So a Labour MP tweets Labour’s narrative on the budget and what is more surprising, perhaps, is that the BBC comes up with exactly the same narrative almost word for word.
I had the misfortune to catch the first 5 minutes of Emma Barnett’s show. It was more than eough, she’s always good value for money….this blog could run on her nonsense alone or what she calls ‘original journalism and surprising news stories.’
It’s certainly new and unusual though I’d have to question the ‘journalism’ claim…just seemed like a simple matter of regurgitating Labour’s anti-Tory, anti-Brexit propaganda today as Barnett informed us that the Tories were spending more on Brexit than on the NHS….and…just think how many hospitals, nurses and operations we could have if that £3 billion had been spent on the NHS rather than Brexit as promised to us by the Leave campaign on their bus.
Trouble is I was pretty sure Hammond had mentioned the figure of £10 billion for the NHS, it certainly wasn’t only £2.8 billion as Barnett was telling us. [And interesting to read the comments about the NHS on this BBC/Labour press release]
Checking his speech and we get an entirely different story…
It is central to this government’s vision that everyone has access to our NHS, free at the point of need.
That is why we endorsed and funded the NHS’s Five Year Forward View in 2014.
And met its funding ask – providing an extra £10 billion in real terms per year by 2020.
But even with this additional funding, we acknowledge that the service remains under pressure and today we respond.
First, we will deliver an additional £10 billion package of capital investment over the course of this Parliament.
To support the Sustainability and Transformation plans which will make our NHS more resilient.
Investing for an NHS which is fit for the future.
But we also recognise that the NHS is under pressure right now.
I am therefore exceptionally, and outside the Spending Review process, making an additional commitment of resource funding of £2.8 billion to the NHS in England.
£350 million immediately to allow trusts to plan for this winter
And £1.6 billion in 2018-19, with the balance in 19-20, taking the extra resource into the NHS next year to £3.75 billion in total.
Meaning that it will receive a £7.5 billion increase to its resource budget over this year and next year.
So the government is on target to fund the NHS with an extra £10 bn per year by 2020, there will be an extra £10 billion on top of this…and ‘exceptionally, and outside the Spending Review process, making an additional commitment of resource funding of £2.8 billion’.
So the £2.8 bn is on top of large increases in NHS funding…it is extra to already promised funding. The NHS will get £7.5 billion over 2 years, the £3 billion for Brexit was also over two years….so the NHS is getting at least double what Brexit gets.
It’s the same story with wages….the BBC is going into overdrive telling us a big lie…..that income has stalled and that we are being ‘squeezed’ more than ever. They pump out a forecast from a think tank, the IFS, as if it were the voice of God and use it to continue peddling their narrative that ‘we’ve never had it so bad’ and it’s all #duetoBrexit. They introduced their news bulletin with the claim that things were grim as we are set to lose two decades of earnings growth….according to the IFS… does real world experience of people bear that out? Doubt it. Amusingly that was followed by a Freudian slip as the announcer told us Hammond’s Budget day had ‘passed off better than many hoped’. Yeah…I’m sure they were all hoping he’d fall on his face in BBC Towers.
Trouble is they ignore, as always, a few salient facts…such as a massive, and endless, influx of EU workers who undercut wages, we have had incredibly low interest rates for a decade, inflation has been low and only rose to 3% as a peak….as predicted [and Hammond predicted it would fall back to 2% next year…’With inflation peaking at 3% in this quarter, before falling back towards target over the next year. And today I reaffirm the remit for the independent Monetary Policy Committee, and its 2% CPI inflation target.’], then there’s the Living Wage and the Minimum Wage rises, and of course tax allowances have increased enormously and will increase again next year giving us more cash in our pockets……
Making work pay is core to the philosophy of this government.
That is why we introduced the National Living Wage in 2016.
From April, it will rise 4.4%, from £7.50 an hour to £7.83.
Handing full-time workers a further £600 pay increase.
And taking their total pay rise, since its introduction, to over £2000 a year.
We also accept the Low Pay Commission’s recommendations on National Minimum Wage rates.
Today, income inequality is at its lowest level in 30 years.
The top 1% are paying a larger share of income tax than at any time under the last Labour government.
The poorest 10% have seen their real incomes grow faster since 2010 than the richest 10%.
And the proportion of full-time jobs that are low paid is at its lowest for 20 years.
When we came into office the personal allowance stood at £6,475.
From April, I will increase the personal allowance to £11,850.
The typical basic rate tax payer will be £1,075 a year better off compared to 2010.
And a full-time worker on the National Living Wage will take home more than £3,800 extra.
The BBC happily ignores all that as it blasts out sensationalist and alarmist headlines and context free brief news bulletins spreading gloom and doom as fast as it can and as far as it can.
