Peston has really outdone himself on the eve of the election….seemingly coming down openly, in a subtle/non-subtle manner, in favour of Labour.
You have to ask why he felt the need to tell us that this is …
An election that really matters
That title indicates he has a view, a view that suggests he thinks one party is the one which will have significant impact on the way your life goes, and the following body of the article gives a fair indication of what his preferred line might be…and it’s not ‘vote Tory’. Peston gives us an either/or but it is not hard to guess which way his heart lies and which arguments he finds the more preferable…….
On the EU you can see a gentle nudge towards staying in…..
‘The issues that are on the table are huge, arguably the most important of my political lifetime.
The choice between whether to have a referendum on membership of the European Union (EU) – offered by Tories and UKIP, declined by Labour, LibDem and SNP – is massive.
Leaving the EU would have a profound impact on our economy, immigration and culture. For better or worse it matters.
For what it is worth, the consensus among mainstream economists and leaders of big businesses is that David Cameron’s aim of using the referendum to secure EU reforms is a laudable one.
But they would also argue that the costs of leaving the EU, reformed or not, would be big.’
On the SNP you are led to believe that one party looks to break up the Union and one will defend it….and it is the Tories who are being presented as the ‘enemies’of the SNP whipping up Scottish Nationalism by the BBC today (remarkable that it isn’t the SNP that is whipping up nationalism! The BBC ignoring or downplaying SNP related violence, intimidation and rampant nationalism in a way that they wouldn’t with UKIP for instance)….
‘Likewise what is going on in Scotland will shape the whole UK…you should ponder which other parties best capture your views about whether the Scots should be ushered towards the exit or urged to stay in the union.’
So to keep the Union together vote Labour!
Then onto Labour itself…the shiny new ‘socialist’ party breaking with the war mongers and false economic prophets of the past (ie Old New Labour) seeking a fairer , more equal society battling the evil money makers….
‘Ed Miliband represents a big break with the New Labour of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, because of his explicit promise of higher taxes on the highest earners and the wealthy, and with his shift to much greater economic interventionism.
Whether you think his mandating of a higher minimum wage, his cap on energy prices, his determination to break-up banks and his raid on non-doms are wealth-destroying meddling or fairness-enhancing reforms, they are not same-old, same-old.’
Then onto the Tories…on the one hand making prudent economic choices…or on the other hand callous, heartless people grinding the poor’s nose in yet more poverty…..the dramatic phrasing of the last sentence indicates how you are supposed to think….
‘Finally even the often sterile debate on how, and how fast. to reduce the gap between taxes and spending – how rapidly to shrink the deficit and start cutting the record national debt – is a big one.
Take just one aspect, the Tories’ plan to reduce welfare bills by a further £12bn.
You can see this as either essential to make the nation’s balance sheet more resistant to inevitable shocks and an imperative to improve work incentives.
Or you can see it as an attack on the poorest and most vulnerable.’
And finally………LOL……
Now even if I were not constrained by BBC impartiality rules, I would not have the chutzpah to tell you how to vote.
But please don’t moan to me that this vote does not matter.
When the party leaders tell you this is the most important election in a generation, for once they are spot on.
Peston has had a bad election with reports and articles that bulge with pro-Labour nuances whilst doing down the Tories. Peston defends Labour’s economic past suggesting there was no reckless ramping up of debt pre-crash even as John Humphrys said that Miliband must be the ‘last man standing’ who didn’t think that Labour spent wildly and helped make the recession far worse than it could have been. Peston also suggest that getting the debt down is not important…how times change…..let’s have a look at previous statements made when there wasn’t an election in the offing……
First here’s John Cridland, the CBI director general, said: “Labour has form spending money it does not really have.”
And here’s Peston in 2011 saying pay down the debt…that may take a decade with low growth as a result…but is necessary…and you cannot borrow to run the public finances….
The Future’s Overdrawn
What became clear in 2008 is that we will have to find a way of paying much of that debt back.
