This is interesting. Terry Smith on his blog Straight Talking has engaged with someone posting a comment on how the BBC in the interests of “balance” is not helping provide a serious forum to discuss the issue of austerity and cuts. Give it a read!
“Where does Ann Pettifor come from? The information I can find online suggest she has never held a job in the real world by which I mean working in a for profit organisation, and lists amongst her accomplishments being a former advisor to Ken Livingston. Birds of a feather do flock together. She is well known to the BBC staff which is a telling sign, and we are dealing with the full blown champagne socialist with the apartment in W1 and cottage in the country. How convenient to get the BBC car to pick her up from W1, take her to the Newsnight studio and waft her back after she has dispensed wisdom to us about how to solve the debt crisis with such gems as having discovered this new source of money which the rest of us had overlooked-the Bank of England can just lend to the government. Utter buffoonery-you are right, my face does tend to betray my views.
In a previous Newsnight appearance she told us that Keynes’ theories were tried in the Great Depression and so must be employed now, thereby displaying total ignorance of both Keynes and the Great Depression (Keynes’ main works were not published until 1933 and 1936), let alone a total lack of comprehension about what will work now. And described my views that the government is heavily indebted as ‘rubbish’. I can only hope she’s up for round three.
Funnily enough I had a remarkably similar thought about Question Time. The approach seems to be along the lines of saying “Let’s have a vote, who wants more money?” and then when there is a massive majority from the show of hands, or in Question Times’ case the loud applause, assuming that’s the matter resolved. You are right about David Starkey and about Dimbleby-a state broadcaster which was genuinely trying to maintain balance would get rid of him immediately. I watched him in a programme about South America warbling on about how Chile had achieved an economic miracle in spite of the repression of General Pinochet. In reality, Chile owes its economic strength to Pinochet’s reforms, but we’re not allowed to say that as it does not accord with the BBC rewriting of history.
It is essential to see the Augean stables of the BBC cleaned of this bias if viewers are to have any chance of grasping the enormity of the problem we now face. I would be more than willing to take on Balls, Dimbleby and Ann Pettifor together single handed. However, being proved right after the disaster has overwhelmed us will be much less satisfying than getting people to see what’s coming and take some action to prevent or reduce it.”
When the history of the Decline and Fall of the Euro gets to be written-let us praise the brave men like Terry, Jeff, Liam and John who knew all along where this would all end…but were not allowed to speak without the Ashdowns, Mandelsons, McShanes, Cleggs and Heseltines drowning them in oil and bile.
Hence we`re not hearing too much from Ken Clark and Tony Blair types about their catastrophic vanity, personal failings and economic/historical inanities…for which the Greeks etc are paying the ultimate prices as we speak.
I imagine there`s a lot of redacting at the BBC where the likes of Stoopid Flanders etc are surely getting videoclips and CDs scotched regarding THEIR role in all this mass delusion.
These are the same fools that laughed at Tulip Fever and Spice Prices from centuries back…thank JM Keynes, we`re all so much more clever now eh?
there needs to be a mechanism that puts the socialists in a box from which they can whinge and wail, but do no harm. Failing that, we need to reinstate the death penalty for treachery and put a few hundred (thousands?) of socialists against a wall and put them out of our misery. I don’t believe that socialists can ever be changed by argument, so I can only conclude that they can only be prevented from doing what they do, by neutralising them.
Oh, and viva General Pinochet.
Education might stop future generations from making the same mistakes. No, bugger, that won’t happen, education for the masses is a step too far for all political parties.
PS Dimbletwat should be fired for being a totally biased berk!
It’s interesting that in the comments on his blog, Terry Smith notes that the politicians “specify whom they are willing to appear with on Newsnight”. No wonder the BBC is Groupthink Central.
The control is absolute.
Who gets invited.
How the ‘chair’ moderates.
What the audience wants (and how it is assigned).
And then… it goes through the edit suite, with suitable samples at the top of the hour…to suit.
24/7, multi-channel.. to you, a bargain at just £4Bpa, or a compelled £145.50papp. No refunds.
It’s a miracle on any non-BBC view on any subject gets a shot.
Ms. Pettifor sounds ‘just about right’ for the BBC porridge.
I also looked Ms Pettifor up on Wiki and this is the money quote: “She is best known for her leadership of a worldwide campaign to cancel approximately $100 billion of debts owed by 42 of the poorest countries.” Bingo!
Cancelling the debt of poor countries would resonate with BBC producers. The “poor countries” are the victims, the West is the rapist. Never mind that the West has wasted trillions in foreign aid, giving it to corrupt leaders who have exploited their own people. But the Left is all about feeling good. It is the intention, not the result which seems to matter. And they are helped by people like Ms Pettifor with forgiveness in their hearts and whom they play like violins.
