FEEDING THE BEAST

Here I start you off with a passage from a Telegraph article….One point of which is the renewed popularity of Gordon Brown…..no surprise really when the BBC has done all it can to smother any and all criticism of him….you will rarely hear his name on the BBC despite him being both Chancellor and PM and leading us into the most disastrous financial crisis possibly in history. Also included are further parts of the article to illustrate the BBC’s economic narrative is lacking in realism, aligned as it is with Balls’….

‘Both David Cameron and George Osborne found themselves roundly booed at the Paralympics this week. No surprise there, you might think, given that the Government is failing to deliver the economic recovery it promised. And austerity, even in the limited dose so far applied, is never going to be popular.

Rather more startling was that Gordon Brown, the former prime minister and chancellor, was cheered. Memories, it seems, are very short. That little more than two years after losing power, the man who presided over the worst financial road crash of all time could find himself publicly celebrated is quite a turnaround.

Even Brown, who has long believed that the judgment of posterity will be kinder to him than the voters were at the last election, could not have expected such a swift rehabilitation.

Something of a reality check is called for. The Coalition may be failing on the economy, but the idea that the Left offers credible alternatives is dangerous poppycock.

To understand what’s really happening here, it is necessary to revisit the underlying causes of the crisis. The consensus is still very much that the main mischief was years of Thatcherite deregulation, which allowed bankers to run riot. In this Brownite narrative, there was nothing much wrong with the pre-crisis economy which sorting the banking system wouldn’t fix. Get the money moving again with repeated rounds of monetary and fiscal stimulus, and demand would quickly return to the way it was. Confronted with the uncomfortable truth that bankrupting governments with deficit spending has failed to work as predicted, proponents argue either that there was simply not enough of such spending, or that it has been withdrawn prematurely.

Regrettably, there is a much more painful and altogether more plausible way of looking at the crisis and its causes than this “get out of jail free” approach. Confronted by a steady loss of competitiveness, governments in many advanced economies started spending more than they could afford to support growth, and they actively encouraged households with low interest rates, credit expansion and misguided social policy objectives to do the same.

Unsurprisingly, this growth has proved unsustainable. To believe that the crisis can be corrected simply by doing more of what got countries into such a mess in the first place is to descend into fantasy.’

And here is an additional piece about Japan…The BBC’s ‘Wake Up to Money’ team always use Japan as an example that ‘austerity’ doesn’t work claiming government spending is the only way out of recession….however the truth is Japan ‘stimulated’…’spent’…. enormously and its economy stagnated for decades…they have decided to change that policy:

At last, Japan may be about to abandon its disastrous Keynesian consensus

‘What is newsworthy is that, having tried and failed with every other option, the Japanese government may be taking a remarkably novel approach. It appears as though they are going to try to spend close to what they receive in taxation. The Keynesian consensus is coming to an end in Japan, although not before it has wrought enormous damage to one of the world’s great economies.’

　

So there we go….the BBC supports the Labour approach to economics and is helping to rehabilitate Gordon Brown’s reputation and hence Labour’s electoral chances.

The BBC’s approach is, as mentioned above, to refuse to mention what Gordon Brown’s government did for Britain and conversely mention every little problem that the Coalition has…and blame it on their policies.

 

But hang on even Ed Miliband doesn’t believe in Brownian economics anymore:

‘If we came along and said ‘look, we can just carry on like the last Labour government did’ – I mean it’s politically crackers to do that, because we wouldn’t win the election and we wouldn’t deserve to win the election. We can’t say: ‘Look, we just want to sort of carry on where we left off, you know, the electorate was wrong, we were right, thanks very much…” It’s not realistic…..Centre-left governments of the future will have to make work pay better by doing more to make work itself pay.  That is how we are going to build growth based not just on credit, but on real demand.’

 

Alastair Sooke in his BBC programme on Roman art  tells us that…..‘In Ancient Rome Caesar, Augustus, played a clever and cynical game, secretly killing off the Republic whilst at the same time paving the way for his vision of the Roman Empire…and Art played a leading role in this deception.’

All very evocative of how the BBC operates….it providing the televisual ‘Art’, the programmes into which it slips its political messages, that allows it to deceive the Public and pave the way for Labour’s return and thence a Union with Europe….Hurrah!!!

A prime example of this ‘revolution through Art’ is the latest Panorama programme suggesting that cuts to emergency service’s budgets will lead to deaths.

It was a thoroughly confused programme, unsure if it was examining government cuts or emergency service inefficiencies. At the end you had little real idea of what the issues really were but were left with the general impression that government cuts were definitely a bad thing…as no doubt intended….perhaps ‘bullshit baffles brains’ serves as well at the BBC as in the Army.

