Just a few weeks ago the BBC was trumpeting the then latest PMI figures that had dipped below 50 and in the BBC’s interpretation this definitely showed we were heading for recession due to Brexit. This ‘news’ was constantly and loudly broadcast on the day the figures were released.
How different yesterday when the latest PMI figures [53.3] were released showing that ‘the month-on-month increase in the PMI level was the joint largest in the survey’s 25-year history.’
The figures were released at 09:30, the BBC didn’t report this until around 21:00 and the radio news was totally silent all day on this remarkable turn around in contrast to the very high profile the figures received last month. Odd that the BBC was not chomping at the bit to get these latest ‘good news’ figures that give the lie to the BBC’s scaremongering about Brexit.
Interesting to hear Justin Webb interview Stiglitz on Wednesday as he slammed the EU and told us that if the EU acted in a rational way [note the ironic guffah from Webb…if so sceptical about the EU where was that in the run-up to the referendum?] the Uk could ‘do very well’.
Stiglitz tells us that the EU was supposed to bring solidarity and prosperity but has done the opposite and that the fact that the EU sees the only way to keep members in line, and inside the EU, is to threaten them must show that the EU doesn’t have a positive argument for itself and its supposed benefits.
Stiglitz tells us what we all know…that the only way the EU can succeed and make the Euro work is to have ever closer union…which was a major reason so many people voted to get out of the EU because staying in would inevitably mean we get dragged into that ever closer union…but this was not a line that the BBC cared to explore at all.
Instead the BBC concentrated on the economics..or the ‘economics’ as the Remain camp saw them…the BBC’s presentation parroted Remain’s propaganda unquestioningly even when making what were pretty outrageous claims.
Yesterday I heard Peter Allen get a bit hot under the collar when someone from the Electoral Reform Society suggested that the media were to blame for not properly informing the public during the referendum campaign. The BBC was, ufortunately the source that the majority of people relied upon for their information….which, given the BBC’s very pro-EU reporting, might suggest Leave might have got an even higher percentage of the vote had we had a more balanced and honest narrative from the BBC.
Have to say most of the ERS’s analysis is mostly hot air…just look at this..
The society said the EU debate was in “stark contrast” to the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence, which it said had featured a “vibrant, well-informed, grassroots conversation that left a lasting legacy of on-going public participation in politics and public life”.
That’ll be right…the Scottish national socialist party’s anti- English rhetoric combined with total falsehoods about the economy meant that voters were had a ‘vibrant and well informed’ debate along with the stay camp’s ‘project fear’. Such a shining example of how to run a referendum…not.
This is interesting though…
Referendums are a rich source of learning about public attitudes to politics and democracy. They expose views and feelings that are not given true expression or representation at general elections, given our distorted electoral system. At the Electoral Reform Society we have heard time and again from members of the public for whom 23rd June was the first time their vote had truly counted.
So, despite what the ERS are trying to claim, the referendum in fact represented what people actually thought and wanted to say, they were given a voice so often denied to them….and the referendum had a turn out far in excess of any recent general election. Democracy in action.
The ERS is of course a campaigning group with its own agenda and is twisting its analysis on the EU referendum to support its own line.
I don’t think that voters were under-informed about why we should leave the EU by the Leave campaign but anyone in the Remain camp or undecided were certainly short-changed by the BBC which concentrated on the the supposed disastrous economics of a Brexit vote and which refused to explore the very extreme problems if we did stay in the EU and which painted anyone who spoke about immigration as a racist.
Leave voters were very clear why they wanted to leave….to escape the stranglehold of EU and its unelected politicians, to control immigration and to control our own destiny. Simple. To claim they didn’t know what they were voting for, which is the BBC’s own narrative, is just nonsense. It was the BBC that didn’t know, or couldn’t accept, what they were voting for and no doubt all future debates about this will be ‘informed’ by the ERS analysis, conveniently avoiding the negatives about the Remain campaign, but loudly trumpeting any criticism of the Leave campaign thus adding to the BBC’s narrative that the referendum was invalid and that people were misled into voting Leave….and thus we should have a second referendum.
Note the interview with Gus O’Donnell in which Mishal Husain repeatedly asked if we should have a second referendum….O’Donnell is a Remain man who admits his ‘utopia’ would be to still be in the EU. This is the man that the BBC chose to present a programme about Brexit. The programme is designed purely to instill in us the idea that Brexit is so difficult and beset with problems that we are more ready to accept a suggestion of a second referendum to escape Brexit armageddon.
Also note the BBC’s road trip around the UK to check on how Brexit is effecting you…Unlikely Brexit is effecting anyone to any great extent at the moment. The BBC will of course end up packing the programme with immigrants who claim to have been abused by racists due to Brexit. Just more BBC anti-Brexit propaganda designed to paint a negative picture of a future outside the EU’s grasp.
The BBC seems to live in an entirely different world to most people and rather than report facts instead reports what it wants you to think you know. It is corrupt, it is hugely damaging to democracy in this country and is a massive danger to society as it supports terrorism and cheerleads radical ideologies that bring only a new Dark Ages.
