Well. it looks like Berlusconi is following Papandreou out through the exit door, as demanded by Merkozy. This morning, the BBC pondered the future for Italy. Naturally, they push the “tighter fiscal and political union” fantasy of Barroso and his pals. They are also fixated on the personality of Berlusconi.They might do better to listen to the markets, now factoring Italy’s 10yr bond rates at 7%. That’s immediate bail-out time, and this time, not enough cash in the coffers to bail Italy out. So why does the BBC not discuss the central issue here – namely Euro-Governments spending more money than they have? The impossibility of such diverse economies as Germany and Greece? The hubris of the European elite who have ignored the profound schisms that now threaten to engulf the Eurozone? Why is the substance of the debate always so restricted?
BEHIND THE CURVEBALL
Bookmark the permalink.
The BBC just want Berlusconi (snigger snigger) out, that’s their main thrust and the economic isseues are a poor second.
Merkozy !!!
The problem is that firstly the BBC do not have anyone who understands economics, finance or fiscal policy, so they are in no position to comment on these matters.
Secondly, they operate on the simplistic basis that the EU and the Euro is good. Anything else is bad.
So the BBC is always going to get everything wrong.
And why did ‘Law in Action’ yesterday not invite anybody on who wants us to cut our ties with the European Court of Human Rights?
The BBC summed up the programme with this Hobson’s choice:
“So, which would you prefer? A splendid new bill of rights that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere like the one recommended for Northern Ireland or some informal guidance for the judges that might just succeed in tilting the balance.”
This is like the debate about us joining the Euro: those who did not want the Euro were marginalised either using ridicule or by simply ignoring them.
Link to the bias is here: http://tiny.cc/7cjgp
When did you ever see a proper debate on the BBC about anything. All we get are 2 minute arguments with Jeremy Paxman or John Humphries which are more noise than signal.
Why can we not get together several informed experts from various sides of the debate to sit across a table and debate the points in front of the public so that we can watch and think and make our minds up.
This is I believe on reason why we are in so much of a mess. Parliament is dead as a debating chamber. And the BBC does not want a debate because the people might come to the wrong answer once they hear the range of arguments.
Bring back the 14-day rule that the BBC succesfully lobbied to repeal. It was a good law and meant that Parliament remained the premier debating chamber in the country and not BBC studios.
KM
“Bring back the 14-day rule”
The abolition of the 14 day rule was one of the good things the BBC pressed for. As Frederick Bloggs says, there are now no debates worth the name in Parliament and yet you want to bring back media censorship. Doesn’t the BBC restrict debate enough for you?
Are the BBC asking Euro-fanatics if they are still in favour of Britain joining the Euro ?
That question should be put to all of them.
Any who say “yes” can then be certified as mentally deranged.
The 14 day rule only applied to broadcasters. Sky is nearly as biased as the BBC
“Why is the substance of the debate always so restricted?”
I think you answer that in your post, David. It’s a way of avoiding the reporting of the very serious flaws that you mention, flaws that call into question the very formation and future of the EU project. If you’re of a pro-EU stance, much better to focus on the personalities and their various rivalries than the inconvenient truths that are becoming more and more difficult to ignore.
It’s been mentioned by others before that it’s a tactic of the left (and here I include the BBC) to give the appearance of open and lively debate whilst severely restricting what can be said within that debate.
This is just another manifestation.
As Italy tries to catch up with Greece’s less than impressive 10yrBR, the BBC have not paid too much attention to the giggling Chinese.
Could it be that the paradox that is the EU, beloved by the BBC, with its good old socialist spending and loads of public non-jobs, has come unstuck and is now forced to ask China to help them out ?
Such irony, a Communist super player raising eyebrows at the idiotic spendthrifts in Europe.
How will the BBC spin this one ?
If you want to do business with China, my advice is to do the opposite of what Rover Cars did.
john,
When it comes to money, the Chinese are the ultimate capitalists and too wise to bail out anyone. And good luck to them !
Berlusconi and Papandreou may be out the door, but since there’s precious little change in the financial behavior of either of their countries, this is basically another level of rearranging the deck chairs. All the astute BBC minds seem to think this is a sign of reform, and fret about a new austerity. China is about to go to hell in a handbasket on their own, and won’t be bailing anyone out or likely to forgive debt.
Does Stephanie Flanders still think that Greece will “get nowhere near default” ?
Jane,
The words “Stepanie Flanders” and “think” don’t sit too easily together !
The problem is that firstly the BBC do not have anyone who understands economics, finance or fiscal policy, so they are in no position to comment on these matters.
Surely not! Paul Mason is a communist, and Stephanie Flanders has shagged both Ed Balls and Ed Miliband. How more impartial could they be?
Meanwhile, on the World at One this afternoon the Euro crisis was discussed by Lord Heseltine, Lord Kinnock, and, for balance, Lady Williams. The BBC is a laughing stock, and they just don’t get it.
