BBC sycophancy towards Vince Cable has reached new levels of nausea this morning. A headline on the Today programme was that Cable agreed that he would make a good Chancellor! You don’t say? This is of course also being used by the BBC as a not so coded attack on Osborne but it’s remarkable how the BBC grovels to Cable. I wonder if Cable’s self declared “war on Murdoch” is the thread that has earned Cable such respect from the BBC. To attack Saint Vince is to attract the opprobrium of the Beeb yet his record on the big economic issues is abysmal, but he is the man who is always right- in hindsight. What next from the BBC? Mr Miliband – would you accept you would make a great Prime Minister?
SAINT VINCE – TRIUMPHANT
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I always think he’d make an excellent undertaker. Ideal demeanour.
Ideal demeanour but without the easy charm.
He reminds me of the cadaver, not the undertaker
A possible sequel ?
He comes across as a pervert to me – the voice and sneer speak of fascinated disgust.
And when he smiles it’s enough to make children scream.
Can you have a dead undertaker? Just wondered!
Ah but when St Vince’s coalition performance is compared to the good old days under Brown, Vince isn’t so immune from criticism. On Today at around 8:10 this morning, Vince was cornered by Humphrys and “impartial” economics correspondent Steph and given a public whipping for the awful GDP figures. It was only at the end of this item that Steph suddenly admitted that the official GDP stuff looked rather peculiar in light of the increase in non-construction private employment data and the increase in tax revenues.
What – you mean there’s a possibility that the official stats might be wrong or, God forbid, fiddled by our selfless bureaucrats or, at least, wilfully misinterpreted by the state broadcaster? Actually I think FWIW that – as the BBC seeks to embed in the nation’s conciousness – Osborne’s policies are crap (but not for the reasons the BBC champion): there are no aggregate “cutz”; there has not been a bonfire of regulation (not with Vince responsible, that’s for certain); printing money hasn’t worked (except to tweak the system to allow more government borrowing at ludicrously low rates).
Unfortunately the BBC – apart from the odd truncated contribution from, for instance, Terry Smith* – an opposing view to the bien pensant tax/borrow/spend theme is rarely given a fair wind – or any wind. I could go on but, hey, it’s not my job, although it should be Steph’s job, to provide, if not an analysis, at least coverage of opposing views on how best to get the UK out of the mire caused by Brown and Balls.
* even then Smith was ambushed by Jonathan Portes of the (left-leaning but no BBC warning) NIESR yesterday on Today when Portes was allowed by Humphrys to quote (or, probably, misquote or quote out of context – we’ll never know) something Smith had said 18 months ago. Humphrys wound up the item before Smith was given an opportunity to respond: the BBC signature “impartial” bias in all its glory.
Third para should start “Unfortunately on the BBC . . . “
Osborne does seem to have scored a bit of an own goal by slashing capital spending to the extent that he has.
HOWEVER, when the BBC numpties bring on various people to criticise him for this they avoid asking the obvious, particularly when aforementioned critic has a surname like Balls or Miliband, which is, ‘If the government increase public spending on capital projects they would have to make cuts elsewhere. So what would YOU cut instead?’
But then that would be asking a challenging right-wing style question of their political masters and we can’t have that – got to maintain the illusion for the people that Labour has a painless way of getting us all out of this (their) mess.
I couldn’t understand what all this was about throughout the BBC today – St Vince to be the Chancellor – but an article in the Telegraph allowed me to put two and two together. The suggestion that St Vince should have the Chancellor’s job was made apparently by Lord Oakshott (described by Vine as Vince’s best friend in politics). So really the suggestion had no chance of becoming reality. But the Telegraph article was about a cabinet reshuffle – hence Vince’s bid. The mere fact that he is useless in his present post doesn’t enable the BBC to see the hopelessness of his bid. So it was a non news story given far too much air time by a biased BBC.
So “Cable agreed that he would make a good Chancellor”, did he? Well I think I would make a good brain surgeon. Anybody willing to let me practice on them to see if I’m right? Thought not, and I feel exactly the same way about Cable throwing his stupid hat in the ring to become Chancellor.
He has form for making differing predictions about anything and everything so however things turn out he can then claim to have been able to predict that particular outcome. Naturally, the wrong predictions are quietly swept under the carpet where they lay conveniently forgotten.
The only thing which Cable is well practiced at is being a dangerous, self-promoting and treacherous back-stabber, and he’s not even very good at that, however much the B-BBC try to polish his halo.
Good chancellor.
http://order-order.com/2010/04/21/guy-news-cables-flip-flop-smackdown/
Brillo on form again.
Great link. Compulsory viewing for anybody suffering from St Vince syndrome. Compulsive viewing for everybody else!
The BBC wanted a Lib-Lab coalition after the last election. The BBC wanted a Government that would attempt to spend their way out of recession. Most of all the BBC wanted ‘investment’ in an increasing license fee.
As for St Vince, he was caught voicing his bias whilst in a quasi-judicial role. The Beeb don’t care about that gaffe.