My French teacher in high school had a sort of “mental virus” theory about silly mistakes becoming contagious in the classroom. The idea was that (during interactive periods of class, not writing, obviously) if one student made a simple mistake, other students who didn’t normally make that mistake all of a sudden started doing it themselves. Simple errors were passed around the class, almost like yawning is supposed to be “catching”. If you see somebody doing it, that triggers your yawn reflex.

    Either it’s the same thing at the BBC, or there’s a Narrative. Some editor got the idea from Tim Franks, and the Narrative is being spread around. How else do these ideas work their way across the spectrum of BBC broadcasting?

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  28. TPO says:

    logdon | 23.04.09 – 6:19 pm |

    I’ve been living under a misapprehension. All these years I falsely believed that it was the Lufwaffe blitzing London. Thank you Labour/BBC for putting me straight and pinpointing the real culprits.
    Is there anybody, ANYBODY, from the BBC or from their supporters who occasionally congregate here, that can support this.

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  29. TPO says:

    A couple of days ago the Ernst & Young Item Club issued a bleak picture for the UK economy.
    The BBC trawled through it and seized on the one piece of information that offered a crumb of comfort. This was then fanfaired by the BBC.
    Economy ‘no longer in free fall’
    The economy is no longer in free fall and a recovery next spring is likely, a renowned economic think tank has said.
    Note the BBC’s use of the word Renowned. The first time I have ever seen them refer to the E&Y IC as ‘renowned’.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8005439.stm

    Well I suppose I’ll have to wait until hell freezes over before the BBC refers to the Institute For Fiscal Studies as ‘renowned’ let alone them reporting this:
    IFS says Budget’s 50p top tax ‘won’t work’
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/budget/5208602/IFS-says-Budgets-50p-top-tax-wont-work.html

    BBC: When the “facts” fit the agenda then we’ll broadcast.

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  30. Greencoat says:

    Mark Easton on todays’s BBC webpage:

    ‘Theft from the person up 25% in England and Wales?! What is going on?’

    A freakin’ crime wave is what’s going on, you retard!

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  31. mash says:

    ;0

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  32. Dorian Smith says:

    In these times of crisis (what crisis?), fair play and well done to the Lib Dems for having their finger on the pulse of the issues important to the public:

    Call to control seagull numbers

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8014975.stm

    Don Foster, Lib Dem MP: “When they come hurtling towards you they can be pretty frightening”.

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  33. Martin says:

    I see Sheena Easton is at it again. Funny how Easton always seems to highlight whichever set of crime figures is better for McSnot. The twat just doesn’t learn does he?

    Read HIS blog entry, then the Daily Telegraphs’ take.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/5207598/Violent-robberies-burglaries-and-thefts-all-up-in-recession-crime-wave.html

    Sheena has just become a joke. Parroting Nu liebour spin on a daily basis.

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  34. AndrewSouthLondon says:

    I think NuLab and BBC mates know they are utterly and totally fukcd, therefore they are at their most dangerous: they have nothing to lose because they know they have already lost. Any lie, any smear, any set-up, anything, because you never know, some treehugging new-university type somewhere might hesitate on that ballot paper. The Audacity of Hope!

    A lot of this is all down to Bill Clinton and his foul ilk (including left-CV-ticking “interns” like Stephanie Flanders and the Balls Brothers) : no-one really knows what is happening, they only know what the media tell them is happening. Control the media and you rule the world. CLIENT media-whores are most truly the biggest traitors to the human race on this planet.

    The only answer is freedom through the Internet. Not Che Guevarra on a red T-shirt. Wrong time, wrong revolution. A man and his keyboard is the real revolutionary, not that cigar-puffing sack of red sh*t.

    Go Guido go!

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  35. David Preiser (USA) says:

    Martin | 23.04.09 – 8:06 pm |

    Easton never fails, does he? When he wants to use this survey to reassure everyone, he says:

    Overall the BCS survey suggests that crime is stable. There’s been no real change in people’s experience of violence, domestic burglary, vandalism or vehicle-related thefts compared with the previous year.

    But then when he’s talking about the significant increase in crime as reported in the survey, he says this:

    Remember, the survey asks people about their “experience” of crime – it cannot determine whether people’s recollections are accurate or consistent.

    So is the survey useful or not? Whichever makes him feel better, I suspect.

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  36. TPO says:

    AndrewSouthLondon | 23.04.09 – 8:49 pm |
    One of the most odious pieces of shit that Clinton had onboard was the talking skull, James Carville.

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  37. Martin says:

    David Preiser (USA): Easton just spins whatever makes 5 bellies and the Snotmeister look good.

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  38. archduke says:

    at least Boris (in this evening’s standard) has shown some backbone and dare i said it LEADERSHIP..

    on record as saying he is totally against the 50% tax and thinks it will kick off a brain drain from London.

    must admit the official Tory line has been utterly feeble and wimpish. i’m not impressed.

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  39. Jon says:

    Greencoat | 23.04.09 – 7:07 pm |

    The police figures have been fiddled for years – “Theft from the person” is the new term for “Robbery with vilolence” – Theft goes up but vilolence goes down – clever eh?

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  40. Jon says:

    “..must admit the official Tory line has been utterly feeble and wimpish. i’m not impressed.”
    archduke | 23.04.09 – 9:25 pm | #

    The Tories have had 12 years of BBC propaganda too – they don’t seem to want to upset them, so they have given up plain speaking .

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  41. Eggs Benedict says:

    well the Tory line has been weak, but thats because they are just as clueless as labour. different clothes, but same old no-policy, PR friendly morons.

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  42. archduke says:

    Eggs Benedict | 23.04.09 – 9:33 pm

    agree. they seem to be coasting ,because of the polls, and not prepared to ATTACK ATTACK ATTACK…

    i get a strong sense of class snobbery from Cameron and his ilk – as if power is something that is owed to him, rather than something that is struggled for and fought for. Labour understand this far more than Cameron.

    mark my words – it is going to get extremely vicious in the run up to the 2010 election. Labour know they have lost – but they will do EVERYTHING to limit the Tory majority.

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  43. TPO says:

    The police figures have been fiddled for years
    Jon | 23.04.09 – 9:26 pm |

    Yep. They were doing it when I joined, and they were doing it when I left. Have to say though that the Home Office were complicit in the ‘creative accounting’.
    BBC swallow it hook, line & sinker.

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  44. TPO says:

    Don’t tell the BBC, otherwise this will be their main story.

    David Cameron gets Budget bounce
    An exclusive YouGov poll for the Daily Telegraph gives the Conservatives an 18 point lead. If the result was repeated at a general election Mr Cameron would be returned to Downing Street with a majority of more than 150.
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/budget/5209960/David-Cameron-gets-Budget-bounce.html

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  45. Jon says:

    TPO | 23.04.09 – 10:13 pm |

    The thing is people used to believe them – now I don’t know anyone who does. Yet Easton and his mates take them as gospel – just shows how out of touch they really are.

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  46. Garden Trash says:

    Gordon Brown salutes the British People.

    http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/arts/2007/05/15/brownbig.jpg

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  47. Ryan says:

    The BBC never makes clear that the people that will be paying 50% in income tax (and another 15% in VAT) will be working 2 days for themselves and three days for the state.

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  48. Alex says:

    “punishing those who create wealth”

    “committed socialists”

    etc. Starting to look a little biased yourself, david..

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