I caught Nick Clegg on the BBC this morning as he was given a free canter on how to further demoralise the UK’s wealth-creating sector. Using the much loved “excessive boardroom pay” meme, Clegg was allowed to claim – outrageously – that “the public sector can’t do ALL the heavy lifting” when it comes to re-balancing our economy. (WHAT?) No dissenting opinion came back so we can be sure the BBC gets quite excited about the idea of the State telling private companies what they should pay. Who says the USSR did not have some good ideas?
So, a power grab by an already bloated State is sanitised, presented by nice Mr Clegg as if it were the most reasonable thing in the world, and given clear passage by the BBC. Where is the voice arguing for less State intervention in private enterprise? Where is the voice pointing out that Government has no business telling any privately owned business what it should pay those who work for it?
We saw the farce of the Public Sector strike a few days ago now, with the BBC laying on the onions and violins every time some greedy trade unionist hit the spin button. It seemed then that nothing is so expensive that we can refrain from lavishing it on the Public Sector. But when it is the Private wealth-creating sector under the spotlight, well, it seems more wage austerity is deemed OK by the State Broadcaster.
Glad to see a post about this. I caught that outrageous remark of Clegg’s on a clip of the Marr programme and meant to post a comment about it but forgot. Cleggy, you’re not doing any lifting when you are being carried! It must be a phrase he heard and thought it would be smart to use, never mind the context making it nonsense.
Is this LibDem Sunday? First Clegg, then that charlatan Huhne on The Politics Show producing more windy nonsense than his stupid windfarms can manage and spouting that the future is electric – cars, that is.
Mustn’t forget Labour of course, so he was followed by Wee Dougie. My attention wandered as soon as I heard his voice so I can’t even say what he was on about.
Your readers might like this:
Clarkson – Like Unison only funnier:
That was a prime example of a BBC interviewer being so locked into a certain (left-wing) way of thinking on a subject that he seemed to be incapable of asking anything other than questions from the Left.
Marr kicks it off with his “excessive pay seems to many people to be out of control” question. Clegg says “I agree with you” and attacks top executives. Marr “mmms” sympathetically and, when Clegg begins attacking “old boy’s networks” in boardrooms, he chips in to support Clegg’s attack (“you scratch my back”) and Clegg echoes him in turn.
Marr’s lines of questioning were (a) to ask him repeatedly how legislation to tackle the ‘problem’ can be made successful, (b) to ask whether employees should be given a statutory say in deciding employers’ pay and (c) to quote Will Hutton at him, calling for a legal limit (no more than a 20:1 ratio) on pay differentials.
When Clegg made that “heavy lifting” crack, a decent interviewer – even if just for the sake of playing devil’s advocate – would have leapt in to challenge him but, no, Andrew Marr just asked him another variation on the ‘successful legislation’ question to “make sure some of these things happen.”
“nice Mr Clegg..”, I don’t think so. I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could spit. I read something, somewhere today that said the EU love him and would love him to be our PM. Now why is that I wonder, rhetorically.
Having been an EU bureaucrat and an MEP, Clegg is more “European” than British. Unless you count a short spell as a lobbyist (apparently representing Libya) and a few days with the FT, he has lived his whole adult life on the taxpayers’ tab. He is the model of a member of the political class: a parasite, a statist, a lefty; in fact everything the BBC loves except, of course, for his unfortunate dalliance with Cameron. However even that is forgiveable on the same basis that the Independent keeps Hari employed: he might be a liar and a shyster but he lies in a good cause.
“Nick Clegg airbrushed lobbying job from his CV”
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/centreright/2010/04/nick-clegg-airbrushed-lobbying-job-from-his-cv.html
And as for Mrs Clegg:
“As Nick Clegg’s Spanish wife gets a job with a Madrid wind farm firm targeting Britain, one man pens her an irate letter”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1285456/As-Nick-Cleggs-Spanish-wife-gets-job-Madrid-wind-farm-firm-targeting-Britain-man-pens-irate-letter.html#ixzz1faeBmrTy
“Revealed: The United Nations that make up Nick Clegg”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/election/article-1266826/The-United-Nations-Nick-Clegg.html#ixzz1fafaRTTf
Mrs Clegg is married to a wind farm. It is unproductive, as it rarely works, & hasn’t done much since it’s installation, it is, though, extremely expensive to maintain. It really is a very ugly piece of work. On rare occasions it begins to spin uncontrollably, galvanized by any criticism of the EU, or the subject of ‘British racism’. Then it slows down again, oxidising in the wet cultural Marxist air that seems to hang over the UK these days. At the next election it will be decommissioned then reassembled in Euroland, where it will be amongst many thousands of other similarly useless drains on the pauperised taxpayers. They’re welcome to it.
Clegg lies in the cause of the EU project and his EU pension; he is almost as dishonest as Bliar and Mandelson.
Yes, he is a real Eurobabe. His mother is Dutch, I think. He has worked in Brussels and maybe also Paris, his wife is Spanish, he speaks God knows how many European languages, some of them fluently…heh…it is all most (or perhaps almost?) unBritish!
Umbongo, you hit the nail on the head. Clegg is a serial sponger, having enjoyed every success he’s had at the expense of the taxpayer. The man is a dangerous EU fanatic and hopelessly in thrall to the Church of AGW. Basically, he’s a clear and present danger to a sound economy and a healthy democracy. He’d like nothing more for the dream of a Federal Europe to become reality (with himself, no doubt, installed as some kind of UK Satrap, serving his political (and financial) masters in Brussels).
Thankfully, even Call Me Dave doesn’t really seem to have too much time for him, treating him more like a mistrusted, younger half-brother and once we get past the next election Clegg will hopefully be sent packing back into the political wilderness (or a cushy, over-paid job as a Euro Commissioner).
Incredible isn’t it. “The public sector doing all the heavy lifting”! I just wonder who is paying for al this heavy lifting. I thought, silly me, that it was the private sector doing all the lifting.
The sooner the useless Tories slough off the even more useless Liberals , the better for the rest of us.
That Clegg is so-called Deputy Prime Minister is only slightly better than having Prescott being allowed to use this “pitcher of warm spit” soubriquet.
History will judge us badly for replacing Prescott with something nearly as worthless…how did we ever find the money to support these care in the community clowns?
The economy could not have been THAT bad then could it?…
“…to ask whether employees should be given a statutory say in deciding employers’ pay …”
Great idea – let’s all have a vote on how much (or little) we should pay BBC luvvies.
On ‘liking’ that, I have realised that, actually, the mooted premise quoted seems to be that the BBC employees would get to decide every aspect of how licence fee compellees who uniquely fund them live, without challenge, or the BBC and its employees being held to account.
A bit like now, then.