Add to that the fact that Robert Peston is Gordon Brown’s biographer and champion of his economic policies. And Mark Mardell confirmed at the BBC College of Journalism that they’re all über-Keynesians, and believe the British public to be as well.
The BBC have been listening to the same old has-beens and never- weres for way too long…and so when the crisis comes, then they have absolutely nothing to say that is worth the breath.
Incestuous thick lazy and privileged…never had to defend any position that they hold, because it was all so obvious and couldn`t possibly be argued by any reasonable person.
So they never argued about anything-so now when they might have an opinion, no-one in their right minds would ever listen to any of them…as if Shirley Williams has an opinion that has not proved catastrophically wrong and in real time…and yet the BBC will still ask the mad old bat about things none of them have a clue about.
Those who havent` atrophied through lack of thinking juts have dementia…why else would an Yvette Coopoer be asked about immigration…as if her Home Inforamtion Packs debacle proved her competent to sound off on any chosen topic the BBC feeds her with!
cj,
You are right. It is totally incomprehensible to Beeboids that anyone could have a opinion different from their identikit views.
Narrow-minded and robotic.
A Communist from the EU or BBC should ask Communist China why Capitalism has been so good for them. They would say they copied Hong Kong which follows the economic libertarian “Positive non-interventionism” of Briton, John Cowperthwaite.
We would need to leave behind the Labour, Liberal and Tory parties as well as leave the EU, for that to be possible in Britain.
We will know when the Eurozone’s end is near. That’s when they decide to borrow money from a Nigerian moneylender.
Nigerian moneylender? Boko Haram isn’t allowed to charge interest according to sharia law – must be worth a try! What a hoot!
Rumours of China applying to join the EU have been greatly overstated.
But China is as the Liberals say “ISOLATED and ALONE” as are all the Countries of the world not in the EU.
China’s going to have serious problems of their own real soon. But not because of capitalism but because it’s really a massively corrupt command economy. All that construction the BBC has been praising for the last few years has created little more than ghost cities and empty office buildings, and a few hundred million pissed-off peasants. As the saying goes, things which can’t last, won’t.
Two Ed’s two beds Steph Flanders is at it again, she just claimed that the “markets were sure Italy would be OK”
On what planet Flanders? Only you are thick enough to fall for the crap that the Euro is saved, the Euro is stuffed.
Even if they can find enough money to bail out Italy for the time being, we all know that Spain, Portugal and Ireland will be next and what happens when that money is used up?
None of these Countries can grow their economies as they need to because they’ve got locked into the Euro which is run by the Germans.
The more crap I see reported by the BBC the more I despair, millions of people trust the BBC to report truthfully and that is one thing the BBC does not do.
Flanders is a joke.
They also all have unsustainable Welfare states, which don’t seem to be giong away any time soon.
Agree David. OWS and its clones, the student demos in the UK, the subprime fiasco in the US, the demise of Greece, Italy and all the other basket case economies are about one thing. Entitlement mentality.
“SPIEGEL: Do you seriously think the Greeks will manage to repay their debts, which are denominated in euros, with a weakened national currency?
Sinn: They will only be able to generate foreign trade surpluses if they abandon the euro. And only then will they be able to pay anything back. Otherwise, they will forever remain dependent on others.”
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,796251,00.html
Which is why the Germans want political integration, they can they use their financial muscle to get the Government they want.
Buy buying up Countries the Germans are able to ensure that they can vote through any policies they want within the EU.
Smart move by Merkel, more subtle than a Tiger tank or a Stuka but Germany gets its way and no one can or will stand up to it.
Yes, Martin, there is something in their national character which will never change. They just can’t help it.
Journalists can only be as good as the sources they carefully select
“I have experienced this first-hand in the UK with the BBC away from climate change. If you read the BBC, it’s almost impossible to fathom what happens in Italian politics: it all looks like a movie where half of the plot is missing and a great deal of the image is blanked out.
Simply, all BBC reporting about Italy is invariably left-leaning (from an Italian point of view). That’s because the Italians they interview are 99% of the time only Italian journalists writing in leftist newspapers. I remember once months ago there was some time given by BBC Radio4 Today to a recorded statement by an Italian non-leftist MP, drowned by untold number of live radio minutes given to a leftist journalists. Same happens with the Financial Times.”
http://omniclimate.wordpress.com/2011/11/09/journalists-in-a-cage-or-the-curse-of-climate-change-bias/
How true. Maurizio Morabito also has the BBCs climate change “reporting” sussed.
“Why is the substance of the debate always so restricted?”
Noam Chomsky wrote: ‘The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident veiws. That gives people the feeling that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate’.
As an avid fan of Mr Chomsky, you now know why the BBC acts as it does.
Another idea is to bring in incitement laws, and then employ people to turn violent at places such as speakers corner, and then you can arrest the speaker for inciting violence.