That will take at least a decade.
And when we repay debt, we’re spending less. Which means economic activity slows down, growth grinds to a halt.
It is reasonable to assume that growth will be as little as 1% in the coming 10 years….which wouldn’t look so bad after a contraction of 6.3% in output during the 2008-09 recession.
When essential public services start to be financed through borrowing rather than tax, it is immensely difficult to cut the borrowing.
And there’s more of the same from him……the importance of reducing debt and the likelihood of many years of low growth, maybe just 1%, as we battle to get our economy and spending under control…
It has now become widely recognised that perhaps the greatest economic policy failure in the UK, US and eurozone during the 16 boom years before the crash of 2008 was the explosion of borrowing by banks, households, businesses and governments – or, to use the jargon, the unprecedented and massive leveraging up of entire economies.
That is why getting the debt down to prudent levels is the most important economic challenge of our time.
So what’s going on? Why are UK debts still going up?
Well partly it’s to do with a phenomenon I’ve discussed here many times, that debt has been shuffled from the private sector to the public sector.
When banks stopped lending, and private-sector spending and investing collapsed, governments continued to spend, even though tax revenues were falling. So public-sector borrowing exploded.
To be clear, if governments had not continued to spend, our recession might well have become something much worse, a 1930s-style depression.
But it is fair to say that a consequence of banks, households and businesses trying to repay their debts has been a big increase in government borrowing.We haven’t as yet found a way to get the debts down so that we can be confident that our economy’s foundations are solid and sound again.
What it means is that we must brace ourselves for many years of relatively low growth, perhaps 1% versus the 3% of the 16 boom years before the crash, because we no longer have the fuel of borrowing more and more every year.’
How soon we, and Robert Peston, forget.
And what did Stephanie Flanders have to say way back in 2005 about Labour’s economic miracle? It’s a miracle based upon borrowing and spending…and it couldn’t go on…not only that but productivity, Labour’s latest ‘concern’ in this election, was dire when they were in control…….
On running the rule over Gordon Brown’s economic record
Britain is growing slower than it has in more than a decade. The high street has ground to a halt, and inflation is the highest it has been under Labour.
When we look back, in a few years’ time, at Brown’s economy, will we still see an economic miracle? Or another old-fashioned spending binge that, sooner or later, had to run dry?
Our trade gap has widened almost every year since Labour took office.
Ed Balls was with Gordon Brown every step of the way until he became MP for Normanton in May 2005. I asked him whether he was disappointed by Britain’s continued low productivity and widening trade gap.
“There’s an ability for people to plan ahead, invest in the future, which we’ve not seen in the last 20 to 30 years.”
Quite a few people around the country echoed this view – especially the property developers (before the property crash of course….causing the credit crunch). There is just one problem. Businesses are not investing more. They are investing less.
Total investment as a share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the lowest it has been since those records began in 1965.
Saved by spending
The miracle, if there is one, is that we carried on growing. But looking around the country, you see it is a miracle built not on investing, or exporting, but on a miraculous capacity to spend.
The public spending prop
What is left of the miracle economy, if you strip out the cheap imports and the consumer spending? What is left is a lot of public spending. The only part of the economy that has grown faster than spending by all of us the past few years has been spending by the government.
In the north-east, one recent estimate puts the public sector of the economy at close to 60%.
But all of that public spending, sooner or later has to be paid for. Ed Balls denies that Gordon Brown’s decision to move the goal posts on his golden rule this summer has done his reputation real harm.
What Gordon Brown would like to be his final years as chancellor could be the most testing yet.
‘
And a final thing of note…the BBC is usually keen to tell us that all the rising number of self-employed people isn’t a sign of a healthy economy on the up but an indication of a weak economy in which people are desperate to scrape a living and end up as self-employed as a last resort because there are no jobs out there…..the Guardian in 2006 puts the lie to that when it predicts that maybe a third of workers will be self employed by 2011….
