Seems to me that the BBC has moved into full “Save Labour” mode as wave after wave crashes down on the hapless heads of their paymasters and political soul-mates in government. The Today programme this morning is a classic example. The lead story, just after 7am was the scandalous abuse of the expenses systems by cabinet members, including the Dear Leader and that £6000 cleaning bill. As you know, the Telegraph has revealed all the sordid details, including Ms Blear’s scams, Jack Straw’s “errors” – the whole rotten lot. What to do? Cue Nick Robinson who pops up to say that none of this is too bad and when you compare it to what happens elsewhere it is no big deal. Cheers Nick – glad you take this relaxed view of OUR taxes being abused by the scum in power.
Next up, the Government controlled RBS announces first quarter losses of £44m. That’s a loss to you and me, the tax-payer – who bankrolls this failed bank. Up pops Robert Peston to suggest that this result is not that bad and that there are plenty of good things in the RBS announcements. How wise government was to step in and bail it out, right?
Never mind – if you are feeling about down about the BBC tune in to Thought for The Day, it has Abdal Hakim Murad, Muslim Chaplain at the University of Cambridge on to share his wisdom with us all. Allah be praised.
It’s an alternative universe these people live in and I only hope that when the electorate throw Labour out of power, the incoming Conservative administration finally faces up to the menace that masquerades as a State Broadcaster. If it doesn’t, it will regret it.
Unfortunately it is not an “alternative universe” that the BBC live in but the UK and we pay their fat salaries. I fully expect the BBC to highlight any Conservative MPs whose have abused their expense claims whilst downplaying Labour Cabinet members. The attacks on Caroline Spelman and the ignoring of Baroness Uddin show how the BBC operate; institutionalised bias against the Conservative party is beyond doubt and it will only get worse as the elections near.
RBS only lost £44mil. That is a HUGE improvement on its end of year results for 2008!
The simple fact is Davo, that had RBS folded it would have cost the economy hundreds and hundreds of billions of pounds, not only directly from the loss of over 100,000 direct jobs, but also the lost indirectly of around another half million jobs related to the bank (cleaners, cooks, drivers etc) and lost investment and funds but also because the effect of all those people being dumped on the unemployment heap would have been a disaster.
This is also not taking in to account the flow on effect this would have had on other banks.
Yes I have skin in the game BUT sometimes we have to look outside the box and realise that not everyone who works for the banks is an investment banker.
Regards
Mailman
the Police should investigate MPs expenses under the Theft Act
if they have nothing to hide, theyve nothing to fear
Great post DV, a terrible indictment of our state broadcaster and you are correct when you say that if the Tories dont reform the Socialist BBC collective straight away they will bitterly regret it later, however I detect a deep streak of cowardice running through the Tory leadership, they desire appeasement and an easy life more than a moral crusade, as long as they can keep living the high life and get to stuff ever more quangos with their own nodding heads while looking to their masters in brussels then all will remain the same.
I hope I am wrong, I hope it turns out that I can return and admit I was way off base, damned hope is all we have right now!
I live in Scotland and work in London. To do this, I rent a bedsit in Guildford and commute in. I have (rightly) to pay for all this myself. So why are MPs different. The Today programme had Harman on after 8am and she was not asked the obvious question, why are MPs different? It’s just a job – like any other job. The BBC never admits to that, always spouting the “public service” claptrap. No one forces Harman to be an MP – or an appallingly arrogant bastard – she does that all by herself.
Reading David Vance on this site is always a delight. I find that my personal hate fest against the BBC P,C Multi Ethnic news team and their peculiar Gazan obsessions has been written about on this site far better than I could ever put it myself . it is nice to know that `i am not alone in my opinions
Not only is being an MP just another job, its also a bloody well paid job (then again, the reason you pay well is to put people above corruption and all that).
What made me laugh was that the new proposed rules where second house allowances were removed from MP’s who lived within 10 miles of Westminster!
My train jurney each day is nearly 100miles each way YET I pay for this myself and DONT expect anyone else to pay (ok, Ill whinge and moan and cheat first crapital connect because their prices are sh1t!).
Mailman
I don’t think the rotten BBC are aware of how out of touch with reality they are.
Of course they have to defend MPs’ expenses as their own are probably even worse.
All Beeboids’ expenses should be published so we can see what they are doing with OUR money.
Sleaze, sleaze and more sleaze.
