The BBC always wondered out loud, mainly in the context of the Coalition government must be failing appallingly and yet unemployment keeps falling!!???!!, about the apparent puzzles of ever rising employment and the apparent lack of productivity.
The BBC never bothered to go out and just ask the businesses why they were employing people, that would be too easy. The BBC preferred to speculate and tell us that these weren’t real jobs, they were low paid, part-time, zero hours contracts that didn’t contribute to the economy.
The reality was that the open border meant that an endless supply of workers could be imported and employed on low wages. This is why employment kept rising and the low wages gives the clue as to why productivity was apparently so low…..it wasn’t low at all, it was just that the BBC used, knowingly, the wrong measure to judge productivity by comparing the number of workers with output when in reality they should have been measuring pay against output…the employers got the same level of output from more people but for less money meaning there was no fall in productivity in terms of cash….the companies did not have to invest in machinery and skills to drive up productivity.
On wednesday the Resolution Foundation confirmed that on 5Live (11 mins) and following that we had the BBC’s Rob Young (12 mins) talking about job losses due to the introduction of the national living wage…..what he had to say was interesting in light of the furore about the claims of job losses if we vote for Brexit and also in light of Port Talbot.
Fraser Nelson in the Telegraph says this about the potential job losses due to the Living Wage…
The Living Wage could make Port Talbot look like a drop in the ocean
David Cameron is mulling direct intervention to save Tata’s giant plant. Some 1,000 jobs are at stake, most in a part of Wales unlikely to recover easily from such setbacks. To hear Tories even discussing nationalisation gives an idea of scale of the panic.
It raises an interesting question: how would the Prime Minister react if another event were to cause at least 60,000 job losses among the low-paid? Because this is precisely what his new Living Wage is expected to do….. it risks dumping tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of Britons on the new scrap heap of globalisation.
The BBC’s Rob Young says this…
‘Remember 60,000 jobs would be awful for those individuals but in the grand scheme of things it’s not a huge number given we’ve seen a pretty big and rapid fall in unemployment in Britain that many economists call a jobs miracle….’
Remarkable isn’t it how suddenly 60,000 job losses isn’t much to worry about and that we’ve had a jobs miracle. There was a time on the BBC when every little job loss was railed against and the government hung out to dry and the rise in employment was all smoke and mirrors hiding the real, dreadful, state of the economy.
I’m guessing the BBC likes the living wage or rather it’s been reconvinced of its value. When Miliband proposed it, first as the ridiculous ‘predistribution’, and then as the living wage, the BBC were all ears and cheered him on uncritically. When the Tories stole Labour’s thunder suddenly it was the worst idea out there and the criticisms never stopped…however it seems the BBC is swinging into line as its urge to undermine the Tories looks to be losing out to its liking of the living wage especially as groups like the Resolution Foundation back it, though with a few reservations.
How’s productivity at the Beeb ?
Are they making more programmes with less people ?
Although it’s a confusing concept as its how many man hours to produce x value .
UK Police: Be ‘Kind’ And ‘Use The Internet Safely’ Or
‘You May Receive A Visit’
Glasgow Police have threatened social media users, ordering them to be “kind” and not “hurtful” unless they want to “receive a visit… this weekend”.
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/04/01/uk-police-say-they-will-pay-you-a-visit-unless-you-are-kind-on-twitter/
But if an Imam praises and glorifies murder, its freedom of speech.
The political elite are desperate to keep the dam shored up. Surely it will burst sometime.
The introduction of the living wage has exposed the BBC’s political bias in many ways.
It should be a good news story but the BBC are asking questions and allowing the negative truths of the effects of the living wage to be aired. Funny that – after all the BBC’s suppression of facts running up to the last general election, and the campaign for a national living wage given lots of prominence during that period last year, we NOW begin to get the FACTS about the economic implications of the introduction of a living wage!
What changed? Have the BBC come to their senses?
Nope. It’s a Tory living wage and not a Labour living wage, so it’s open season on the policy itself. The BBC are now – belatedly – happy to speak to experts and academics who raise awareness of the dangers of a living wage.
That’s new! What? The BBC??? Allowing people on air who put the ideology of a living wage into doubt? Shooorley not!
The living wage is not a new idea, as we already know. So why haven’t the BBC exposed the economic dangers of a living wage up until now? (I won’t ask for the answer to that, because we all know it already.)
Something that has made me laugh recently is the response from those socialist, economically Illiterate, unionist… you get my drift… NUMBSKULL BULLIES! … is how they’re trying to redefine the actual term – as if they have a choice in how much unskilled labour is worth!
Here’s an example of what happens when the BBC refer to a government initiative by its official name – “living wage”.
How many times did the BBC refer to the “spare room subsidy” as the “bedroom tax”?
The job losses at Port Talbot are a Labour/media wet dream as they’re all concentrated in one place, making it much easier to lobby on their behalf. 60,000 job losses spread over the country is a lot less tangible and will probably go unnoticed by the BBC.
60,000 atomised jobs dotted around the country with no union bloc vote to back Corbyn is probably the reason why the liberal left won`t care too much about this attack on job creation.
