The BBC has been to the fore in providing a platform to those such as the Milibands and Boris Johnson who advocate the neo-Marxist nonsense of “a living wage”. Boris was on Today this morning waffling about it and Miliband got plenty of coverage too. These Statists all line up bully business into buying out more so they can feel all good inside. Now then, my beef with the BBC on this is that it does not provide the same platform to those people who oppose this “Living Wage” oxymoron on the basis it will be the death of many UK businesses. From a Conservative point of view people may wonder at Johnson’s embrace of this example of latter day Marxism but then again, perhaps that is why the BBC tolerate Boris?
THE LIVING WAGE AND MODERN MARXISM
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The BBC is reporting a story. It’s also reported the those opposed:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15151877
Another factual inaccuracy Mr Vance.
Factual inaccuracy? On here? Who’da thunk it?
Yes it’s even better when there are 2 BBC factual infancy’s hanging around back slapping each other on the same thread !
Wow that’s true balance for you the pro’s get the heads up on the frog ship ‘today’ and across the other BBC views programmes and the counter gets the business page on the website ?
Another swivel-eyed leftie loon, this site is becoming infested by them. Well done David V, it shows this site is working well for them all to be so rattled by the truth.
One of the enduring illusions held by regulars is that all opposition to their views comes from lefties. If you’re a long way to the Right, I guess even a moderate Tory looks that way.
I didn’t have you marked down as a moderate Tory. Or even a Tory of any type. Or even a Moderate of any type.
To quote your pathetic friend “Who’da thunk it?”
This says more about your political views than about mine.
You only think you know what people on the right’s views are on everything. That reflects on you as you assume we all think alike – nothing can be further from the truth.
Those of us on the right of centre are able to think for ourselves which is our weakness as we will have different opinions on any subject so we have no “collective” force on it. We just have a general knowledge of what is right and decent.
However, the strength of the extreme left, people like you, is the fact that you don’t think for yourselves. You just repeat whatever the BBC, Guardian, Independent tell you to think. Therefore you will always have the numbers parroting the same shit.
This strength is how the left has become the establishment. It’s like a collective force for evil and your strength is in not having anybody able to think for themselves who can say, of any given subject, this is wrong.
I just pity the poor people of this country (the sheep) who will be voting in Labour because the BBC is propagandising on their behalf on a virtually constant basis.
My point was that many of those who comment here assume that anybody who disagrees with them is of the ‘extreme left’. You have just repeated the claim. I am not of the ‘extreme left’. I am a blue-blooded Conservative who has voted nothing but Conservative in the forty years I’ve had the vote, and I have campaigned for Conservative candidates. I support deficit reduction, a smaller State, lower taxes and a traditionalist reform of education. I believe that capitalism works, and that Marxism is insanity. These things hardly sit well with your description of my beliefs. As a Conservative of a moderate stripe, I find many of the views expressed here – how shall I put this – troubling. Having first found this site some months ago I have consistently contested some of what I see as the more reprehensible postings, which do not reflect the mainstream of moderate conservative thought. Your characterisation of any opposition to your own views as ‘extreme left’ is revealing of your own petty mindset. I stick my oar in from time to time because it angers me when those on the hard right try to sell themselves as representing right-wing thought at large. If you smear people like me, you’re condemning yourself to sitting in a nasty little bubble of extremist reactionary ideology, ignored by the world at large.
“Having first found this site some months ago I have consistently contested some of what I see as the more reprehensible postings”
Which is your right. Personally, unless they are really beyond the pale, I prefer to ignore them as being part and parcel of a diversity of opinion and inevitable if you want to have a coherent discussion, rather than moderating away all the cut and thrust as happens over at Auntie where only Approved Thoughts are permissible.
I confess to being rather puzzled as to how a blue-blooded Conservative would want to spend most of his time on here arguing about what someone has said in the comments and precious little time pointing out BBC bias. I can only assume that, despite all evidence presented to the contrary, you think the Conservatives, and right-of-centre thinking get a fair deal from the BBC. Do all these tweets from the left highlighted here mean nothing to you?
And if you really have voted nothing but Conservative for forty years, that suggests more of a tribal attitude than serious political thought.
nesting alert woot woot
don’t you mean ee ee?
http://tinyurl.com/b38dkk2
Interesting reply. Strangely it rather makes my point about people on the right able to hold differing views from one another but still being generally together.
So I would like to ask you to answer a few questions:
Do you agree that the BBC is politically biased in UK politics? (i.e. Pro Labour every time and anti Conservative every time)? The same for US poitics? And the same for their relentless bias against Israel and supporting her enemies?
What do you particularly dislike about this site, i.e. the things that make you keep returning to attack it?
PS I oppose the living wage, just as I oppose the minimum wage.
This is a mistaken view since there are plenty of Globalists on the far right, neo cons, Open borders Libertarian types.
Even the BBC , while mostly to the left is primarily a Globalist organisation, pro EU, supra national organisations, mass immigration and open borders. It has no concern for the British working class.