The “line to take” issued by Downing Street’s spin-doctors for NuLab spokesmen and their surrogates on the expenses scandal is:
We must’nt make a fuss or the public will lose faith in democracy. Therefore, criticising Brown and Co is playing into the hands of the BNP.I have now heard this broadcast by the BBC from the mouths of:
Harriet Harman
Lance Price
Steve Richards of the Independent
and……
the BBC’s political editor, Nick Robinson.
It seems the BBC is now so desperate, it does not even mediate or paraphrase the propaganda line from Number 10.
It just parrots it verbatim.
I think that jornalists is mostly leftist and that is probably why the BBC is chering for the labor party. I gues that the bbc also get money from the goverment and that maybe the conservative woldnt give BBC money if they got elected.
In a way the BBC is lokin after there own interists. Labor in rule meens constant moneys for BBC
Let's name and shame.
Nick Robinson – 'compared to what goes on in other countries this (eg Jackboot's 200 odd grand) is pretty small beer.' No, Nick, it isn't.
Bobby Prior ? on Ken Bruce show – 'It's all within the rules'
No it isn't, dear.
Rita Chakraborti sp? – 'Tory & Lib Dem to follow'. Ah, that makes it alright then.
Tom
Absolutely correct. But what the fools don’t realise is that the more the BNP is ignored and marginalised the greater it’s appeal as the fresh start so many want.
All the BNP has to do is wait for the public disgust with the present system to deliver vast numbers of votes it’s way.
AS an old style Tory I do not want to see this happen but present events are making it look more and nore likely.
We are governed and informed by fools who never think things through.
Hazel Blears:
“I don’t think anyone’s suggesting that Gordon Brown was pocketing that £6,000, nor are they suggesting that his brother was pocketing that £6,000.”
I am you thieving fu*king *unts!
They can’t help themselves can they. When Peter Bottomley or Norman Baker complained to Evan Davis at the end of Today that Harman had mentioned crooked MP, Derek Conway, twice (without, as it happens, mentioning Conway’s party allegiance) to contrast Conway’s crookery with Labour cabinet members’ . . er. . thievery, Evan helpfully repeated Conway’s name and added that he was a Conservative. That said, Evan did a fairly good job of crucifying Lady Pakenham’s niece on a cross of gold.
This morning the BBC regurgitated the National Audit Office’s report on Road Safety. Then introduced ‘independent’ comments from a representative from BRAKE. Please see how independent BRAKE and other such ‘charities’ are at Fakecharities
http://fakecharities.org/pages/posts/brake8.php
it is an eyeopener where our money is going.
Umbongo
Evan did a fairly good job of crucifying Lady Pakenham’s niece on a cross of gold.He did rather. My initial thought was that he missed his vocation and should really have been a barrister working for the CPS and prosecuting lying career criminals.
Then I wondered whether his forensic demolition of Ms Harperson was part of the game plan all along or just found he just could take no more of being spoken to as if a child. That woman’s particular blend of condescension and evasiveness must be almost as infuriating to journalists as it is to the public at home.
Pity she has so unequivocally ruled herself out of the running for the Labour leadership. She must lose her party a thousand swing votes every time she comes on the airwaves. The beeboid wimmin, of course, do not understand this and think they are doing Labour a favour by putting her on.
DOES THE ESTABLISHMENT IN REALITY *NEED* THE BNP TO EXIST?
Lately I’ve wondered whether the political Establishment in fact *needs* the BNP!
What would happen if a new populist non-PC, libertarian-leaning party was formed – that would oppose mass immigration, and ‘Islamisation’ – but without the racism, bigotry and general backwardness of the BNP?
A party that wasn’t mostly just ashamed of British achievements or British identity (like Labour, Lib-Dem, SNP, Green, even media-savvy Tories).
Perhaps somehow like Pim Fortuyn’s party in Holland?
I think a fair number of ex-Labourites and ex-Tories might vote for it. (Anyone, really, who has ceased to be a ‘brain-dead liberal’, as David Mamet put it. Gay people and women might have good reasons to vote for it…!).
I might even vote for it myself…
Even the (soft Left) Prospect has just published a devastating critique if what its Editor David Goodhart calls the “pieties of European multiculturalism” and its policies of mass immigration and cultural relativism.
Read the article here:
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=10749
One reader has commented that:
“This article could be re-published without edits on http://bnp.org.uk/“
… but others on the Left might decide instead to ask whether the article’s true, not whether it’s PC, and therefore ‘safe’ to think.