The BBC’s reporting seems entirely out of touch with the real world…some might think deliberately so….here we have this from Kamal Ahmed who provided us with such insightful and intelligent briefings during the Brexit referendum…..the BBC, always peddling Corbyn’s Marxist line about capitalism….I seem to remember the BBC telling us it was dead 10 years ago when ‘Occupy’ was all the rage and on every journalist’s[BBC’s] lips as the coming future…
Analysis: Kamal Ahmed, BBC Economics Editor
What is the point of capitalism?
That might seem like a pretty big question, but one answer could be “to provide people the opportunity through work to become richer”.
What, though, if the economy fails in that endeavour?
If the system leaves you – despite all your efforts – worse off in December than you were the previous January?
Or worse off now than you were a decade ago?
It was Lord Adair Turner, the former head of the Low Pay Commission, who put it succinctly.
“The UK over the last 10 years has created a lot of jobs, but today real wages are below where they were in 2007,” he told me earlier this year.
“That is not the capitalist system delivering its promise that over a decade or so it will raise all boats, and it is a very fundamental issue.”
Alan,
“It’s the same story with wages….the BBC is going into overdrive telling us a big lie…..that income has stalled and that we are being ‘squeezed’ more than ever.
…does real world experience of people bear that out? Doubt it.”
“Doubt it”?
That’s truly the full extent of your in depth, fully considered, economic analysis…
“Doubt it”.
You’re a clown, Alan.
The issue is, that most people employed in the private sector, (or retired self-employed like me), don’t really need to hear comments by others in the public sector, especially when they’re supposed to be unbiased, and that includes the tax-funded organisations like the bbc.
Yeah, there are always endless seminars from ‘experts’ like Gordon Brown and expensive bashes by ‘world conglomerates’, but that’s all away with the fairies compared with on-the-ground workforces and small businesses who actually create the wealth. I’d say that ‘Doubt it’ sums it all up concisely, Max. The private sector just can’t be arsed to listen to proven left-wingers telling them how it is and what to do!
The private sector has been bashed on far too many occasions by socialist ‘ideals’, including stealing pension funds, taxing to the hilt, and creating ridiculous rules of engagement in the work place. My economics tutor once said that the best way to get any country on its feet was for everyone to become self-employed. Its an interesting issue, and would certainly affect spurious ‘reporters’ and pundits alike, as they’d actually have to really understand any business first, before they spouted idealistic opinions.
The further analysis below that paragraph is succint, and sums up the current situation very well, and it would have been nice if the bbc had mentioned all that. They really should have done, because it was part of the speech, and would have balanced the report, but they chose not to. The Ahmed comments are a joke, and an insult to businesses who have to make a profit to keep a workforce in place. For someone to bring a hypothetical question to the screen and make it sound like it’s fact is just ludicrous, and another reason why wealth-creators just don’t take much notice, other than to hear the stuff, then go somewhere else for the facts – not the opinions.
Scroblene ,
That lecturer was absolutely right ( isn’t he an unusual one ) . If everyone had to run a business , even if for one year , before any entitlements ,we’d have the most prosperous nation on the planet . And no , Maxicony and BBC , we wouldn’t be fat cat capitalists . We’d be workers who are independent and can see well run businesses and economies from a mile off .
No BBC report on economics or business should be taken any notice of until the BBC employ someone who’s run a one man band , and not in finance but more something like a milkman .
Hello Maxincony, are you a nurse by any chance or just someone who nurses a grudge?
If you were a nurse, you might be interested to know that the average rise across your ‘profession’ last year was 3.3%. That’s because of the incremental scale, you see, not something the BBC like to talk about as it would absolutely ruin their ‘1% public sector pay limit’ narrative, which is yet another example of their fat stinking bias.
And then things are never as bad as they’re made out to be, are they? Use your eyes and your common sense and ask yourself why are you seeing a continuing massive expansion of coffee shops, bars, restaurants, takeaways etc etc? Where is the money coming from if not increased prosperity and disposable income?
Maxincony
You are a clown with bells on.
Maxincony, your people are very inferior people with low intelligence and unable to see what the cause of the problems are. Replace the word “Capitalism” with “Mass Immigration” and you can see why nasty Capitalists are using your people as useful idiots.
What is the point of mass immigration?
That might seem like a pretty big question, but one answer could be “to provide people the opportunity through work to become poorer”.
What, though, if the economy succeeds in that endeavour?
If the system leaves you – despite all your efforts – worse off in December than you were the previous January?
Or worse off now than you were a decade ago?
It was Lord Adair Turner, the former head of the Low Pay Commission, who put it succinctly. “The UK over the last 10 years has created a lot of jobs, but today real wages are below where they were in 2007,”
“That is not the mass immigration system delivering its promise that over a decade or so it will raise all boats, and it is a very fundamental issue.”
