Peston’s latest is an out and out party political ‘broadcast’ for Labour, even going so far as to try and compare Miliband to Thatcher…somebody at the BBC really should start reading Peston’s stuff before they let it go to press.
Miliband as Thatcher not Foot?
Yes…Miliband and Thatcher…soul mates….
Peston shows himself to be more the wide-eyed stagedoor johnny than a hard-nosed journalist with a handle on reality. Here he tells us that the wealthy are being shut out of the tent…it’s a new world, a new politics…all thanks to Miliband…
….the last nail in the coffin of a political approach – not quite an ideology – which had at its core the idea that it was better to get the wealthy and powerful in the tent, rather than doing what they typically do if they are outside the tent.
Really? Never happen. The wealthy and big business will always have huge influence in politics….even Lenin admitted that capitalism was absolutely necessary for Communism…only once Communism was well established would capitalism be rethought…but of course that was never going to happen just as Peston’s ‘Milibandism’ is never going to happen.
This next part illustrates how Peston is not interested in critiquing Miliband’s policy but in praising him personally…
I spoke to a New Labour veteran. This is what he said to me about the non-dom cull: it would “alienate some people whose goodwill is a good investment for us, send the wrong signal about the UK and [is] a rather useless piece of posturing (as the last Labour government concluded for 13 years)”.
Symbolic break
In other words, it is a powerful and important symbolic break with the Blair era.
When a Labour ‘veteran’ criticises the policy Peston ignores the criticism as to whether it is a workable policy or not and instead glorifies Miliband using trigger words ‘powerful’, ‘important’ and ‘symbolic’…all chosen to make Miliband and his policy look like something of substance rather than the squalid ‘posturing’ that we now know it really is that will not in fact end non-dom status, and, rather than raising money we know Labour actually thinks it will lose the UK money.
Nice bit of dramatising from Peston..
[For] Miliband, that calculation has had to be re-done, as living standards were savagely squeezed in the years after that profound economic shock, and the welfare state has been rolled back.
So living standards were ‘savagely’ squeezed? Was the welfare state really ‘rolled back’ or just trimmed to make it more cost effective and to encourage people into work…as it did? Peston is peddling the Labour narrative as if it is the only interpretation, or indeed the truth, never mind the interpretation.
He goes on…
Miliband would also say that the stagnating gap between the incomes of rich and poor and the widening wealth gap have shown that collaborating with the wealthy has not delivered adequate fruits to the poorest.
Like that word ‘collaborating’…another dog whistle. And how true is that when most people’s lives have improved enormously…the fact that some get mega rich due to globalisation resulting in an increasing ‘gap’ between the man in the street’s pay and that mega rich person’s income doesn’t mean the man in the street is getting poorer.
Then Peston really goes to town…Red Ed’s not red at all, he’s doing his best to make the world a wonderful place for the poor and deprived….
Now the conventional view from the centre of politics of what he’s doing is that he is a throwback to Labour’s left-wing past, a Michael Foot in a sharp tailored suit.
But that doesn’t feel right to me. He isn’t resorting to the traditional left-wing solutions of nationalisation, significantly increased state spending, incestuous deals with trade unions or penal increases in tax rates.
What he is attempting to do – perhaps naively, perhaps clumsily – is encourage competition, give more power to consumers, nudge up the minimum wage and take on vested interests.
‘Naive’ and ‘clumsy’…again words meant to engender some sympathy for Miliband, an innocent doing his best while the nasty world rails at him. And not nationalising stuff? How about the railways…or price freezes on private companies? No incestuous deals with the unions? He’s Labour leader only because of such a ‘deal’…and as for taxes.…to cut the deficit Labour has said 50% will come from tax rises. Peston is blowing smoke up our derrieres.
He then reinforces this image with the claim that the ‘Establishment’ is out to get Miliband, he’s an outsider like Thatcher battling the vested interests….curious that the ‘hated’ Thatcher is always the one they turn to when they want a bit of credibility to rub off onto them….Thatcher would have scorned Miliband, his policies and his shallow political posturing.
Peston finishes off with this…
So what is striking, as the election looms, is the sheer scale of Miliband’s repositioning of Labour, both in respect of fundamental policy and the communication of policy.