It has no concern for any class apart from its own political class.
I haven’t laughed so much in ages. This site is great fun to read. But it has absolutely no influence hence the complete lack of any insider stories. Poor old Alan and DV are reduced to making the up.
People who can spell think?
Mea Culpa. So it did. One year ago. I was kinda talking about the news today…maybe you misunderstand this site deals with CURRENT issues? But thanks for searching BBC archives!
You said the BBC doesn’t give those with a different agenda a platform. It does. I’ve noted how poor research is here, and how often a simple search undermines a story.
Nobody has popped their head up today (who is taken seriously) to oppose the concept. So there are no other links anywhere, not just BBC. I’d expect at least some alternate views tomorrow and we’ll see if they are ignored. Then you have a story.
I saw zero balancing opinion against Billy Bragg’s ‘Livingg Waaagee’ on the BBC news reports today. Just the idiots Miliband, Boris and No.10 Spin machine all agreeing it’s a great idea. No it’s not. It’s a dumb idea: The government lobbying for wage inflation. No, no, no. The free market should determine wages. If someone’s stupid enough to collect supermarket trolleys for 50p/hr they should be allowed to do it.
And Bragg got half an hour tonight free on Radio 4 to tell us about “how I wrote my most influential LP”.
Is there anybody who has not turned Bragg off after 90 secs max?…hopeless in more ways than any man dare dream of being?
No one-and I`m involved in music more than most-has either heard his “famous” LP…let alone got a copy of it…and they bypassed it in 1986 as well.
The BBC are a vanity project for New Labour…or is that the other way round….and Bragg should not get a penny for rewriting his own “history and legacy”.
“The Boy does nothing”…now THERE`S a song that Billy could only dream of writing by way of confessional…how come every BBC music show or current affairs stuff on the 80s always seems to go “Back To Bragg”?
I’ve met Billy Bragg nice man.
A musical version of Owen Jones is the best way to describe him.
‘You said the BBC doesn’t give those with a different agenda a platform. It does. I’ve noted how poor research is here, and how often a simple search undermines a story.’
So….last time they gave a platform to:
Anti-EU.
Anti-mass immigration.
Anti-multiculturalism.
Anti-Islam.
Anti-UAF.
Anti-unions.
Anti-CAGW.
or
Pro-Margaret Thatcher.
Pro-Ronald Reagan.
Pro-Israel.
Pro-capitalism.
or
A right-wing critique of Labour’s mishandling of the economy.
A right-wing critique of unemployment in the UK.
A right-wing critique of the education system.
….you get the drift.
Whenever you spot some, let us know.
P.S. BBC website doesn’t count.
If only Melanie Phillips appeared on the Beeb. She’d tick most of these off.
If she appeared with the same regularity as Toynbee and her ilk it would be a start, but she would still be a lone voice overwhelmed by the crowds of socialist politicians, academics, journalists, authors etc etc who participate in the daily BBC groupthink exercises exposed by David Vance’s wonderful crusading website.
Would be nice if both sides had equal prominence, or if the lefty view was tucked away on some obscure part of the website while the business case was broadcast on prime-time radio.
But that never happens with the BBC.
One of the problems of Gordon Brown bringing in the working tax credit was that employers now know that they can pay the minimum wage and the state, i.e. the rest of us will top it up. Unsurprisingly the BBC don’t mention that.
Always disliked the term ‘ minimum wage ‘ as it has become in many industry’s the maximum wage now !
When the minimum wage was first mooted there were those who warned that would happen. The minimum wage aficionados cried those warnings down as hysterical scaremongering.
Ah well, they live and learn.
Exactly! And that has been the problem ever since they introduced FIS back in the dim dustant past. Take a look at the joke centres site and you will m9ore than likely see “You may be able to top up your wages with tax credits”.
A company that my partner used to work for decided to cut the staffs wages when minimum wage was introduced because they were paying over minimum wage. As you correctly state Mr Taxpayer is topping up wages left right and centre.
Labour deliberately misnamed it ‘tax credit’. It is not a ‘tax credit’ it is ‘negative taxation’. If your tax code takes you below ‘zero’, you are then supplied with other taxpayers money. So it is possible for the rest of your working life to have your wages increased, subsidised by other taxpayers.
there is a way of doing this without cost to the employer – get the state to stop taxing the poor. The difference betweem a full time job on minimum wage and the Living Wage is almost exactly the tax paid. People get some of this back through tax credits etc but simply remove the cumbersome bureaucracy around it by increasing the personal income tax threshold to a *mandatory* amount equal to a 40hr week on MW. At a stroke you eliminate cost, increase simplicity and reduce the tax take, while at the same time leaving money in the pockets of the poor.
Except it would mean reducing the size and budget of the DWP, so it will never be implemented.
