Independent Advice?

 

 

Remember a couple of weeks ago when we heard this:

Ed Miliband wants consumer groups to improve uncompetitive markets

Labour leader says Competition and Markets Authority would seek independent advice on tackling suppliers and regulators
Miliband said on the BBC’s Andrew Marr programme that under Labour plans, bodies such as Citizens Advice and Which? would work with the Competition and Markets Authority to define a programme for the year ahead. The idea is to highlight areas that parliament and the business secretary should be focusing on.
Miliband will be taking advice on how to regulate Business from the likes of consumer group Which?….you may have had doubts about that to start with….how many more doubts when you read this:

What is Milibandism?

Your guide to the key intellectual texts, thinkers and activists

Independent thinktanks and charities

IPPR (Institute for Public Policy Research) Run by Nick Pearce (former policy unit head at No 10), it devises policy in terms of what might work in an era of no money.

Resolution Foundation Its director, Gavin Kelly (former deputy chief of staff to Gordon Brown), is the man with the PowerPoint slides that tell the whole squeezed-middle story.
Which? Consumer charity whose head, Richard Lloyd, a former No 10 adviser, has a backstage pass to the offices of Eds Miliband and Balls.
Nice to get confirmation of what we knew already about the Resolution Foundation, and interesting that they and the IPPR are classed as ‘independent’ by the Guardian……and  the BBC never revealed the link between Labour and the head of Which?  Which might be relevant to the story….not an independent group siding with Labour purely because it thinks his policies are consumer friendly…but maybe a suspicion that it is because the boss is a Labourite….just more State control of Business using supposedly independent advisors.
Red Ed gets redder.
Richard has also worked for two years in No10 Downing Street as an adviser to the Prime Minister, dealing with economic issues across the government, including strategy, communications and consumer policy.
And in 2013 when ‘Ed Miliband, leader of the Labour Party, delighted his supporters when he announced that Labour will freeze UK gas and electricity bills if they come to power in the next election.’…..
Which? Executive Director, Richard Lloyd, said: “We now look forward to seeing the detail of how this will work. “Wholesale costs are the biggest part of the eye-watering rises to energy bills that people have faced over the last 10 years. “Making the wholesale market competitive by separating energy generation from supply is essential to help keep prices in check.”
Guess Lloyd was one of those ‘delighted supporters’.

Cut the Big Six Energy Companies Down to Size, George

Posted 31 October 2013 | (00:00)

With almost eight in 10 people worried about rising energy costs and suppliers being hauled in front of MPs to justify their latest inflation-busting price hikes, Which? is calling on the Chancellor to stand up for consumers.

The Truth Behind Spiralling Energy Prices

Posted 14 October 2013 | (01:00)

We’ve all seen the rather undignified blame game around why our energy prices are rising.

Some people blame the cost of wholesale energy. Some people blame the government’s green subsidies and policies.

Some blame the ‘greedy profiteering energy fat cats’. Some have even blamed consumers for not helping…

Ed’s Price Promise a Bold Move

Posted 25 September 2013 | (01:00)

Ed Miliband’s promises at the Labour Party Conference will give hope to the millions worrying about how they will heat their home this winter. Consistently, we find that rising energy prices is one of the top worries for hard-pressed consumers with some people even having to dip in to their…

 

Regulator Needs to Work Hard to Prove It Can Change Banking

Posted 26 June 2013 | (01:00)

Published last week, the long-awaited Parliamentary Commission into Banking Standards (PCBS) final report weighed in at 550 pages and included a long list of recommendations designed to tackle the broken culture in the UK’s banking industry.

Which? has long been campaigning for a Big Change in banking to put customers…

 

The Government Needs to Green Up its Act

 Posted 21 May 2012 | (01:00)

As the prime minister is reportedly reviewing the coalition’s flagship Green Deal, we want him to take this opportunity to make big changes to ensure this scheme turns out to be a good deal for consumers.

Which? supports the ambition for homes to be more energy efficient and we welcome…

 

 

 

So…banking, green policies and reining in the energy companies, remarkably close to Miliband’s own agenda.