Miliband hasn’t repositioned Labour he’s just ‘posturing’ and headline grabbing, he isn’t ending non-dom status merely tweaking it, he isn’t an outsider…he read PPE like all the rest of them at Oxford and he was safely ensconced well within the Establishment for all of Labour’s term in office…and apparently was spending much of the time wrapped in the arms of the BBC’s Stephanie Flanders…whilst in office….as Guido reveals…
Who was Ed’s secret girlfriend in 2005?
“I first met Ed when I went to a friend’s house for dinner,” Justine Miliband tells the Mirror today:
“I was interested in him, I thought he was good looking and clever and seemed to be unattached. But we just went down a conversational cul-de-sac. Apparently we had nothing in common. He wanted to talk about economics – one of my least favourite subjects. None of our conversations went anywhere. Then I found out he was secretly going out with the woman who had invited us for dinner. I was furious.”
But who was Ed’s secret lover at the time? According to John Rentoul it was Stephanie Flanders…
Flanders has admitted to dating both Ed Balls and Ed Miliband, though friends had always claimed it was in the nineties. Curious…
“Could the secrecy have been because he was a Treasury special adviser Stephanie Flanders was BBC economics journalist”, muses Rentoul on Twitter today. Questions to which the answer is oooooh.
Although the son of a Labour peer, at least Peston has not previously dated Ed Balls and Ed Miliband as did his predecessor Stephanie Flanders. Flanders however did appear less biased and had a good grasp of economics – though that is clearly not a prerequisite for a BBC Economics Editor.
Pretty much everyone I can think of who is or was a BBC Economics Editor for BBC News and Current Affairs has had links to the Labour Party and/or the Left-Wing press.
Can anybody think of a BBC Economics editor who (in living memory) was biased to the Right?
Polly Toynbee was BBC Social Affairs Editor.
I don’t think there has ever been a BBC economics editor biased to the right. Nor do I ever remember one who understands real economics in the real world. Must be a coincidence.
A good grasp seems to have got her all sorts of places.
Meanwhile, I ran ‘good looking’ for Ed past the missus (clever worth a punt too, I guess)… clearly it was a different time.
But as a personality cul-de-sac, our future leader if the BBC has anything, or four billion and twenty thousand of them, to do with it.
One of my nephews was at university with someone who was the spawn of a labour peer. My response was to ask what abominable act did he perform for his title. Apart from the heritable peerages, because the dirty deed was done some time past, virtually all of the 800 or so Lords and Ladies are spoiled goods. Mr Peston would do well to remember he is just one of the hoi polloi and that the collectivist hive will ultimately destroy him and his like.
Robert Peston has form as they say, with Labour connections right up to his armpits.
I remember my jaw dropping and sighing deeply, watching some BBC documentary about the causes of the 2007/2008 Financial Crisis, where you would not have thought Brown, Blair, Balls and Miliband Co Ltd were in charge of regulating the premier world’s financial centre!
He said how did we get into this mess and intimated “the free market revolution was unleashed by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan”. Yes he went that far back to find blame for the 2007/8 crash!
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/party-over-how-west-went-bust/
Of course, if they knew anything between them about the very nature of money they would have found a much more enticing bogeyman – Richard Milhaus Nixon.
The wild swings and variations of the 1970s and 80’s, the attempts to form the failed European monetary snake (and later the ERM), were all constructs to try to counter the damage that Nixon did by closing the gold window in August 71.
And why did he do it? To create a false boom going into the 1972 election, because he knew that cheap money creates booms and that in his efforts to ramp up spending (Vietnam related), the USA was in danger of not being able to pay its debts at $35/Oz.
Until August 1971, money was a store of wealth by default, because Bretton Woods tied world currencies to the US dollar, and the US dollar to $35/oz gold. When money has no value, then it becomes just another commodity that governments can use to buy votes with permanent deficit spending.
Joey Manic – just for you:
https://mtc.cdn.vine.co/r/videos/9C373690BD1154779317239455744_35762f537be.1.2.13840850417009189625.mp4?versionId=VtnKB2FZmVzycLHyJSIxJ.tqVg8i2eYj
I was wondering where that ‘not all there’ lame brain Peston had got to over the past few months. Now I realize, he has been constructing his pro Labour campaign and is now releasing it in the run up to the Election.
