Yesterday the BBC published a story from unnamed sources that the government had asked energy firms to freeze their prices.
This was untrue…and yet the BBC kept reporting it as fact whilst at the same time admitting the Government had denied the story.
And they are still reporting it as fact.
If you have been listening to the radio you may have heard the frequent advert trumpeting 5Live’s ‘excellence’ (09:50:30) based on that report:
‘The Government has asked the Big Six energy firms not to put up electricity and gas bills until the middle of 2015 unless there is a major jump in wholesale prices. Shadow energy secretary Caroline Flint is with us in the studio….’
“Energy companies you know, don’t buy energy today for tomorrow, they buy it years in advance, actually, whereas wholesale prices have gone down in recent years and in some recent years flat lined, we as customers haven’t benefited.
We think it’s important to freeze prices because people have been overcharged but importantly we need to reform the way the market works.”
Call me old fashioned but when a story is concocted by the BBC, and only the BBC, from unnamed (and still unnamed) sources on the day that the Labour Party is launching its price freeze pledge, a story that makes it look like the government is adopting Labour’s policy, and the story is vigorously denied by the Government, and common sense would say the story was untrue, then you have to ask why the BBC has decided to select a clip reporting something that is untrue as being true and has then also added to that a soundbite from a Labour spokesperson outlining Labour’s policies.
It sounds remarkably more like a Labour Party political broadcast than a trail for the BBC…though possibly always hard to tell the difference, the News Quiz today having a relentless barrage of anti-Right jokes and not a single anti-Left one, oddly enough.
The fact that the story has basically vanished from the news after a day when the BBC blitzed us with reports, news bulletins and ‘analysis’ about this says a lot about how solid any evidence for it was…and the intentions behind the strategy.
Is this the future of ‘news’ on the BBC until the election? A storm of false, anti-government reports whipped up using baseless ‘evidence’ and speculation from unnamed sources, and all maligning the government whilst timed conveniently to damage the government precisely when it also does the most good for Labour?
Indeed Alan – as alluded to in the previous post and some of the comments there – it has now become clear (morning news – today Sunday – of Cameron and Clegg announcement of restructuring of various green taxes etc to bring down everyone’s energy bills) reveals the BBC’s successful black propaganda strategy of getting Labour’s attack in first (and reiterating it as they read the news today) that was , to use the appropriate word cce mentioned, clearly choreographed to pop the Coalition good news bubble.
Well what a surprise – the Marx show was wall to wall Tory baiting predicated on the Tory ‘problems’ with power……as I predicted yesterday. It’s almost as if I have the power of second sight, for where Labour messaging and the BBC are concerned I could pretty much write the BBC script. And astonishingly this story
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/budget/10486425/Autumn-Statement-2013-UK-growth-upgrade-hits-record.html
“Britain’s growth prospects will be upgraded by the largest margin in more than a decade this week”
seemed to irrelevant as far as the BBC’s #4bn news collection machine is concerned.
What a f*****g surprise!
Even the BBC must be finding it harder to distinguish between labour and ‘call me Daves’ lefty EU loving pronouncements, he will not get rid of any green taxes at all, they will find some other way to steal this money.
The BBC does not seem to have mentioned that Tim Yoe has been kicked out of his local party. Why would it not give it prominence: after all it is news and he is a Tory.
Lefty top trumps – Support the Greenies beats Let’s Kick a Tory.
” . . we need to reform the way the market works.”
I’d be very worried about that little admission. And I’d doubt anyone, even in the MSM let a lone the BBC would not have picked up on that and pressed home on exactly what she meant.
The Conservative’s are just not up to the job. They should have struck while the iron was hot and neutralized the BBC.
Lost opportunities and chicken’s coming home me thinks.
wrote to the government media culture wallah every day complaining about the BBC the first year of the libcon pact.
All i got was a standard letter saying they couldn’t get involved on editorial or planning at the BBC etc etc.
Told them that if they didnt do anything about the bias at the beeb they would lose the next election and it would serve them right as they are fighting the beeb/liebore axis.