Best layout of this idea comes from Tim Worstall again:
http://timworstall.com/2012/11/04/more-of-this-living-wage-shit/
Excellent, and obvious, point. But the whole basis of the Labour Party is to tax and spend, usually trying to bribe voters with their own money; so if they stop taxing people, what will they do?
“if they stop taxing people, what will they do”.
As tax receipts have reduced due to a “recession” I think the Fabians have introduced something called “The Liverpool Care Pathway”.
At this point, the commentariat from the BBC canteen will probably go silent: their shift is over and, more to the point, Colonel Blimp has shot their fox. BTW, the Prole’s clip retailing Mark Littlewood’s remarks is a month old. In the avalanche of Labour propaganda this morning AFAIAA neither Mr Littlewood nor anyone putting forward his case was apparent. On Today the “living wage” issue was – again AFAIAA – only mentioned as a news item with a supporting sound clip from the Labour leader’s whine on the matter.
As to Boris: the headline Exclusive – politician supports crap policy to make himself popular at somebody else’s expense!! would be appropriate. Just because on this issue Boris has decided not to expend any political capital (he’s certainly intelligent enough to know better concerning the “living” wage) is not evidence that the BBC has provided an “impartial” take on this. Quite the reverse: the BBC has decided to bury any controversy in a mound of feel-good (and, by no coincidence, Labour policy) shite.
a month plus one year old…
So it is – and Prole has the chutzpah to critisise DV using the present tense of “to report” and his colleague joins in the allegation of DV’s “factual inaccuracy”. Say what you like: at least the BBC commentariat on this site is consistent, if a tad cavalier with the facts – rather like the institution they seek to defend.
Meanwhile, Guido is having fun pointing out Labour pols who pay interns the Living No Wage At All.
Don’t hold your breath for that to turn up on the BBC anytime soon.
It’s called the dying wage
Dez will provide the necessary link when it appears!
The double economic whammy of unskilled mass immigration into U.K:-
1.) it increases unemployment of UK workers, and keeps wage levels down;
2.) it increases public borrowing and spending on social services, education, health;
Marxists (and BBC-NUJ) are opposed to pushing for
-reduction in mass immigration, but are keen to push for
-increase in ‘living wage’.
But if we stopped mass immigration where would the BBC and the Champagne Socialists get cheap labour to cook and clean for them?
I thought having someone to bring me a mug of tea and do the hoovering was the whole point of having children?
“New Labour is made up of bourgeois bohemian metropolitan trendies who like a constant supply of cheap servants” -Peter Hitchens
Indeed it is complete hypocricy for the left to call for aliving wage while they support mass immigration which inflates the ratio of lworkers to jobs and holds wages down.
The left may wish to intervene to ameliorate effects of market forces, but they cannot deny that thpose forces exist and are powerful. o be made obilgatory then it would simply encourage the use of black market labour, as well as putting some honest small businessmen out of business. Some on the left would be chuckling at that because while honest ethnic British businesses would go but, few foreign immigrant owned businesses would be affected with their cheap exploited, often illegal, immigrant labour. I wonder how many ‘curry cooks’ get a ‘living wage’.
Mark Littlewood from the Institute of Economic Affairs was arguing against this nonsense on the Daily Politics today.
He did a good job considering he was up against a leftard and some women whose only claim to fame was that she declared her open love for Alan Johnson at some Labour conference or other.
A nice bit of balance as well there and when you throw in the BBC person – well, you get the idea…
Don’t raise pay, the sensible thing to do would be to cut taxes but this is anathema to statists like the BBC.
I was in the car early this afternoon when this was ‘read’ as the top story on a Five Live news bulletin.
It was the way on which it was announced that the hourly rate for the ‘living wage’ will be increasing that was quite striking. Announced just like an uprating of benefits, no context apart from a later reference to Miliband, no balance, no real positioning of the ‘living wage’s’ status. Strange – but perhaps in the BBC mindset, the matter is settled.
I can’t help but think that the activists in the BBC were quite happy to go along with Labour’s grid without any real examination of the concept.
That said, it is true that earlier the day, someone was interviewed, on the Today porgramme, who I think was going to challenge the cost of the thing. I’m not sure though – he was quickly closed down and despatched into the ether, just as he was seeminly about to offer us a view.
Paul Johnson of the IFS spoke on Today and he said:
”
Our calculations a couple of years ago suggested that if you moved the minimum wage up to the living wage then you could save the taxpayer somewhere around £6bn or £7bn, but of course that assumes that nothing happens as a result, that there’s no reduction of people in work, no reduction in profits or what have you. This money doesn’t come from nowhere – to introduce the living wage would cost about £12bn, £13bn and that has to come from somewhere.”
To suggest Boris is a statist and a neo Marxist is laughable.
I agree with 90% on this site but David Vance is an Asshole, workers need a decent wage.
‘Workers need a decent wage
Regardless? Like we all ‘need’ a top class healthcare system, a generous welfare system, the best railways in the world, the best education system in the world etc etc?
Or do we get what the country can afford?