If you`re an individual-or even worse, independent minded and creative with a view to providing a job for others when you get successful-then the liberal left will despise you.
Not in the beehive, the Big Tent of Conversations after conversion… just a bolshie, refusnik-and not on message with the collective need for activism a la SNP,McClusky or Lucas, Brand or “Plane Stupid Occupy” and such.
You`re either in THEIR gang…or else you`re going to need to wanne be in their gang.
At least Glitter was explicit-the BBC are believers in Gadd to create the Savilisation of society…but use Islam, deviants, freaks and the liberally-insane to do their dirty grooming work for them.
Look at cBBC, sports coverage or any of their platforms of propaganda…they simply have to model the mad upside down world of no whites, no blokes, no aged, no dads, no manners, no deferred gratification, no fortitude, no faith-unless it`s Islam.
Total freak show the BBC and its liberal stooges..
Like so many parts of the UK, the old and heavily unionised industries under public ownership for long periods, managed to drive up wages to an unsustainable level in localised areas. Privatisation followed, but world markets abhor artificially high business costs, and will seek to reduce that cost wherever it can. If it can’t reduce them in one country, they will go to another.
On top of that, a country with apparently bottomless pockets (e.g. China) can dominate a market by ‘dumping’ a product or commodity into a market for a substantial period, driving out the competition and then hiking the price at an appropriate time. Those competitors whose costs are the highest will be the first to fail under such onslaughts. And so we have the Tata Steel situation in the UK.
However, one other major effect of having an industry in a local area paying wages way out of line with the local norm (just listen to comments from workers, unions, etc. in these areas when they are bemoaning the fact that they are losing very highly-paid jobs, if you don’t think that’s true) is that other industries just can’t compete with these wages, and so, over many years, they don’t willingly move into these areas (or may do so only if they are heavily subsidised) – hence the lack of other jobs to be had locally. A perfect storm occurs. And the way out is NOT to sustain this situation, hoping that headwinds will just blow themselves out – they won’t. Solving the China problem, or the high cost base of UK steel companies, for instance, will not occur in the foreseeable future.
The management and the Unions went to Tata with a plan which they virtually guaranteed would work. Fine – Tata had no confidence in that plan, so let management and Unions put their own money where their mouths are, and put their case to investment companies and get any needed investment by dint of persuading them that a future exists for these plants, and persuade Tata to sell the plants to them at a price that would simply allow Tata to walk away. If they need to use a vehicle like the one used in Scotland where the government apparently bought steel plants only to sell them on instantly, at the same price it paid, to another buyer (in this case the management and Unions, for instance) retaining absolutely NO government financial involvement whatsoever, for any length of time whatsoever, and Bob’s your uncle, aunty, cousin, pet, whatever ! If they can’t get commitment from any investor, what makes anyone think that there’s a buyer out there ?
Tata has been seeking a buyer, we hear, for 18 months or more – so no UK government ‘takeover’ is likely to be a short-term prospect. And when you have an industry losing £1 million a day, for the foreseeable future, and the debts, pension debts, decommissioning costs, redundancy costs, etc., still looming large, along with the almost inevitable disaster of having to close the businesses at some point anyway – we need to bite the bullet now ! It’s no good carrying on just hoping things will change (hopey-changey – now who does that remind me of ????). There has to be a concrete plan as to what any new and sustainable scenario will be, the confidence of everyone involved that it will work, and absolutely no chance of taxpayer commitment in even the short term. If not, then tough ! Throwing money at it won’t solve the problem in the UK. It was this never-ending money-pit mentality in the public sector that caused so many problems in these industries in the first place.
It’s time we had some reality-based thinking for a change, on these and other issues facing us, and the BBC’s behaviour in basically blocking this from happening, by dint of one-sided leftist group-think in so many scenarios, is despicable.
Be nice to see the Labour Party, Leanne Woods bunch, Welsh Dissembling members, BBC Wales all working that black seam together, as they strip to their six packs and beat the silver in honour of St Fag nearby.
THAT would surely put their socialism into practice…a workers co-op under the Tripe of Kinnock and their Danish fairy tale princesses etc.
Let`s see some socialism in action boyos and girlies…Charlotte Church leading the company sing-song, Manic Street Preachers and their five year plans.
Tidy!
Not everything is rosy. The Co-op is in trouble again! Whilst the BBC has claimed (last year) that it offers ‘value for money’ and is being as ‘well run’ as ‘Apple computers’ (absurd quote from Lord Hall) and that it is ‘as essential as the NHS’ (go compare)! An example (or not) of the left whinger mindset can be seen in today’s Saturday TIMES (also in the Mail) the huge Co-op losses this year of £611m (which is in addition to £2.61 Billion of debt from 2012) . The BBC is fond of the Co-op, its ‘Green rhetoric’ ‘right on’ socialism and lack of any financial ‘accountability’ was made even before CEO Bob Flowers made his mark in the highly irregular drugs and devient sexual circumstances that is somewhat ‘normal’ for the BBC progressives to report these days..