The cause is quite obvious to people with high IQ,s. Mass immigration has produced workers for very low paid jobs and reduced the need for capitalists to improve productivity in Britain. To blame it on capitalism rather than Blairite New Labours greedy corporate globalise monopolies would be loony if it meant voting in a Labour party that repeats the failed socialist experiments of the past.
The analysis followed the comment you quote but clearly you didn’t bother to read it. For example, looking at pre- tax average earnings versus price indices ( the basis of the BBCs moaning that people are not getting better off) ignores changes in post tax earnings. The huge increase in the personal allowance has disproportionately benefited the lower paid . Also of course many lower paid have benefited from the increase in the minimum wage above inflation .
A distortion of averages is that we are not comparing the same set of people in the same circumstances over time. People move to better jobs , move up time related pay scales in the public sector ( always ignored by the BBC) and get promoted. Individual experiences of real earnings movement over time can be very different from what the averages say.
So maxi i have been reading your snide comments for many a year now. Alan wasn’t offering an in depth, fully considered economic analysis. Instead he offers his opinion that he doubts the bbc fiction. You don’t like other peoples opinion though, most especially when it doesn’t match your own views. I have found your comments on this site the most simplistic of all the comments posted here. You never offer any sensible debate, merely one sentence sneering remarks. i don’t think you are very bright.
DBDEG
He will never tell us why he posts here.
He’s a graduate troll.
On the BBC it looks bad “Budget 2017: Charts that explain a stormy outlook {bbc.co.uk 23nov2017}” – time for Sadiq Khan to reaffirm #LondonIsOpenIncludingPresidentOfTheUSA.
Time for Sadiq Khan to invite the President of the a democratic country into London – London Is Open to All!
Time for Sadiq Khan to invite the President of the largest economy in the World – London Is Open to All!
Time for Sadiq Khan to invite the President who has visited Majority Muslim country Saudi Arabia where the holy city of Mecca resides!
Time for Sadiq Khan to put the economy of the UK before his bitter feelings towards Donald Trump.
If Diane Abbott can put her child before her Labour Party Principles … surely Sadiq Khan can but the UK economy before his anger towards a leader of a free nation.
“I (Diane Abbott) had to choose between my reputation as a politician and my son.” {bbc.co.uk oct2003}
#LondonIsReallyOpenAndDoesNotExcludeLeaderOfLargestEconomyInTheWorld
Think of the Future! Think of the children! Think of the Economy! Time for Sadiq Khan to act – #LondonIsOpenToUSA!!!
p.s. I posted on the main thread but thought it would fit nicely here, I noticed that Khan is focusing on housing rather than economics. Sadiq Khan says the Budget is the worst for Londoners “in a generation” {twitter}
The NHS gets far too much money, and as a consequence, is the most wasteful organisation in the UK.
I wonder which land these politicians live in – we’ll spend £40 billion of tax payers money but not show you a list. We’ll give an organisation £40bn who waste €103 million moving offices each year. We’ll decide who should be in the BBC and if you try to stop us you go to prison. We’ll decide what large pay gap we can create and give presenters a free political voice and large audience, but if you want to stop us you will go to prison.
As I can see, according to Labour, spending £3 Billion on Brexit preparations is more expensive than the Tories giving the EU a £40 Billion ransom for Brexit. But even cheaper would be an unlimited ransom payment of more than £80 Billion from the Labour party, for Brexit?
Just think how many hospitals, nurses and operations we could have if that £40 billion had been spent on the NHS rather than the ransom for Brexit.
We don’t live in a fully capitalist economy because there is far too much government interference. The Tories called Labour’s bluff when they brought in the living wage. It was Labour’s policy in the first place and the Tories stole it, to much applause. But such meddling in a free market economy simply doesn’t work. The living wage does not work and those on the left have gone very quiet on the subject.
Alan I agree with your original summary. I also think it’s importNt that we do have other views on this website so we don’t all end up in our own echo chamber. For completeness I have worked all my life in the private sector my wife works in the NHS so we have some good debates. We should campingn to have the nhs turned into a state funded charity free from govt mismananagemnt. Most charities no longer have final salary pension schemes neither should the NHS it would free up Billions and create a better understanding between the public and private sector choices people make. It would also allow longer term planning in the NHS and allow highly trained medical staff to deal with patient care and managers to focus on the efficient delivery of that care so resources can be allocated appropriartely. It doesn’t need to be uber efficient moat charities aren’t but it does need to be moved off the political football pitch. Finally in the economic gloom did you hear the Polish guy say how even at their current rates of growth it would be 30 years before GDP per head in Poland matched the Uk assuming we don’t grow ( funnily enough we are despite brexit) also the French guy who said all the French working class would trade their growth rate for our levels of employment and Job creation. We are doing well as a nation but this is driving the MSM bonkers aren’t we naughty