Just a thought…
Anonymous 11:37 AM
I think the more people vote and join the BNP, the more it moves forward from its ‘backward’ position. Parties do and are allowed to change their stances.
My idiot of a dad has voted Labour all his life, is the biggest racist/bigot I know and has a go at me for voting BNP. I put it down to watching too much BBC.
I’ll vote BNP at the next election. And have always previously voted Tory.
Not because I necessarily believe in anything they stand for polticially. But a vote for the BNP is a dagger to the heart of the current political system.
It’s the system that needs destroying and voting for the three main parties does nothing to tackle the democratic deficits in the UK.
I think the BNP needs someone gay involved prominently, if they’re not to be eternally seen as dinosaurs.
Pim Fortuyn again.
And I mean out-gay, not a la Haider.
Most of the Taliban-esque reactionaries might then leave the party too.
Not sure how much of the BNP would be left though.
It also doesn’t make sense that the BNP moans about how wrong it thinks black-only type organisations are, so therefore we need to copy them with something white-only.
Bonkers…
Why can’t proud black Brits join the BNP?
Which makes me think. The BNP needs a black, gay leader somewhere in the upper echelons.
I will then definitely consider joining. (Actually, I’m not sure I’m even joking about this, I might!)
Nick’s glasses are clearly rose tinted.
I resent that it calls itself ‘BBC news’, it should be ‘BBC propaganda’.
Is the whole design of the site in what would be described in an MP home furnishing guide as ‘Labour Red 2’ an accident, or something more sinister and subliminal????
Anonymous 11.37
Such a non-PC, libertarian-leaning party was formed at the beginning of 2008.
A Party that has written its policies with Britain in mind first, the EU last, where the rights and liberties of the British public come before the needs of the State.
LPUK is growing very quickly, and is gaining ground every day as the excesses of government are exposed, as more authoritarian laws and rules are imposed.
You can see details of the manifesto here.
http://lpuk.org/pages/manifesto.php
Mailman @8:11 AM
RBS only lost £44mil. That is a HUGE improvement on its end of year results for 2008!
Don’t you think that might have something to do with the anomalous 40% drop in share price one day in October 2008 because Robert Peston couldn’t keep his mouth shut? If that hadn’t happened, the numbers would be rather different. He has to tread very carefully now about how he handles RBS for the fuuull….yeeeeeaaar.
The simple fact is Davo, that had RBS folded it would have cost the economy hundreds and hundreds of billions of pounds, not only directly from the loss of over 100,000 direct jobs, but also the lost indirectly of around another half million jobs related to the bank (cleaners, cooks, drivers etc) and lost investment and funds but also because the effect of all those people being dumped on the unemployment heap would have been a disaster.
This is also not taking in to account the flow on effect this would have had on other banks.
Actually, if RBS had been allowed to get broken up and sold off, like Lehman Bros., this would be much less of a blow to the taxpayer all round. Peston himself was warning against government ownership of RBS before it happened. When the quasi-nationalization actually went through. He said this:
So the Treasury, on behalf of taxpayers, bought up the remaining 23bn shares at 65.5p each.
And, with last night’s market price at 55p, we as taxpayers are already sitting on a loss of £2.4bn on this stake.
But the share price may rise.
Well, he had to say that, didn’t he?
A commenter had to point out the full truth before Peston would address it as an update to his post:
I forgot the elephant in the room, Royal Bank of Scotland’s £1900bn of borrowings, deposits and other liabilities.
I’m sure these will be kept off the formal public sector balance sheet. The public finances really wouldn’t look pretty if another 140% of GDP was added to the national debt.
But now that taxpayers own 58% of Royal Bank, we are explicitly and formally standing behind its entire, gargantuan balance sheet, its assets and its liabilities.
That was always true in an implicit sense, because Royal Bank was too big to be allowed by the government to fail.
But we shouldn’t pretend that the liability isn’t real. The assessment of Royal Bank’s credit-worthiness is now closely linked to an assessment of the credit-worthiness of the UK state.
That cuts both ways. Royal Bank is benefitting from having the financial support of the state (which is why it really does have to behave itself).
But the fact that Royal Bank has this conspicuous support also shines quite a bright light on the huge and growing liabilities of the state, which will have an impact on the perceived credit-worthiness of Britain – and not in a nice way.
