For months the BBC has been telling us that British consumers have been suffering a spending squeeze due to high inflation and low wages #duetobrexit. Unfortunately for the BBC reality keeps on mugging them as consumers defy the BBC’s ‘truth’ and keep on spending…however the BBC, whilst keen to promote the idea that Brexit has caused an alleged spending slowdown, isn’t so keen to make the reality widely known.
Today we hear that the deficit is down significantly and that retail sales have outperformed expectations by a wide margin. But you’d be hard pushed to know that if you relied on the BBC for the information. There’s nothing on the frontpage and nothing on the UK page…you have to go to the specialised Business page to find out these significant stories. Extraordinary no? Almost as if the BBC was hiding the good news ‘#despitebrexit’. 5 Live certainly wasn’t trumpeting the good news today as it usually does with bad news #duetobrexit. Bad news is discussed at length and leads the news bulletins all day.
Even when they do report on the stories they short change us. The forecast for retail sales was a growth of 0.2%, the actual growth was 1%…but the BBC don’t bother to mention this improved performance.
On the deficit we get the truth…the improvement was due to a rise in VAT receipts [er…due to consumer spending] but this is strangely tagged on the end…
Samuel Tombs, chief UK economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said the improvement in August’s deficit reflected government spending cuts, rather than a strong economy.
Clearly not true.
They do tell us that ‘It was the 52nd month in a row that sales have risen.’ which makes you wonder why the BBC keeps telling us consumers are hit hard by the wage/inflation squeeze.
Alan,
Al Beeb – like the Labour Party – seems to ignore reductions in unemployment levels – particularly concerning the young.
At best they say these are not real jobs – zero hours and interns but anything which takes people off welfare can only be a good thing. And before anyone accuses me of being a smug oldie – before I was due to go to university I got a summer job as a school caretaker scrubbing floors and toilets for 12 hours a day at the age of 17. By eck it were ard life .
Luxury!
I had to sweep t’floor in a wire rope factory.
And thankfully, it’s still manufacturing.
“They do tell us that ‘It was the 52nd month in a row that sales have risen.’ which makes you wonder why the BBC keeps telling us consumers are hit hard by the wage/inflation squeeze.”
Of course people ‘have been hit hard’, they keep spending recklessly!
They feel ‘better’ immediately with a few more quid in the pocket, go on holiday, buy a bigger stupider car, try and move up a bling house, try and keep up with the Jones (who have a Mercedes), and then complain bitterly the moment their fantasies are thwarted, sterling takes stock, and hopefully when they’re stranded in Magaluf with a fat load of kids and a silly hat.
The BBC tells me that I need an iPhone X.
That should boost consumer spending!
Another manifestation I noticed recently.
A “reporter” shouts, “Are you going to {whatever}, Minister?” to a passing Minister and is completely ignored.
This is reported as “The Minister refused to deny that (s)he is going to {whatever}.” or alternatively “The Minister refused to comment on rumours that (s)he is going to {whatever}.”
Both of these neglect to tell the public that the question was asked out of the blue and not at a press conference or in an interview and the Minister had no real opportunity to reply.
It does seem odd that this only happens to real Ministers and never to their Shadows.
Crick is the chief weasel, did it at the BBC and was hired to do it for Jon Snow.
Laura K is also an exponent, but suffers from no one understanding a word she says.
In biased BBC leftie la la land, every day is a good day to bury good news when it shows the successes of the market economy, and a good day to bury bad news when it shows the abject failings of socialism.
Just about everyone I speak to these days has given up on the BBC, and just ignores the whole set up as a leftie, biased minor pirate station.
Sad really, they used to be a signal broadcaster, but now they’re a squealing little crowd of self-opinionated twerps, and not really any good at anything, except squander taxpayers money, rather like most politicians.
When your octogenarian parents say that they no longer watch the BBC because it is so biased (and remark, incidentally, that Sky News is nearly as bad) you know that the BBC control of public opinion is slipping away. The tipping point for them was being branded as racists for voting to leave the EU.