A MR Hunt was in charge then .
nothing has changed at tory towers
Agree. Its a curious state of affairs when the Tories allow the BBC to run pro Labour ads , mocked up as news bulletins, everyday and do nothing about it. They do seem to be stirring themselves a bit in recent weeks but it is probably too late to undo the damage the BBC has done to Tory election chances.
The Tories really missed their big chance when Lady T was in power, she would have had the guts to get rid of the BBC, but decided not to do so. Since then the Tories haven’t had a sufficiently solid base from which to take on the over mighty corporation, in what would be a long and bloody struggle.
If the economy does pick up sufficiently to give the Tories a majority at the next election then high on their priorities must be to get rid of the state funded broadcaster. If folks can be wound up about having their energy bills frozen for 20 months , well maybe frozen it just depends. Then surely there would be wide support for abolition of the LF and having the BBC seek advertising revenue for its income. That would soon sort them out and give us something much less biased to the liberal left and less damaging to democracy.
Actually, a short and bloodless struggle.
Step 1 – Revoke the ‘television tax’, saving every family in the UK £130 a year
Step 2 – supply only enough taxpayers money to run BBC1 and Radio 4
Step 3 – make that money subject to the BBC fulfilling the terms of their charter
I am sure that could be accomplished within one day in parliament?
Even if the economy grew by 50% the Tories wouldn’t win the election as the BBC would keep promoting Labour spin about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, Tory ‘toffs’ looking after their own etc. As long as the BBC has 70% news coverage and persists with its left wing evangelising, the Tories don’t stand a chance.
I think your exactly right, which is why I will be voting for UKIP (even though I’m in no way a tory )
A good result for UKIP might shake up the status quo, convincing the millions that don’t vote that change is possible and de-legitimising the actions of the incoming Labour government ( they will not be able to claim a consensus mandate).
The alternative is to continue with same old, same old , indefinitely.
Two little instances from this morning. The paper review on Marr’s show featured Shami Chakrabarti and Hugh Bonneville, famed for his superinsertion, sorry, injunction, and some ITV show or other.
The battle for how lefty luvvy it was was won easily by Bonneville, who definitely seems to have something up his arse (…) regarding the Tories. Shami almost right of centre in comparison, Marr silent as the Tories were attacked, and entirely complicit.
Secondly, a moment reminiscent of the recent Emily Maitlis Newsnight capitulation to Alastair Campbell…
John Pienaar on Five Live circa 10.15 this morning first interviewed Ed Balls, then afterwards a la Maitlis allowed Ed Balls to interview his next guest Danny Alexander, which resulted in Alexander unable to complete a sentence without Balls interjecting. Pienaar presumably scratching his backside while this went on for a couple of minutes. Balls was eventually shown the door, and the real interview began.
It wasn’t bonneville but Jim Carter, who also came out as a big greenpeace supporter. Chakrabarti then started going on about the Arctic 30 which led into her ‘mentioning’ that carter had starred in a new promo for greenpeace and of course they had this piece at hand to show to the nation.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2516449/Downton-Abbeys-Jim-Carter-dresses-Father-Christmas-global-warming-advert.html
They’ve even got at Andrew Neil. The trailer the bBBC is running for his programme about this week’s Autumn Statement has him saying words to the effect of “tune in to see the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement on the economy, the recovery, and the all-important cost of living and what it means for you”.
Labour’s line exactly, no mention of borrowing, deficit or national debt, just home in on the cost of living and what it means to voters.
Simply because someone calls himself a ‘Tory’ doesn’t mean that is what he is. While they might differ on the odd subject here and there, most of the PPE graduates who people all three mainstream parties (at least at the top) have far more in common than they have differences.
They see the BBC as ‘a Good Thing’ and largely share its ‘progressive’ agenda.
As I’ve said before: if we want rid of the BBC, we will have to get rid of the Tory party as well.