If content were important he would be handing it to the Conservatives.
So has anyone actually complained to BBC? only way to put pressure on this sort of nonsense
Peston isn’t Red Ed’s only fan at the BBC:
http://order-order.com/2015/04/09/who-was-eds-secret-girlfriend-in-2005/#_@/z9IIK9ao5qKZEg
Flanders has admitted to dating both Ed Balls and Ed Miliband, though friends had always claimed it was in the nineties. Curious…
“Could the secrecy have been because he was a Treasury special adviser Stephanie Flanders was BBC economics journalist”, muses Rentoul on Twitter today. Questions to which the answer is oooooh.
I’m not quite sure what she saw in him. Maybe he’s hung like a horse!
No other quote sums up BBC bias quite like:
Preston’s piece re non doms yesterday was unwatchable. Really the BBC has completely lost it with the degree of bias in its pieces now. Where is the other half of the arguement?
Totally agree, it was off the charts even by the BBC’s standards. There really should be an official complaint.
BBC are giving the impression that Non Doms do not pay UK tax. Fact is they pay the fee of £90,000 AND tax on any earnings in the UK which might be millions.
Unfortunately the Conservatives are, as with the other issues, not clarifying this to the Electorate.
Quite frankly, I think it unreasonable to tax earning from outside the UK unless the proceeds are brought into the UK. Presumably these earnings are taxed in the source country so it would be very much on the cards that Non Doms would seriously consider leaving the UK to avoid double taxation, depriving the Exchequer of the millions paid on earnings here, the Non Dom fees , the tax on the goods and services they consume in the UK and the jobs and profits derived from their commercial enterprises in the UK.
Of course Milliband does not give a toss about that as long as he gets to walk into No.10 ( as is looking increasingly likely).
Oh but no doubt the Conservatives are waiting until the week before the Election to run out the facts and expose Milliband’s empty promises and lies ! If only…. DON’T HOLD YOUR BREATH !
They have brought in the ‘Guru’ but he does not seem to be the least bit effective.
According to Al Beeb, Nondoms are Condoms that don’t work .
http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/victoria-derbyshire-offered-surrogate-brothers-5488924
So many nasty comments. What would your heroine Thatcher say? I think we all know the answer to that one…
“Give that nice Jimmy Savile a knighthood. Yes, I know what they say about him but whenever I’ve had him round to Chequers many many times for dinner he’s been alright. I’d like this done right away, this is the THIRD time I’ve asked. And while you’re at it, give Cyril Smith a knighthood too…”
how many millions of innocent ppl did blair murder durng his illegal wars?
how many tens of thousands has ed milibands climate change act killed?
how many hundreds of thousands of white english girls been raped because of labour and the BBCs policy of mass immigration from the 3rd world to multiculturalise us?
give me thatcher and her faults any day
get used to the idea of Miliband being our PM backed up by the awful SNP. It is going to happen as I am sorry to say but most of the general population have the memory of a goldfish but will soon come to regret it when taxes go up as well as interest rates and then we get a genuine “cost of living crisis” thanks to Labour’s policies (although the BBC will blame Cameron’s 5 years in charge for anything)
Plus the Tories are idiots as the more they attack Miliband the more it becomes like UKIP and people support him. How can they not understand that?
Nick Robbo is back, quoting sources by name…
Hats off to @IsabelHardman & @BBCAllegra for revealing the Tory “throw a dead cat on table” strategy. More here – http://t.co/8PiPwTkFUi
It’s an interesting technique, and clearly a staple of reporting.
I just wonder how many BBC editors doff their hats to other BBC reporters running with stories by nicely distanced commentators less helpful to the man who has guaranteed their future income?
Peston: “He isn’t resorting to the traditional left-wing solutions of nationalisation, significantly increased state spending, incestuous deals with trade unions or penal increases in tax rates.”
That’s exactly what he wants to do. Don’t you speak English, Mr Peston? You could add price controls another dismal failure from the 1970s.