Today programme news bulletins this morning:
6am – “Figures to be released this morning could show that the UK economy grew slightly in the third quarter of this year. If confirmed it would be the first quarterly growth since early 2008 and would mean that the recession is technically over.”
7am and 8am – “Many analysts expect figures out today will show that the British economy has started growing again…”
8.30am – “The latest figures for gross domestic product due to be published in the next hour are expected to show the economy grew between July and September…”
10am – BBC News website:
The UK economy unexpectedly contracted by 0.4% between July and September, according to official figures, meaning the country is still in recession.
It is the first time UK gross domestic product (GDP) has contracted for six consecutive quarters, since quarterly figures were first recorded in 1955.
Green shooooots! greeeeen shoots! greeenshooooots! er..uhm…aahh…greeen shoots?
Why did the BBC feel the need to report their version of the facts BEFORE they figures came out, why not wait untill the figures were released?
This is why the BBC cannot be trusted and is so often wrong on economic issues, it reports what it wants to see, wishful thinking and shiny eyed optimism.
Hey, when you’ve got all that money lying around, you may as well spend it. Even if it is on speculating about what you – in your completely-out-of-touch-with-anything-resembling-reality – think might happen in the future.
Oh, and thanks Gordon for applying your mad economic skills to the economy. I would never have guessed that a guy with no useful training in anything – let alone economics – could break records with his economy-scuppering ability.
Unexpected only by the government and the BBC. This is going to get a lot worse and if they know it it is a gross and dangerous misrepresentation.
Check out the port figures and numbers of trucks ,locomotives laid up or is that too difficult for our economic gurus?
Winter is coming on and can anyone seriously believe that the economy will recover .
Oh I forgot the BBC will but then it is insulated from reality.
BBC TV News at one just now had Hugh Pym, Steph Flanders and others trying to expain why the UK is doing so much worse than other countries.
Quite difficult for them without mentioning the main reason, Gordon Brown !
His total incompetence with the Government finances and his failure to regulate the financial services have been absolutely criminal, but the biased BBC just can’t bring themselves to say it !
Asuka 12:07
Quite right !
Brown’s first degree was history, his PhD was politics, the only job he has had outside politics was 2 years as a lecturer at a minor college in Glasgow. His subject, politics !
He has no background in economics, finance, taxation or business. And he has spent the last 12 years demonstrating his ignorance and now we all have to pay the price.
Oh dear, it looks like the BBC got tripped up by going with what No. 10 fed them. Again.
Dave S 12:51
The BBC is not in recession so why should the Beeboids care ?!
More classic BBC website stuff this:
“A group of rich Germans has launched a petition calling for the government to make wealthy people pay higher taxes
(…)
The petition has 44 signatories so far” (my emphasis)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8321967.stm
So a petition from some German loony lefties who would rather the state sequestered their wealth than choose how to spend it themselves counts as news when it has 44 signatories. Unbelievable.
Of course the BBC are desperate to fictionalize the recession. The longer it continues, the closer the cross-hairs get to the BBC as a possible cost cutting measure to make joe public better off.
The entire media/business industry in the UK has been predicting that GDP would improve this quarter, so I’m not sure why you choose to pick on the BBC for being wrong/over optimisitc. They were all wrong! Shall I expect to see a list of businessmen/companies/other media outlets who also thought GDP would rise but now look silly?
FFPS – apparently those media and business experts and analysts were merely parroting “Today‘s forecast”, so the BBC is to blame…
That said, there’s no denying the awkwardness and embarrassment with which the BBC has reported the surprising strength of the recession, and little sign yet of the Beeb highlighting in large letters the fact that Brown has not helped this country get out of recession one iota. Will the BBC spend the rest of the day re-playing the various clips from recent months of Brown and his cabinet declaring how well-placed Britain was to emerge from recession stronger and healthier than ever? Sooner than our neighbours? Saving the world? I doubt it. Were this a Tory recession (I say this from memory not from idle speculation) the coverage would be of a completely different order.
But I think the penny may now start to drop at the BBC. They might realise that Operation Save Gordon has no chance of success.
FFps
Why does everybody in authority keep getting it wrong?
It sure is a puzzle to me. The information is out there if you know where to look. I have no intention of revealing useful sources after all why make a fool into a wise man but I will give you a clue.
Every commodity or manufacture at some stage moves across the world’s surface or internally in any specific country.
In the US the information is realtively easy to find, Here it is much harder but you can get it.
I have been consistently right over the last few years in my forecasts which I do purely for the fun and to make a few good friends richer or at least to preserve their capital.
Myself I prefer backing horses. Similar rules but I find it more interesting and profitable.
Bollocks! The BBC have ONLY been interested in giving airtime to those that promote the Government line that the economy has turned the corner.
Try listening to Jeff Randall on Sky News to hear the TRUTH.
Now why would all these economists get it wrong – possibly because a lot of them are employed by the government.
“..the Government Economics Service employs over 1000 economists in 30 departments – and it is still recruiting more!”
http://www.johnredwoodsdiary.com/2009/09/25/how-many-economists-does-it-take-to-preside-over-a-recession/
Just like “crime statistics” – the government employees only tell you what Gordon Brown wants you to know.
Fat Face Penguin Seal
The first message should have given you the clue. The BBC have been bigging up every possible green shoot storey that they can find for months. They were also one of the last to change from “downturn” to “recession”. Can you name a Prime Minister who displayed such similar denial? Strange that!
Gerald 14:06
Exactly.
The Beeboid idiots have believed Brown’s lies for so long that when the reality turns out to be different , they can’t figure it.