Third top story on BBC-NUJ online News Politics page:-
“Ed Balls not a nightmare at home, says wife Yvette Cooper”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-25174492
But, ‘Daily Mail’-
“How George can bury Balls once and for all”
By SIMON HEFFER.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2515949/How-George-bury-Balls-all.html#ixzz2mEXBBbQa
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
BBC shroud-waving ‘press-release-pretending-to-be-news’ for the day: “HIV care ‘at risk from NHS changes'”
Pathetic. Just pathetic.
So Flint having being an expert on trade and industry, local government, public health, employment and benefits, the regions, housing, the home office, Europe (where as Minister she admitted that she hadn’t read the Lisbon Treaty (like the rest of the Labour Government, it seems)), she now ships up as a gobby expert on energy…
“Energy companies you know, don’t buy energy today for tomorrow, THEY BUY IT YEARS IN ADVANCE, actually, whereas wholesale prices have gone down in recent years and in some recent years flat lined, we as customers haven’t benefited.”
So BBC, thinking about that statement….did anyone bother to ask Flint, if what she said was so, what did the energy companies pay for the gas several years ago, gas that they are now selling now that was more expensive on the global markets at the time.
Perhaps someone at the BBC could be arsed to ask next time they give her a free platform to spout off her shallow banalities
are energy bills are so high because when new labour was in power ed millband was the energy secretary and it was him that introduced all these green energy taxes on are bills just to please these climate change fanatics and the green party,dont get me wrong,the politacaly correct posh boys cameron and osbourne and the new conservatives are no better with all this green crap and and frankly could not care less if we all froze to death this winter,but we must never forget that the blame for this energy bills crisis we are having at the moment must firmly be layed at the door of the former energy secretary door of ed milliband.
Andrew Marr interviewed Miliband when he introduced Green Taxes. Miliband actually said that ” … price rises and increased costs are something the public will have to live with as the price of saving the planet….” . I may be paraphrasing but that is the gist of what he said. Miliband KNEW household energy costs would increase under his legislation but basically said the public would have to lump it because he was busy saving civilisation from man made global warming.
Probably said something similar more than once although even if he didn’t most of the extra cost can be laid squarely at his door:
“The bill (The Climate Change Bill) originally bound governments by law to meet targets for reducing carbon emissions by 26% by 2020 and 60% by 2050.
The new climate minister, Ed Miliband, amended it to raise the final target by a third to 80% – thereby increasing the likely cost by at least a third, although no-one deigned to mention this. He has refused to reveal the extra cost until after the bill becomes law.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7746126.stm
Yes, Labour in Government said quite openly that pricing would be used to ‘CHANGE PEOPLE’S BEHAVIOUR’ on energy usage and on other ‘green crap’, like air travel, and the use of private motor vehicles. I can only assume that the BBC must have mislaid the tapes of all of these announcements.
Labour were the one’s that also said that rail passengers had to pay a greater proportion towards the cost of running the railways…they introduced the above inflation fares escalator to achieve this. Something else that Miliband and the BBC keep quiet about.
I’m just waiting to see if the BBC backtracks and spins it away as something “mistakenly” left in a document that the media was never meant to see, oops, like they did when Nick Robinson and Robert Peston heralded Labour’s VAT rise. It took a couple of days for them to sort out their story then. Labour used the BBC to run a trial balloon which turned out to be made of lead, so they left skid marks reeling back from it, and claimed it was never supposed to be announced.
Robinson at least admitted he’d been had, while Peston pretended it never happened. I wonder what the BBC will do this time.
And the bBBC’s main ‘news’ this evening is another ‘Labour says …’ concoction. Labour leader Ed Miliband is to accuse ministers of using “smoke and mirrors” over its plan to cut the cost of energy bills
Fortunately their editor is so stupid/ illiterate that, by using the word ‘its’, s/he has made it seem like it is Labour’s plan that is a sham. This is the 22.01 version: keep an eye on newssniffer for changes.
It seems the BBC isn’t even pretending now. First (after days of obfuscation and false trails) it buries Osborne’s risible reductions down the page but the moment the creature that caused the high prices, Ed ‘Climate Change Act’ Miliband, gets up on his hind legs and starts braying, suddenly its a major news item, with Labour as the people’s champions.
It’s little short of criminal.