The BBC were blasted by Tory Ian Duncan Smith for their insistence that falling unemployment figures were bad for the economy in some mysterious way….now the Empire is striking back.
The release of the latest borrowing figures ironically (considering they have been calling for more borrowing) led to the BBC having the opportunity to launch a counter attack on the Tories. They also constantly slip in Flander’s question demanding to know why employment is going up in a recession whenever possible.
One of the factors in unemployment falling was that of some people becoming self employed and setting up their own businesses.
Steven Nolan steps up to the plate and set out to do battle with that assertion…that self employment is a proper job, or possible to do.
Nolan brought on a 20 year old called Matt (36 mins in) who has been unemployed for a year and says it is impossible for him to get a job in his area….he could of course just get on his bike as Chinese, Polish and African workers have done and moved to get work…half way around the world in many cases….I know that where I live foreign workers are working a 4 day rota of 12 hours shifts on a farm and then 4 days in a factory…so not just one job but two…and yet the Brits can’t get a job!
Listening to him you get the impression there might be more to ‘Matt’ than meets the eye…he seems to have the patter off, well, pat…and glibly cranks out Labour Party or even Occupy rhetoric….he is almost cast for the part of Labour activist calling a phone in…’authentic working class accent, articulate, unemployed for a long time, ‘can’t afford’ to go to university, angry at bankers and the Tories’. Perfect….all ‘designed’ to generate as much sympathy as possible?
I’m sure he’s entirely authentic. I was wrong………
UPDATE: Thanks to Beeboidal in the comments for digging out this video of young Matt…apparently a member of the Socialist Party….‘A victim of capitalism’s failure Socialist Party member. Hull KR Green Bay and LFC fan’
Funny how the BBC kept that quiet!
He says it is impossible to get a job, there are businesses collapsing left right and centre….he can’t risk coming out of university with 50-60 grand debt and no job…it’s like a mortgage…can’t risk that without a job.
He goes on…the real issue, the core is the bankers and speculators who made this crisis and aren’t being made to pay for it….their money should be taken to be invested in youth jobs instead of hoarding it for the rich….we have a lost generation and a government of rich people who don’t know what it’s like to be poor.
Nolan agrees….no one should have to have that much debt and no job…and that banks ‘hoarding’ money is wrong.
Nolan’s attitude is a big problem…it is an attitude prevalent throughout the BBC…and one resulting from journalistic laziness and one might suspect preconceived notions.
The idea that Student debt is a problem is an astonishingly common assertion both by students and BBC presenters.
It is also completely wrong.
The BBC website explains it quite clearly should anyone (including BBC staff) be bothered to read it……under the new system you in fact will pay less than under the old one…not only that but if you earn under £21,000, or are not earning at all, you pay nothing back….not only that but the amount paid back is not dependent on how much you borrow…..you pay back an amount dependent on your earnings alone…..so even with £60,000 debt you will pay no more than someone with a £30,000 debt….and after 30 years all debt is written off.
It’s a bargain and simple…anyone who doesn’t understand the system perhaps should not be considering going to university…or preaching nonsense on the radio.
Victoria Derbyshire practically joined up with the student protestors last year in their protest against tuition fees….but made only a very weak and short explanation of the fee system to the students.
The old lefty of ‘Wake Up To Money’ (Andrew Verity I believe) last Thursday argued against the tuition fees and insisted they were an albatross around young people’s necks….Martin Lewis, financial expert, came onto Shelagh Fogarty’s show and did battle with him as he repeated his mantra of doom on that programme…unfortunately just timed out on the useless BBC iPlayer.
So student fees aren’t really a problem…accept for the country that has to pay off all the ones that aren’t repaid eventually.
As for Nolan agreeing that banks ‘hoard’ money…do they? What was the problem with banks? It was reckless lending and not having sufficient capital in reserve to back that lending up. Now they are required by the regulators to hold sufficient reserves and control their lending.
Today on ‘Wake Up To Money’ (27 minutes) we had a KPMG representative on to talk about the banks…their profits being down 17% on last year.
He stated that the reasons for lower profits are…too tight a regulatory environment…at the wrong time…he said the regulations to curb the credit boom should have been put in place in 2005/06 (note sharp intake of BBC breath…2005 was Team GB time! Embarrassing!) and now is the wrong time to tighten credit and limit lending. (note Flander’s 2005 assessment of the Brown policies Testing the Miracle)
The banks are required now to hold large amounts of capital, which comes from the funds that normally would be used for lending to businesses and for mortgages.
You can’t have it both ways…you can have Gordon Brown’s high risk based financial system or you can have a careful, safe and steady, risk free lending environment which limits growth at a sustainable level.
Which one? The BBC have plumped for Labour’s choice….that of Brown’s protégé, Ed Balls, who is going for the spend, spend, spend option.
Guess they never learn….Evan Davis insists that ‘Austerity is killing the patient’….clever boy that.
t’s a bargain and simple…anyone who doesn’t understand the system perhaps should not be considering going to university…or preaching nonsense on the radio.
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Except for one problem.
If you borrow, take the risk, fine. I’ve no problem with student debt. However, because you took the risk, you should also get the rewards.
Ah, if you do reap rewards, along comes the state, and taxes you more for those rewards.