‘Become your own boss. And many of us want to. According to research by Vodafone, the number of UK businesses could rise from 3m to 10m over the next five years. That would mean a third of UK workers running their own business by 2011. The government will have to rethink its view on migrants. Otherwise our hourglass economy will become top heavy, toppling into the North Sea and causing a tsunami that would wipe out Scandinavia.’
And I note that ITV only inform me about what The Guardian and The Mirror are telling us all, for tomorrows paper headlines.
I`ll not spoil the surprise for you.
But there`ll be no effort to tell me what the Sun, Express, Indie,Mail and all those others will be saying tomorrow.
Course not.
The media seem genuinely unhinged,as if someone`s blown purple and yellow smoke into their lazy beehive.
So I`ll vote UKIP…if only to see Jon Snows face looking like a slapped arse on Friday.
As well as the other rentalefties-the Left are lazy evil suckups.
Burn the ticks off our backs, before their Islamic pals try to take our heads off.
Nice to know that the BBC and Nick Lowles have been working together again….And a day before the election – who would have foreseen that? (sic)
That’s the best example of pot, kettle, black yet this election – a BBC android whining about UKIP smear and using Hope Not Soap as a reference!
How does Alan cope in the polling station? Reduced to a single “x” when we know he needs 20 paragraphs and a variety of font sizes to explain why we’re all wrong.
Like it or not UKIP votes are going to favour Labour in most constituencies ,who will do yet more damage to the UK.I hope UKIP do take swathes of seats in the north,but realistically it is not going to happen.
You’re probably not wrong but the longer view is that if Miliband seizes power, aided by the Caledonian loonies, the whole edifice will be in ruins with months.
At that stage, we may be able to ditch Scotland completely and be assured that England will never again be ruled by Marxists.
Personally, I bear the Scots no ill will. I may even send them the occasional food parcel when they are starving. But I’d be damn careful which of them I gave asylum to!
I fear that Cameron and Osborne with their contempt for Ukippers have simply confirmed many Ukip voters. Cameron’s plan to move to the centre aping Blair has failed as he has ignored the Right ground. Can a Tory leader survive coins consecutive failures to win a majority?
Get real will you. UKIP and the Tories are different parties. Of course the Tories are going to go head to head with UKIP and disagree and argue with and about their polices…what do you expect? For them to be brothers in arms?
And before you come up with that ‘fruitcakes’ jibe…the one that KIPPers wear as a badge of grievance…that was 10 years ago when UKIP was tiny and they were fruitcakes and loonies (Kilroy Silk, FFS)…and many years before most of today’s KIPPers became KIPPers.
That’s by the by, I really came on here to say what a great piece that was by Alan. That’s the sort of insight that has been sadly missing this election.
The BBC need to account for Peston’s bias, and by the way, who the fuck does he think that he is to tell me or anyone else what ‘I SHOULD PONDER’ when I cast my vote.
Fuck off, BBC
Cameron’s plan …. has failed …. uuummmm …. something about not counting chickens before they are hatched … think you allowed yourself to be brainwashed by the media …… is a retraction in order ?
He won’t be that bothered.Big question is whether this is a professional Journalist working for a very famous foreigner wanting to get his hands on BBC bandwidth. This site isn’t about democracy,it’s simply about making money. You don’t get to the top of a Google search without a lot of doe changing hands.
Maybe you could tell us what you think the benefits of austerity economics are.
errrr paying off the national debt that Labour built up….
Background Information.
Person A owns her own modest property outright having paid off the mortgage early, she owns (there is no loan) a 10 year old fully depreciated diesel run about and forgoes expensive luxuries like subscription TV. Her annual income is greater than her expenditure, and she has zero interest charges or repayments to make.