Did Peston mention any of this today when he was saying the £44m loss wasn’t such a big deal? No, he didn’t. Instead, he babbled about how all the money being printed by governments is the explanation for how RBS’s investment division is making a profit. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have done really well in this area, says Peston. Um…I’m sure they did, Robert, seeing as how they’re getting a lot of this printed money. It doesn’t take a genius to acquire two-thirds or more of a bank at the taxpayers’ expense, then pump money into one of its divisions and claim it made a profit.
But like his colleague, Stephanie Flanders, Peston refuses to call it “printing money”. Even though all of this is your tax money, and does nothing to help the taxpayers’ debts in the end. And how’s that £1900b debt doing? Oh, that’s right, it’s off the public books (why does that sound familiar?), so we don’t have to think about it. Printing money works, only we’re going to use at least three different euphemisms for it, to make it sound better. We are over the woooorst.
If you think the last UK bond sale went poorly, wait until next time.
Anatolie 10:29
Nice to have you on this website.
I quite agree with your comments.
Keep on posting !
I notice that big nose MaGuire and Michael Shite (White) have been all over the BBC wanking on about “where is the Tory sleaze”
So why didn’t the Daily Mirror, Guardian or Independent buy the CD of expenses then?
Oh hang on all three of those papers are financially bust and can’t afford it.
But at least the BBC gives us those two tools to defend McTwat.
From Nick Robinson’s blog:
“Ask any MP and they’ll insist that you don’t get rich by going into politics. They’ll tell you that they need to live in two places to do their job properly and that costs money which they’re entitled to re-claim.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/nickrobinson/
How about a little more skepticism about what “any” MP says?
Perhaps BBC employees share a certain empathy with government officials over the delicate question of expenses. BBC employees do not fare well when their claims are scrutinized.
A new motto: “By their expenses claims shall ye judge them.”
“Lately I’ve wondered whether the political Establishment in fact *needs* the BNP!
What would happen if a new populist non-PC, libertarian-leaning party was formed – that would oppose mass immigration, and ‘Islamisation’ – but without the racism, bigotry and general backwardness of the BNP?”
This misses the fundamental point in that the BBC’s perspsective is to see any opposition to mass immigration and islam as racist, bigoted and backward. Therefore any party which opposes mass immigration and islam is racist, bigoted and backward.
John Bosworth: The lobby fodder hacks will have to tow the line. i wonder how many of them have had all expenses paid weekends at Chequers or free tabs in the Strangers Bar?
BBC news headline, ‘South Asia’ webpage:
“Thousands flee Pakistan fighting”.
OR, the other side of the coin, the headline should soon be:
‘Another wave of Pakistan Muslim immigrants to head for Britain, courtesy of UK Labour government’
Here is a voice and a view not heard on the BBC:
“Israel Today, the West Tomorrow”
(by Mark Steyn)
‘Commentary Magazine’:
[Extract]-
“British, European, and even American troops will withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, and a bomb will go off in Madrid or Hamburg or Manchester, and there will be nothing left to blame except Israeli ‘disproportion.’ For the remnants of European Jewry, the already discernible migration of French Jews to Quebec, Florida, and elsewhere will accelerate. There are about 150,000 Jews in London today—it’s the thirteenth biggest Jewish city in the world. But there are approximately one million Muslims. The highest number of Jews is found in the 50-54 age group; the highest number of Muslims are found in the four-years-and-under category. By 2025, there will be Jews in Israel, and Jews in America, but not in many other places. Even as the legitimacy of a Jewish state is rejected, the Jewish diaspora—the Jewish presence in the wider world—will shrivel.” (Mark Steyn.)
IanPJ
Nice to see a party that supports liberty – but I doubt if even you could penetrate the 100 year tradition of voting Labour in the North East.
Talking to an elderly gentleman at the bus stop today he was worried that next year the Conservatives would get in and he would lose his free bus pass. You cannot blame him, but it seems that it doesn’t matter how many liberties the Labour party destroy – the threat of losing a free bus pass is much more important to some.
Predictably, BBC gives prominence to:
“UK judges reopen Guantanamo case”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/default.stm And predictably, BBC ignores:
“Wilders wants to attend British court hearing”
http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2009/05/wilders_wants_to_attend_britis.php
Davo,
Lehman Brothers was a small player in the field (only 25,000 staff world wide at the time) BUT the impact their bankruptcy had on world markets was massive!