So the states approach, heads we win, tails you lose.
Would you rather be taxed on a doctor’s pay of over £100,000/annum or someone earning £25000/annum?
Death and taxes…you can’t avoid them whatever…unless you’re Vodaphone.
I have noticed that on every phone in, comment on the economy, surprised there hasn’t been a tv drama about it…the opening words..”I don’t want to come out of uni (never university) with £40k of debt.” It is so obviously pre-arranged it is getting boring.
‘there might be more to ‘Matt’ than meets the eye’
I was first (happened a lot ’til I became my own boss) booted from a job in mid-late 80’s, I think.
It was a profession that did not do well in a recession.
So I adopted a higher-tech approach version of Mr. Tebbit’s ‘get on yer bike’ suggestion to look for work, gambling with the 3-month pay-off on a ticket to Australia, where sadly PC quotas applied over qualifications even back then (oddly it seems the other way round now in Ms. Gillard’s utopian paradise), and despite bunch of offers no work permit.
Stopped off in Hong Kong en route back and hung around Asia the next 20 or so years.
Seemed to work out.
Of course I could have stayed and thrown myself on the mercy and largesse of the state, but frankly a career as an on-call stooge to BBC producers would have no more appealed to me then than it should to any half-way sensible youngster now.
The student loan in the UK offers the most favourable terms for a loan that anyone anywhere on the planet will be offered in their entire life.
For some reason, many people seem to still be labouring under the misapprehension that they have to pay upfront. If you think this, you are a total moron.
Oh, I’m sorry – I know what the reason is – the BBC keep telling them that’s how it works!
In the US, student loan debt is the next big looming bubble that will kill the banks and cost the taxpayers billions and billions. Student loan debt is the one kind which – magically – cannot be dismissed via bankruptcy. Because much of it is a scam that gets banks paid by a government guarantee if the student defaults. The universities aren’t on the hook for it, so they can sell their cushy student lifestyle and useless degrees as much as they like. The banks will get their asses covered, and guess who gets left holding the bag. Again.
This will all end in tears.
There is more money owed for student debt in America than credit card debit. Its a least $1 trillion dollars. The whole US University system is well known for being nearly totally full of cultural marxist zealot teachers. You can do courses at US universities in judge judy, cake making and klingon. No wonder US students can’t get a job.
If they cut back on the number of university degrees to a number that the jobs market actually demands, then maybe the country could afford a more generous grants system.
But we all know who stuck his finger in the air and decided 50% of kids should go to university, don’t we? Yet another of his legacies forever hanging round our necks.
If high treason was still law in this country and we had a decent legal system. Then Tony Blair would suffer the ultimate penalty.
Which is no doubt why one of their first acts in 1997 was to remove the death penalty for treason …
The BBC and the Guardian are, by the very nature of their existence, intrinsically anti-growth and anti-enterprise; this is why they simply cannot comprehend that young people might just have get off their asses and move to find work – there is a massive sense of entitlement which has spread like a cancer under Liebour and it must stop! Also, people on the bacon role cheque shouldn’t have the bloody privilege of living in £1, 000, 000 mansions with the excuse that ‘moving outside their neighborhood would be against their human rights man’. I know in my case I had to move from London to bloody Jocko-land to get a job, which I hated at first but I simply had to do it in order to earn a sodding living!
Labour have caused this mess by: 1) turning the education system into a dumbed down, self-indulgent wasteland where mickey mouse qualifications mean that people graduating are enable to to solve basic arithmetical operations or tell the difference between a definite or indefinite article and, 2) Creating welfare dependancy for the lower classes and, 3) Flooding this country with ungrateful immigrants and, 4) Spending money we simply didn’t have…. oh and illegal wars which are none of our business!
The problem with the bloody BBC mindset is that they espouse a utopian political ideology that is incongruous with neoliberalism and less government intervention; they, alongside their Liebour lover boys, are still living in socialist dreamland where the belief that big government can looks after all is still the main topic at the snooty dinner table… God I hate socialists and left-wingers!
Socialists and left-wingers are a modern day version of the bubonic plague.
Don’t be too hard on the plague – at least it died out eventually, unlike socialism.
Interesting that it should have made a mini-comeback under Labour, thanks to mass immigration.
Do remind me-it WAS Labour that introduced student fees wasn`t it?
Listening to him you get the impression there might be more to ‘Matt’ than meets the eye…he seems to have the patter off, well, pat…and glibly cranks out Labour Party or even Occupy rhetoric….he is almost cast for the part of Labour activist calling a phone in…’authentic working class accent, articulate, unemployed for a long time, ‘can’t afford’ to go to university, angry at bankers and the Tories’. Perfect….all ‘designed’ to generate as much sympathy as possible?
I’m sure he’s entirely authentic.
I’m sure you’re right. 5Live used him just over a month ago. Then as now, 5Live forgot to tell the listener that he is a member of the Socialist Party and spoke at their 2011 shindig.
Great find….thanks.
It wouldn’t appear that he’s short of money to spend on food!
It’s getting to the point where you almost believe that you couldn’t make this stuff up –
– then you remember which organisation has a near-monopoly on broadcast news.
‘forgot to tell the listener’
‘Forgot’ in a uniquely BBC manner.
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