On News at one today, they were like a bunch of rabbits in the headlights. That smirking dimbo bimbo, Sophie Raworth ,looked as if she was going to burst into tears.
How will they cope with the realisation that Obama is even more useless than Brown ? !!
Funny you should say that:
“The decline in Barack Obama’s popularity since July has been the steepest of any president at the same stage of his first term for more than 50 years.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/6409721/Barack-Obama-sees-worst-poll-rating-drop-in-50-years.html
Stephanie Flanders on her blog http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/stephanieflanders/ tells us that this is only “a first draft of history”. She then quotes one of the “green shoots are visible/optimism regardless” brigade – Ben Broadbent of Goldman Sachs – who says that the figures should all be taken with a pinch of salt because we’re really doing so well. In other words, according to Ben and Stephanie, the ONS figures are bollocks and it’s best to trust us: after all would we lie?
Just like we can trust Sheena Easton to give us the TRUTH about violent, knife and gun crime. NOT!
I just knew this would be a blog entry when I got home today. All morning in the car on the way to work I heard the BBC “bigging up” the recovery (what recovery?)
Then when I get in the car to come home….. oh dear the BBC sound like someone shot their dog.
For all the crap that McBraindead has spouted our economy is in free fall still as WE on this board predicted. How do WE know, because those of us lucky enough to have a job in the REAL WORLD know that companies are still folding and no one in the private sector is spending and those tosspot beeboids don’t get it that it’s the PRIVATE SECTOR that drives the economy not bloated wasteful Government spending.
But isn’t it funny that we have Nick Griffin to take our minds of the failing economy and the one eyed prat who destroyed it?
Hmm, the day after the big QT debacle, a good time to bury bad news?
I expect to hear an apology or good explanation from every brown noser at the BBC that followed the party line by saying the recession was over.
It isn’t.
Report the fact that the recession isn’t over as much as you reported it being over and at the same time, reminding all that the Government and yourselves were wrong.
Then and only then will the score be level.
Now dig out the news and stories and stop reading party handouts.
Humble pie – get some.
But the very dopey and talentless Stephanie Flanders stated on the 6PM news that the figures might be wrong (what like Government crime stats that the BBC continually use without fact checking?) but at no time did she suggest that perhaps the economy is being mismanaged by the leftists in power. Why not? the BBC were happy to big up McMoron when things “appeared to be going well”
Again what the beeboids don’t get is the private sector is choking to death, tax cuts are what is needed not yet more pointless wasteful public spending.
The BBC were happy to play along with the Labour claim “that the Tories were wrong on the economy”, what and Liebour are getting it right?
thanks for this article. i heard the Today programme telling us we were out ot the recession this morning then later on all the other media told us the opposite. i thought I’d lost it but you have confrimed my first impression. The BBC really ought to be wound up asap.
Martin 19:08
Exactly. Thicko Steph is implying that the figures are understated. Even she must know that the ONS is a Labour creature. Of course, the numbers are wrong. If they show 0.4 % , it means the real figure is more like minus 1% !!
Grant. That’s it. The BBC happily spout Government figures as FACTS so long as they promote the leftist view. But the moment they don’t (like the economy or crime) the BBC suddenly finds an excuse for the “misreporting”.
We are still in recession yet every other G7 Country is not, yet the BBC still spout the crap that the Tories got it wrong on the economy. What and Liebour are doing it right?
Strange – I’m seeing a lot of negativity towards the government here, and no specific case against the BBC – I suppose the Times, Telegraph, Sky et all were predicting it would be negative, and only the BBC and guardian saw ‘green shoots’ eh?
The Beeb are also doing a wonderful job covering up the bad news too, main UK headline:
‘Record rescession for UK economy’
‘longest recession since records began’
Top story(aside from BNP farce): ‘Labour recession hopes ‘a myth”
“Yippee! There is no need to adjust our sets, normal service has been resumed. The world has been saved; the recession is over. Load up the charabanc with fizzy pop, we’re off to the races.
Nice theory, shame about the facts. What has really happened is that a seriously sick British economy has been pumped full of anaesthetic in the form of unprecedented monetary expansion and debt-funded government largesse.
Not surprisingly, with the narcotics of fantasy money and unaffordable public spending rushing through its veins, the patient suddenly looks a little perkier. But these are tranquillisers, not a panacea. They do not eliminate the illness, they merely mask it.” [10 Sept]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/jeffrandall/6169820/Recovery-talk-is-meaningless-to-the-man-with-his-P45-in-the-post.html
” “Whitbread, which owns hotel chain Premier Inn and the Costa coffee-shop brand, had yet to see substantive signs of improvement, according to its chief executive.
“I’d say we’re bumping along the bottom. There’s good news and bad news but overall we’re not seeing any green shoots,” Parker told the Times.” [8 Sept]
http://www.reuters.com/article/managementIssues/idUSL89718620090908
Highly conclusive evidence that the BBC is somehow biased there, how about something that actually contradicts this:
‘Not a single analyst of the 35 polled by Reuters before the figures came out had expected a negative result. Neither had ministers.’ (Andrew Neil)
Thanks to the unique way the BBC is funded it might consider reporting the news rather than anticipating it. On the day of the supposed announcement of the end of the recession one would have expected Labour ministers to be falling over themselves to get on the Today programme; instead all we got was rentagob backbencher Denis Macshane talking about a Rotherham poet. Could that not have set a few alarm bells ringing and caused the editors to make the headlines a little more neutral ahead of the actual announcement?
Utter crap. Try speaking to people who KNOW like the private sector or people looking for job.
Experts? What the the experts on climate change?
Don’t make me laugh.
The BBC spun the story exactly as they wanted.