The programme was half an hour long into which it tried to pack analysis of the police, fire and ambulance services, each one in themselves deserving probably an hour at least to do them justice….Panorama has effectively been neutered and sidelined but is still brought out to use its once impressive credibility as an investigative programme of mark to provide authority to the BBC’s anti-government rhetoric.

It of course relied on the usual trick of bringing in ‘personal stories’ to illustrate everything that’s wrong. One, of a granny who fell over, was a complete waste of time as it turned out the ambulance service reacted properly in accordance with guidelines. Others were hearsay and apocryphal tales from disgruntled police or senior fire brigade officers defending their budgets.

There was no context for the cuts, of whether the services were inefficient and could improve or why the cuts were necessary….it was just taken as read that cuts were not really necessary and would produce a dangerous drop in emergency response times to incidents….in essence the programme was ‘feeding the beast’….that being the insatiable and ongoing BBC appetite for undermining the government with stories of doom and gloom and disaster.

What is completely disingenuous is the lack of reference to past performance and cuts in Services under Labour.

In 2009 the very same level of cuts that the government are implementing were being suggested by senior police officers…whilst at the same time being opposed by other uncooperative officers as now:

Police budgets to be cut by 20 per cent, says senior officer

Sir Hugh Orde proposes widespread mergers of the country’s police forces / Amalgamation is ‘best way to make use of shrinking Home Office budgets’.

Sir Hugh Orde, the president of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), says amalgamating some of Britain’s 43 forces is the best way to make use of Home Office budgets, which he believes are set to shrink by up to 20 per cent due to the recession.

His comments revive an idea which dates back to 2005, when the then Home Secretary Charles Clarke suggested merging neighbouring forces to create 17 larger police regions.

Sir Hugh says the plan should now be reconsidered given the current economic climate. But due to the unpopularity of the proposals four years ago, and the lack of police co-operation, he says that politicians are fearful of backing a similar plan. “I have raised [amalgamations] with every political party, and I do not detect any political will to deliver this in the foreseeable future. The sense I get is that it is not an urgent priority,” he said.

The primary reason for suggesting mergers is the weak economy.

Forces are expecting budgets to be cut, but are aware that the public will demand that frontline officer numbers do not drop – the areas in which savings are possible are back-office functions. Many also believe that smaller forces are simply not equipped to deal with the threat of large-scale organised crime.

Sir Hugh said: “This country is in a recession. There is no more money for the public sector and I can confidently predict cuts in police budgets of 10 to 20 per cent over the next few years. We really have to focus on what is important – what keeps people safe, what works and what does not.

“[Chief officers] are looking at driving out efficiencies from the back office. They are looking at amalgamating tasks across different police forces – so major inquiry teams will cover more than one county – human resources functions, finance functions, anything we can do to protect the front line will be done.”

 

There are plenty of reports about police service cuts under Labour should the BBC care to look and provide more context.

The Daily Mail told us that under Labour ‘A senior judge has warned of a rise in vigilante crimes caused by slow police response times.   Richard Bray said citizens were increasingly taking matters into their own hands because of lack of confidence in the forces of law and order.
A police pledge, to which all 43 forces in the country have signed up, promises that in urban areas police will arrive within 15 minutes and in rural areas in 20 minutes.

But Judge Bray’s scathing comments make clear he feels they are falling short of those commitments.

Matthew Sinclair, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said ‘This will continue so long as the police are forced to respond to the priorities of politicians rather than ordinary people. They’ll spend their time trying to meet arbitrary and distorting targets rather than trying to catch serious criminals.’

Even investing large quantities of money can lead to loss of performance if badly implemented (As was normal under labour):

‘Police response performance notably declined’ in Barnet after the opening of a £33 million hi-tech call centre in Hendon.

A report delivered by the Metropolitan Police’s Deputy Assistant Commissioner Brian Paddick to Barnet police in January obtained by this newspaper under the Freedom of Information Act shows that the number of crime scenes reached in 12 minutes dropped by eight per cent.

In December 2004, 69 per cent of calls were dealt with in 12 minutes, and by June this figure had slumped to 55 per cent. By September it had fallen to a low of 47 per cent.

“Performance in this area response times has notably declined since the Basic Operational Command Unit’s Barnet call centre migration to MetCall in July 2005,”‘

 

Oh and there’s this:

‘GREATER Manchester Police is to lose 300 officers after overspending by £5m.

The force will also order a freeze on civilian recruitment and crack down on overtime, training and travel as it seeks to balance the books. 

Accountants have forecast the force will overreach its £560m annual budget by around £5m when the financial year ends in March. The planned cuts will leave GMP with about 7,900 officers – falling further behind the target of 11,000 set by ex-Chief Constable Mike Todd in 2004.’