Share prices tumbled around the world on hearing of Lehmans collapse. Millions of people lost their life savings as the Lehmans share price fell over 90% and 5000 people in the UK lost their jobs as the Canary Wharf office was closed down.
Sure, parts of Lehmans was bought by other players BUT still 20,000 jobs were lost.
Now, imagine what would have happened the banking in the UK if anyone of RBS. Lloyds, HBOS etc was allowed to fold, kist as Lehmans did?
It would have been caos, and we would have instantly had a depression today that made the great depression look not so great.
As I said earlier, not everyone that works for a bank is a trader.
Regards
Mailman
Mailman @12:12 AM
And orderly bankruptcy and break-up of RBS certainly wouldn’t have caused the chaos in the streets you’re afraid of. I’m well aware of the affect of Lehman’s closing. You should probably be aware that not all Lehman employees were out on the streets, a good portion of them were absorbed into Barclay’s. I’ve met some of them, and they’re not unemployed. Yes, Lehman’s affected the markets. Printing money to postpone this kind of thing also adversely affects markets, and is doing worse than the alternative?
I’m having difficulty understanding why you keep stressing that not everyone who works for a bank is a trader. Are you implying that secretaries and office clerks are more important than the bankers and traders? Are you saying that we shouldn’t let these companies go bankrupt or get spun off simply because blue-collar workers will be affected?
That seems a very strange way to do business. Any thoughts on my comments about Robert Peston?
George R wrote: ‘Another wave of Pakistan Muslim immigrants to head for Britain, courtesy of UK Labour government’If Pakistan collapses in the next year, then millions of Pakistanis will head for Britain. They can get in because many of them have relatives in Britain, Labour will still be in power, and Labour needs them.
All Pakistanis, as members of the commonwealth, are entitled to vote in national elections. So what we have is a political earthquake in the offing. Pakistan collapses, followed by Labour winning the next election on the back of the Muslim vote + the recently arrived Pakistani vote. This is followed in the not too distant future of the enactment of sharia throughtout Britain.
Thus a Taleban win in Pakistan leads to the Talebanisation of the UK in the not too distant future.
Dave,
There is no such thing as an orderly collapse of a major financial institution.
The affect on the markets would have made the Lehmans collapse look like a Sunday stroll.
Not only would over 100,000 jobs have been lost directly in the UK BUT even worse, all of those lost jobs would have sucked money out of their local economies, which in turn would mean less money going around, thus making the impact of that collapse 100 fold worse.
And all that is without even considering the flow on affect of jobs being lost that are indirectly related to banking or the impact on the markets as people suddenly lose confidence in the UK banking markets.
Dave, over 20,000 former Lehmans employees lost their jobs around the world. And this from an organisation of only 25k staff.
The reason I keep banging on about not everyone being a trader that works for a bank is simply because the vast majority of people who want all the banks to fail have no idea how many “little” people work for these institutions. Its a position of ignorance as far as Im concerned.
Mailman
Mailman @10:52 AM
The reason I keep banging on about not everyone being a trader that works for a bank is simply because the vast majority of people who want all the banks to fail have no idea how many “little” people work for these institutions. Its a position of ignorance as far as Im concerned.
Yes, you’ve made your class warrior stance clear. Your concern is for the workers, and anyone who doesn’t want to put the public into debt to keep them employed at RBS for a whle longer is ignorant, uncaring, etc. Thank you.
Now then, do you have any thoughts at all on Robert Peston’s bias and his misleading the public on just how these investment banks he mentions – especially RBS’s investment division – are taking in money?
Mate, Im a kiwi so have no class system to worry about. Its one of the benefits of being from the uncivilised colonies.
Peston is a god. The sooner we all accept this, the sooner we can all move on 🙂
Mailman
BTW Davo, dont get me wrong…Im gob smacked that the Government has bailed these organisations out simply because of the vast amounts of profits they have made over the last 10 odd years.
A responsible Government would have had legislation in place to protect the country from banks going bust (ie. have adequate capital reserves in place to cover debts and restrictions/bans on dodgy practices).
Then again, perhaps we just expect too much from Labour. As if they have the capacity to ACT as a responsible Government.
Mailman
mailman,
You’re obviously being dishonest about class warfare. You state that people who want banks to be allowed to fail are ignorant because they don’t take the affect on the workers into account. If that’s not class warfare, then nothing is.
As for the rest of your comments, it’s too bad you aren’t interested in debate. Dance, dance, dance. Not at all like the mailman who used to post comments here.