Good to know who has which finger in which political pie…I would think that Lloyd’s political affiliation’s were very relevant considering the influential role Miliband is intent on giving him….disguised under cover of his role as ‘consumer’s champion’ at Which?.

Maybe the BBC can keep us informed about such relationships…after all they were pretty keen to examine in detail Tory advisor Lynton Crosby’s ‘shocking conflict of interest’ when the opportunity came up.

 

 

 

The Very Selective BBC

 

What the BBC doesn’t report is often as telling as what and how it reports other news stories.

 

It does seem that if for instance you are Muslim, or someone positioned to influence government policy on climate change, you are pretty safe from critical BBC investigation.

 

Andrew Gilligan has spent a long time investigating and reporting on the extremely dodgy happenings in Tower Hamlets where Muslim extremists look to have the whip hand…and a £1 billion budget to spend on their favourite prejudices.

The BBC downplayed and often ignored totally all such serious events….had the council been run by, oh say a UKIP mayor, you can guarantee the BBC would have been in Tower Hamlets turning the place upside down looking for dirt.

In order not to give viewers the impression that any Muslim could in any way be associated with criminal or unseemly behaviour, and thereby give rise to the possibility that people might then associate all Muslims with that kind of behaviour, the BBC censors the news and edits out the uncomfortable bits in the interests of community cohesion….ala Rochdale before the **** hit the fan.

 

In a similar way the BBC has long ignored the copious evidence gathered by Guido on Tim Yeo, now the de-selected Tim Yeo.

Yeo is of course the chair of the highly influential  Energy and Climate Change Committee which informs and guides government policy on climate change…and of course Yeo is fully on board the AGW bandwagon, as well as having numerous, and highly lucrative, green industry business interests, and so the BBC has looked to protect his position and not expose him to any charges that might get him removed as chairman of that committee and thereby lose their green champion.

 

News, just not all the news.

 

There again the BBC isn’t too keen on accountability and openness in its own affairs:

Former BBC executive given £680,000 pay off says ‘I did a big job’

 

Good how Mark Thompson won’t admit he knew about Savile and now won’t admit he knew the IT disaster was on the cards.

Maybe all those big payoffs were ‘hush’ money…just don’t spill the beans!

 

 

 

 

Green Con-Sensus?

 

Man has been warming the planet by puffing out CO2….since the 50’s…before that it was Mother Nature….apparently.

However these two graphs from the Met. Office are interesting:

 

This shows the UK annual sunshine….and you can make a direct relationship between sunshine and apparent global warming time frames…..and a leveling off at the end of the 90’s….

 

 

This one showing the UK summer sunshine is perhaps even more clear…the rise in sunshine from the end of the 70’s to the distinct drop off of summer sunshine at the end of the 90’s:

 

 

Are the oceans sucking up the missing heat as Harrabin (English graduate) insists…or is the heat just missing because the sun ain’t shining?

No doubt the answer will be…yes the sun has an effect but man has made it worse.

 

 

 

 

 

Jackarses

 

 

Oops…more language problems at the BBC:

 

From the Independent:

Friday saw the start of the Chinese new year, with this being the year of the horse.

Unfortunately the BBC News’ subtitle system didn’t understand the memo quite right, and instead declared this the ‘year of the whores,’ too much the embarrassment of the channel.

“Welcome to the year of the whores. People around the globe celebrate,” read the subtitles.

FART

 

 

Peter Hitchens shows the BBC’s strange double standards:

The BBC just loves swearing – until it gets a dose of its own @!X*! medicine

The BBC have refused  to accept a complaint about bad language transmitted on national radio – because the complainer’s letter used exactly the same words that they had used on air.

They told Colin Harrow that his letter’s tone and language were ‘unacceptably abusive or offensive’.
In other words, the BBC are ready to transmit words into our homes which their staff are not prepared to read.

The programme involved, a Radio 4 play called Paradigm, was broadcast on Tuesday, January 21 at 2.15 pm, long before any sort of watershed.