But it puts the BBC on the spot. The Co-op is sinking like the Titanic. Its clear that nobody wants the TOXIC job of ‘turning’ around the Co-op bank. Nial Booker (current Chief Executive) costs £3.9 million on top of his ‘basic salary’ of £1.26 Million. Other ‘Co-op’ (directors) earn not far short of a £1,000,000 to stay on board the Co-op leaky boat. So the Co-op is more like the ‘BBC’ – it influences the Co-op as a role model. In effect the Co-op would be the BBC (IF and when privatised into a ‘cooperative’). The Co-op shares exactly the same left twank ‘ethos’ the BBC likes to share with us as being ‘normal’ business.
Where the Co-op coughs, The Guardian falters The GUARDIAN is facing amounting losses (with falling readership and only popular with people who don’t pay for it) and will lead to inevitable closure of the paper. Ironically the Guardian Editor blames the ‘fall in paid readership’ on the BBC for ‘giving the Guardian news away for free’. Its not an amicable (two way) arrangement.
The BBC make no secret that it recruits (proud of) the fact that it directly recruits from The GUARDIAN. The BBC simply ‘sifts’ Guardian news stories and give it added polish and ‘lustre’ with a ‘seasoned’ (reasonable sounding) voice-over. The closure of the Guardian will hit the BBC hard. Yet I have never heard, Lord Haw Haw, support openly ‘ The Guardian or admitted that he banks at the Co-op. Who banks The Guardian do you think? Who banks the Labour party?
The free-spending BBC is the ‘perfect’ job-for-life for ex Guardian staffers – with a salary not exceeding Mark Byford’s £1,000,000 bonus ‘to keep him focussed’. Can the Left (I wonder) ever afford to support themselves ‘independently’ and ‘without-the-BBC-bias?’ and the answer has to be NO! it can’t. In short the Co-op and the left are linked to the BBC as is the Guardian itself.
.
The BBC ‘independence’ is highly reliant on Guardian news, and then the Co-op is highly reliant on the socialist doctrine of the BBC. The BBC are in debt to the Co-op who give money to the Labour party. The Co-op is the lender of ‘soft’ money and no-questions-asked. Money in Euros laundered.
But those TOXIC loans of the Co-op will never be repaid (Loans to Greece and loans to the Labour party will have to be written off). The BBC may claim to be ‘well run’ like APPLE (which earns profits of $18.4 Billion) whilst the BBC makes no profit to the tune of £3.8 Billion a year (we call it the TV license fee) payable by everyone who watches increasingly distorted ‘BBC news bulletins’.
How important is the Co-op to the BBC, the Guardian?
When the Co-op Bank closes, The Guardian Newspaper CEO is ‘warning on imminent newspaper closure’ , The Independent has already closed, the BBC will have to employ an awful lot of migrant ex Guardian and ex Independent journalists. All bankrupted mainly by the BBC itself – (not that the BBC will ever admit that it’s part of the problem) and part of the problem was the ‘soft EURO loans’ given by the Co-op to all and sundry (which will never be repaid back). The times and politics have changed.
Toxic Loans push Co-op Bank to £600 loss …. (last year alone).
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/business/industries/banking/article4726187.ece
A nice little twist is that 30% of the Co-op is still supported via (US) HEDGE -funders registered offshore for tax purposes. They stand to make a huge loss as the Co-op bank is now a basket case as well as an off shore tax liability for BBC bosses who also like to go ‘offshore’ for their own banking.
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2533741/Hedge-funds-Co-op-Bank-tax-havens.html
There seem to be two arguments in this thread. First we have the proposition that there isn’t really a labour productivity problem. This is incorrect. Productivity is measured in real not cash terms. So you can’t increase productivity by cutting wages but maintaining the same number of workers for any given level of output. Not only Britain but other Western economies have suffered from low productivity growth for some years. This is serious because in the longer term, economy-wide living standards depend on productivity growth. There is no settled view of why productivity growth has slowed. Ultimately it must be because capital investment per worker is not big enough and there are a number of reasons why businesses don’t invest enough. In Britain one of the factors could well be the holding down of wages by mass immigration of labour from low wage countries in Eastern Europe.
In this thread there is also criticism of any attempt to keep the steel industry open in South Wales. This seems to be mixed up with views that the Welsh shouldn’t be featherbedded and that wages in steel have been too high both in relation to wages in South Wales generally and because the steel industry is loss making. There is no reason why steelworkers shouldn’t be asked to help by cutting wage costs, and they must not oppose better working practices to help productivity. However these are not the main reasons that steel making in the UK is in deep trouble. Chinese dumping at below cost and unnecessarily high uk energy costs are the main issues. Do we counter these two factors to buy time in order to continue to have a strategically important industry?
The BBC does indeed show some glee at highlighting the problems that the government faces in dealing with these issues. There’s a chance to raise points that seem pure 1970s politics such as the case for nationalisation and how being in the EU inhibits the UK from having an industrial policy supported by tariffs, energy prices and other determinants of costs and prices . But as far as I can see, both sides are being given airtime.