 

and the BBC must remember this:

‘The chief constable of North Wales Police says officers could be taken off the beat because of the latest budget settlement from the UK Government.   Richard Brunstrom said that in real terms there has been a cut in his force’s budget of £3m.

Meanwhile, South Wales Police said they were “disappointed” at the budget set for 2007-8. Dyfed-Powys said the future was “distinctly bleak”.

Mr Brunstrom said”Not only are we losing backroom staff, we are having to take officers off the beat in order to fill in the gaps.”

A Home Office spokesman said government and central spending on the police had increased by 56% – almost £4bn – between 2000/01 and 2007/08.  He said: “The 2007/08 funding settlement provided an increase of a minimum 3.6% for every police authority in England & Wales.  “This increase of 3.6% is above inflation (around 2.7%) and is higher than last year’s settlement.”

　

As to the Fire Service, budgets are only being cut by 3% from central government and response times can go up because of a variety of reasons…..not just ‘cuts’……

 

Review of Fire and Rescue Service response times

Fire Research Series 1/2009

Response times to Primary Fires were examined for the period 1996 to 2006. It was found that response times to each type of Primary Fire in England increased from 1999, primarily due to increased traffic levels.

Using response time fatality rate relationships, it was predicted that the increased response times may contribute to about 13 additional fatalities in dwelling and Other Buildings fires each year, possibly 65 additional deaths in Road Traffic Collisions (RTCs) and an £85m increase in Other Buildings fire damage.

Traffic levels increased by about 14 per cent in the study period for England, while the number of pumping appliances fell by about 3 per cent.

In order to reduce average response times back to 1996 levels, a ‘broad brush’ analysis indicated that the necessary increase in FRS resources is likely to incur costs (of £750m in additional to capital costs) disproportionate to the impact on loss of life and loss of property.’　

In that case it was increasing traffic on the roads blocking fire engine access.

The Fire Service is also being diverted from its main task to that of providing ‘emergency’ cover for the ambulance service thereby using up resources in tasks not primarily of their concern…..

‘Ambulance services are ‘massaging’ response time figures by increasingly sending firemen out on medical emergencies, it emerged yesterday.

Firefighters trained in first-aid techniques are being despatched to deal with ‘life-threatening’ incidents when the nearest ambulance is too far away.’
 

Here is what the West Sussex Fire Service Union says about cuts under Labour and their effect upon the Service then……‘

‘Prior to 2004, the Fire Service worked to National Standards Of Fire Cover. These concentrated on providing emergency response to fire in urban areas, at the expense of rural areas. This approach was, in turn, replicated in Fire Protection & Prevention Legislation. This concentrated on reducing the financial impact of fire to business.

While the standards of fire cover remained unchanged, the Fire Service improved. New equipment enabled the Fire Service to engage in more technical and efficient fire fighting procedures, and Fire Authorities began utilising the Fire Service for other emergencies. Special Services such as road traffic accidents, flooding and chemical incidents were all dealt with by the Fire Service.

Due to this extra workload, it became apparent by the 1980s that the standards of fire cover were not meeting the public’s expectation of the Fire Service. Fire Brigades were under resourced, and firefighter safety was compromised.

Government has used Fire Service legislation to concentrate on cost of delivery rather than cost at outcome.

The Union regards measuring cost in this way to be loaded against emergency response, as response is seen as a cost. Thus the only savings presented are savings made by reducing emergency response. No measurement of outcomes are made. The implicit cost saving of saving life by rescue, or preventing the spread of fire to beyond the room of origin, is not measured.

Between 1997 and 2006 domestic fire damage claims rose by 46.5%.

Commercial fire damage claims rose by 51.2% .

The numbers of whole time firefighters has fallen by 3.7% since 2002, to 30,596.

Between 2004 & 2008 12 firefighters lost their lives at incidents. ( 4 between 1997 & 2004 )

This last statistic takes the firefighter death rate to 9.6/100,000 workers per year. The average figure is 0.71/100,000 workers/year.’

 

 

There was a distinct lack of critical inquiry and real depth to the Panorama report…..the BBC were lecturing or preaching at us rather than informing and educating…they want a passive audience that is unquestioning and receptive to the message…no thought needed here.

 

Much like the old days when those in control didn’t want the ‘people’ to be educated in case they got ideas above their station and started thinking for themselves the BBC restricts the information they allow you to have because the highly educated doyens of the BBC know what’s best for you.

 There is plenty of descriptive and emotional content from the BBC but little in the way of explanation to provide a thorough understanding of the issues. At the end you are merely left with general impressions that cuts are wrong….all critical inquiry is paralysed, all dissent and thought made impossible as you haven’t enough information to consider any different scenarios.

 

It was a BBC political polemic disguised as thought provoking investigative journalism.