No warning of bad language was given. An 80-year-old spinster, or a small child, could have been exposed without notice to a dialogue including the words p***, s*** (lavatory expressions), s*** (a sexual expression), b******s, b****r , b*****d, and some other crudities I’ll omit.

Mr Harrow thought he would treat the Corporation as they had treated him. He opened his letter with the same words and a similar tone (he did not use asterisks, but I have).

‘This afternoon’s play was sh***. It p***ed me off. The b*****d who wrote it needs sh****ing. Perhaps the b****r should be kicked in the testicles while stark b****** naked.’

He added: ‘I hope whoever reads this  is not offended by the language used so far, but then if they work for the BBC why should they be?

‘After all, every swearword and obscenity was used, some several times over, in this “afternoon” play, so I guess the BBC regards them as perfectly acceptable, including, I’m sure, in letters of complaint.’

The metropolitan sophisticates of the Corporation (in my experience well used to every rude word in the language and then some) drew up their skirts like Victorian maiden aunts, and primly rejected the complaint, saying they felt ‘unable to circulate it more widely to our colleagues’.

‘When handling your complaint,’ they continued piously, ‘we will treat you courteously and with respect. We expect you to show equal courtesy  and respect towards our staff and reserve the right to discontinue correspondence if you do not.’

Am I Bovvered?

 

 

 

The OFSTED chair, Labour’s Baroness Sally Morgan, has been relieved of her post….but stays on until the Autumn (Though personally I would now sack her as she clearly is at odds with the government)

 

She is complaining bitterly that this is a Tory Party coup to clear out non-Tory supporters from government quangos……she is Labour…but in the interview on Today this morning said it wasn’t about Labour people being ousted, and anyway the government is also part LibDem…so why does she complain she has been party politically ‘cleansed’?

 

The BBC has made hay with this all day…running with it as its headline story on every news bulletin immediately after the interview. (The Today interview is available halfway down this BBC report)

This was the headline on the Frontpage for much of the day:

No 10 ousting non-Tories from posts

 

 

Now there was absolutely no proof given, or asked for by Naughtie (Labour supporter), that this was happening….just a vague comment that ‘there’s a lot of talk about this…no really!’.

 

What was strange was that this ‘revelation’ didn’t seem to be a surprise to Naughtie who was well informed about the ins and outs of the system to appoint staff to quangos….maybe he is just brilliant and has this information tucked away in his head.

…or perhaps he had prior notice this subject would come up and came prepared.

 

It does look like the BBC were tipped the wink about this and ran with it whilst avoiding actually looking for any confirmation of the claims…..Labour have planted a story and have had a days worth of anti-Tory headlines courtesy of the BBC.

Only now, early evening, are we getting a truer picture, but of course the damage is done, and the legend will become fact on the leftwing blogs and the BBC hope, will lurk in the back of more sensible people and colour their thinking however subconsciously….drip drip drip.

 

 

Fraser Nelson in 2012 said this:

Gordon Brown’s secret army could defeat the Coalition’s welfare and education reforms

Britain’s charities and quangos are now stuffed to the gunwales with Labour placemen

In the article he tells that under the Tories it is Labour who have had the lion’s share of appointments:

Figures out yesterday show that 77 per cent of politically active quango appointees last year were Labour supporters. Not even Gordon Brown dared top up his government-in-exile at such a rate.

 

No such story from the BBC.

 

 

And Nelson reprises his article today in the Spectator:

Sally Morgan is wrong: quangos are not stuffed with Tories

Public Appointments by political allegiance (Red being Labour…black neutral))Screen Shot 2014-02-01 at 14.41.50

 

Shows that far from packing in Tories it is neutral appointees being given many positions whilst Labourites still rule the roost.

Screen Shot 2014-02-01 at 14.36.06

 

Even some of Labour’s own people aren’t impressed by OFSTED:

Streamline Target Culture and Reform Ofsted

Education has become too politicised……..Ofsted’s current tactics and staffing ensures an outdated, unsupportive view in many cases and a large stress in the best cases.

 

 

Yet another Labour story run by an accommodating BBC.

 

Perhaps one public body the Tories should ‘cleanse’ is the leftwing BBC.