Person B has a large mortgage to pay and recently funded holidays and a ‘dream’ wedding on a credit card. Her annual expenditure exceeds income, and includes loan repayments and interest charges but she is unwilling to turn the heating down, cancel (if it is possible) the seventy quid a month for sky and the gym membership that is never used. Similarly she has a leased people carrier costing 380 a month but which will have zero residual value at the end of the lease and since she has driven 369 miles ore than the mileage limit she can expect a penalty charge as well. But she is a “good” person and gives 0.7% of her net income away to a ‘charidee’ that is funding a new palace for a totalitarian kleptocrat in Africa, and is also helping the Kiribati space probe to Jupiter to get off the ground.
Question 1 – which of these two caricatures represents “austerity economics?
Question 2 – which of them has the better medium and long term economic prospects?
Yes it’s simple but unfortunately something you Anti-Austerity Warriors seem incapable of understanding … it means living within your means and only spending money that you earn …. you know like every single person has to do every week … Got it ??? No thought not!
we now live in a country where the leader of ukip nigel farage has to travel around with 6 bodyguards in fear of him and his children being attacked by red eds rent a mob labour supporters,but on the positive side,in 2010, ukip were on 3% with no mps in parliament,2015 there hovering around 15 %, thats fantastic,so,if ukip get 1 mp elected into parliament tomorrow i will see that as a great success,more than 1 mp and i will be over the moon and celebrating for the rest of the year,tommorow is an important day,we have 24 hours to save the uk from a socalist/marxist takeover,do the right thing,get your down the polling booths and put that x next to ukip,this is your last chance to save britian from red ed and his cronies.
Did I miss something? Since when did Robert Peston ever have a political career???
At least Newzoids tonight took the piss out of all of the leaders. Well done ITV. You don’t get that on the Beeb…
Since when did Robert Peston ever have a political career???
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7929210.stm
yeah I enjoyed that! All I want is for ALL of them to be savaged by the media and not the BBC line of ignoring everything Labour has done and constantly bashing the Tories
This election is of litttle importance. That is my opinion of course. It will be won by one or other factions of the liberal elite. Each faction as useless and as mired in unreality as the next. Maybe the Tory faction marginally less useless.
The real issues are different. Existential matters in fact. Firstly who rules?
A free man needs to be ruled by free men from his own land. This is how the world has always been and cannnot be reasoned or bargained away.
From that follows all. Freedom is my inalienable right. I was born with it and it is not to be lightly discarded. I have every right to hand it on to my descendants as it was handed down to me. It is what we have always fought for in this land along with our tenure of the land itself.
Kings and princes and rulers come and go but this is what remains always. It has been that way for generations.
Next comes our right to hold our culture close and to preserve it against the world. It is the English way . Nobody has the right to deny us.
Then comes the wider European world. We are part of it and the inheritors of Judeo Christian civilisation. It is again not ours to throw away.
I am sick of those who say that we are only ruled by selfish monetary needs. That is demeaning to a free man.
To preserve England we will have to understand that it will be hard going. That it has come to pass in my lifetime is extraordinary. War I understand but not this collective treason against my people. This liberal world is beyond reasoning with. It is so sure now that it will win. We must be as seeds and have faith in our families and our country.
Well, his old man is a Labour Peer after all.
Bias? Nah!
I see that the HYS for Peston’s piece has been closed…not that it matters much, a huge number of comments have been ‘disappeared’…or ‘referred to the moderators for further consideration’…Having been removed myself in the last couple of days, I guess that the BBC have a hit squad looking at each comment…only allowing a token number from anyone right of Owen Jones.
I did mange to find one message that had been ‘moderated’, one that a lefty had copied into their reply:
‘Message for Ian Katz, Robert, Andrew and Justin, the cheques are in the post……..couldn’t have done it without you, Ed x’
Clearly the BBC found it to be a bit close to the truth for comfort.
BBC has full instructions on how to vote correctly
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-32584350
Note the 4th and 5th photos in particular
H/T Guido (who also details how culturally enriched areas have been ordered to vote)
Couple of points on that 1) how thick do they think people are with instructions on how to put a cross in a box 2) so so blatant with where that pencil is headed