Meanwhile to Terry Smith I would say this. Achievement is not a qualification for a place at the High Altar of the Church of the Liberal Media. You don’t need to do anything. You simply need to have opinions. You need to be photogenic, lucid and talk to time. You need to carry the right credentials (Ken Livingston? Wow!) and never question the left-wing orthodoxy.
Remember there is no diversity within the BBC. Skin colour and social background may be different but their views are uniform – with an abiding belief in the rightness of their ideas.
These beliefs are formed by the same (Shirley Williams) educational system, honed by the same universities (Oxbridge) and self-selected by the same newspaper adverts. (Guardian)
It’s all very simple. “Are you one of us?” they ask. If you are, you pass the test and are invited on every radio and TV show possible.
Are you an atheist? Come do Thought For The day.
Are you a Conservative? Come and be abused on the News Quiz.
Are you effective? Come and be shouted down on Question Time.
Ms. Pettifor may not have ever held down a real job where payrole has to be met, goods delivered on time, quality has to be checked, and countless nights’ sleep is lost through worry.
But what the hell do BBC producers know about that? I speak from experience. I was a BBC producer for 30 years and later ran a small import/export company. I know which one was the gravy train and which one was the back-breaker.
Excellent. If things continue as they are, finally the wealth which is generated by the grafters and risk-takers will be totally overwhelmed by the demands of the state and its hangers-on like Pettifor who make themselves millionaires (probably) through their wealth-sapping, parasitical ‘careers’ where big rewards for bugger all effort or responsibilty is the norm. But I suspect even then she and her ilk still won’t ‘get it’, and will continue to believe that money really does grow on trees, and that debt is just a monetary illusion that can be dispatched to the ether at the stroke of an Oxfam executive’s pen.
Great Idea!!!
Cancel all future 3rd world debt.
Don’t give them any money.
Works for some.
Ann Pettifor is also a Fellow of the New Economics Foundation, who describe their objective as working towards a “new model of wealth creation, based on equality, diversity and economic stability”. That is not New Economics, it is Tosh.
Wiki says of the New Economics Foundation entry:
“This section contains information which may be of unclear or questionable importance or relevance to the article’s subject matter.” And “This article appears to contain a large number of buzzwords.”
How perceptive of Wiki, but they stop short of how she should be described, which is a complete utter total airhead, who has kept her head above water exclusively by climbing Left wing greasy poles.
That’s not wealth creation: it’s wealth redistribution.
‘However, being proved right after the disaster has overwhelmed us will be much less satisfying than getting people to see what’s coming and take some action to prevent or reduce it.” Nope, ‘fraid that won’t happen, as the b-BBC will make sure the Armageddon which is sure to follow under the next Labour government will be blamed squarely on the Tories. In fact the b-BBC’s own Ministry of Truth has been in overdrive since Year Zero – sorry, 2010, putting them well on the way.
‘Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth’.
I have yet to hear a coherent explanation on the BBc of how the current ANNUAL deficit of £170.8 billion is to be controlled.
More public spending is the answer.
Whatever the question.
Print £170.8 bn and explain it to the electorate as “focusing on growth” Good enough for Labour voters. Which bit of Socialist growth strategy don’t you understand?
Deficit and debt deniers aren`t they?
Reckon we may well need that neuroscience and medication regime stuff quickly before they get to use it on us lot..for denying the worth of the Euro, unlimited immigration, global boiling and the bargain that the BBC turns out to be for us all.
The problem is that socialists actually believe that you never have to pay money back and you can just keep on printing more if you run out.
This woman is an idiot which is why she is on the Broken Biscuit Company
Sirs,
Unlike Ann Pettifor, I actually – REALLY – have discovered a previously untapped source of money the British government can use to reduce the deficit and ultimately pay down the national debt.
It’s quite simple: we close off Highgate Cemetary and charge people twent quid entrance fee to hear Karl Marx laugh in his grave.
This would be bigger than Mao’s Mausoleum which has lifted 200 million people out of poverty.
I thought of two variations upon your excellent idea. The printable one involves building a pod next to it to house a tapdancing school, using the area around his grave as rehearsal space.
And, lo and behold, on the main page of the BBC News website there’s a prominent link to a piece in their ‘Features & Analysis’ section called ‘Still standing: Why a Greek default wouldn’t spell the end of the world’ by…”Ann Pettifor, New Economics Foundation”.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18143078
There’s no other contrasting single-authored ‘Viewpoint’ putting the opposite point of view.
She seems to crop up on the BBC quite a bit then.
I doubt they ever mention her active membership of the Labour Party though. She was on an all-women shortlist to be the Labour parliamentary candidate for Durham North. So if she ever makes party political points, we’ll know why in future.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/richardmoss/2009/12/durham_north_west_labour_short.html