It was all going so well…and then those chickens started coming home to roost.

Leveson has been ‘disastrous’ says Guardian legal chief

The Guardian’s director of editorial legal services Gill Phillips has said the outcome of Leveson Inquiry has been “disastrous”.

Phillips told delegates: “What Leveson has come up with is the worst of all worlds.

“His attempt to please everybody and avoid being a dusty footnote on a shelf somewhere has led him down a road that has proved to be pretty disastrous.

“We don’t have anything that could be perceived as effective or credible by either side of the debate.”

I imagine that when an inquiry, supposedly wideranging, is actually predicated upon the sole intention of reining in one man and his supposed ’empire’ (it’s all relative….see below) things get distorted and that old law of unintended consequences rears its ugly but inevitable head.

From the Guardian:

Media plurality is now about much more than curbing Rupert Murdoch

The BBC, and online media, are included in the government’s consultation on plurality in the industry. And about time, too

The BBC, notes the DCMS, spends £430m a year on news provision – more than all other UK broadcasting put together. It reaches 86% of the population and accounts for 73% of TV news-watching. How, for plurality purposes, can you pretend it doesn’t exist?

Of course it operates under a pall of officially prescribed fairness and balance. But that, in itself, limits its plurality role. It can’t (see the latest contentious BBC Trust verdict) let John Humphrys loose for an individually crafted report on welfare dependency. It demands facts, figures and equivalencies, not personal perceptions. And the BBC is held to account for what it reports, not for what it leaves out. Sometimes it picks up a newspaper story and runs hard with it. Sometimes not. Sometimes Edward Snowden may as well not exist.

It’s often a negative power, but it is power. You can’t calculate pluralism without it. It’s the same online, as bbc.co.uk scoops up 40 million or so unique visitors in Britain alone. What’s the point of counting paper copies when the Telegraph can boast a combined monthly reach of 10.7 million? When the Guardian notches 12.4 million and the Mail 18.8 million. Even the Sun, at 16.9 million, doesn’t seem such a winner in company like this – and, as the consultation adds, that’s before you drop in the Huffington Post, Google News and more in a market place that obeys few conventional rules.

Guess the BBC didn’t forgive Blair for the Iraq War and Dyke having to fall on his sword, and Blair still relying on Murdoch to get his message across:

From the Guardian…emails in 2006 from Labour during in-fighting over leadership between Brown and Blair camps:

1.58pm from Ruth Turner (Blair’s  director of government relations at No 10):

So BBC chose [MPs] Sarah McCarthy-Fry, Julie Morgan and George Mudie who are hostile rather than Mike Gapes, Ann Clwyd and Karen Buck [who] are reasonable and supportive. This is a campaign organisation and not a news outlet!

3.36pm from Jonathan Powell [Blair’s long-serving chief of staff]:

Did we publish his three foreign policy speeches as a pamphlet? TB wants to send to Murdoch.

Make of that what you will….this is yet another open thread to take you into the  weekend….

BBC Newsreader holds the history of the NHS in his hands…it’s blank just for now….but he’ll soon think of something to fill all those pages. Behind him, he tells us, is a picture of Mrs Thatcher as she wept for what she has done to the country.

I have frequently commented on the BBC’s reluctance to mention Labour by name when talking about the deaths at the Mid Staffs Hospital in many of its articles and discussions about this scandal.

I have now learnt why….Labour was not to blame. Who was responsible for all those deaths?

Mrs Thatcher.

I kid you not.

The BBC, in the shape of their Business reporter, Lesley Curwen, concludes that the enormous number of deaths at Mid Staffs happened because Thatcher imposed ‘management’ upon the NHS and that management failed to speak up and stand up to government when Blair and Labour imposed its reign of ‘targets and terror’ upon them or taking self serving decisions designed to protect their career, therefore…Thatcher is to blame for the deaths at Mid Staffs.

Curwen seems determined to find ways to excuse Labour and plants the blame firmly in management’s lap…and therefore the person who introduced ‘management’.

The programme missed out important, relevant information and seemed intent on ‘proving’ something that it had already decided was ‘fact’.

Curwen repeatedly states her position:

‘For me it wasn’t questions about just what happened on the wards but in the boardrooms and executive offices of the trusts…I want to pick apart the part played by the managers and leaders of the NHS in these failing cultures.’

‘Wards’ and ‘Boardrooms’….what’s missing?  No 10 Dowing Street 1997-2010.　

She wanted to look at….

‘How the modern NHS manager came into being and how the flaws in that long evolution may have played a part in today’s cultural failings.’

Targets produced a culture of bullying and fear. It is clear that management were intimidated and cowed by targets but can this alone explain how they lost touch with the organisation they were supposed to be leading.

I’ve been looking for any clue that might explain senior management failures….a split developed , a fault line between management and the clinicians.

That sowed the seeds in what happened at Mid Staffs where staff expressing concerns were ignored.

So there you go…Thatcher sowed the seeds for what happened at Mid Staffs.

Curwen brings it all bang up to date with a warning about current reforms:

‘Right now the NHS is undergoing its most far reaching change for decades and at the same time is facing an unprecedented financial squeeze.’

An ‘unprecedented financial squeeze’?

What? The government is putting in money not merely ring fencing the NHS.

What planet is the BBC on?

Let’s remember what the Labour politician, Aneurin Bevan, Labour Health Minister, said:

‘Administration will be the biggest headache for years to come.’

So not quite as simple as some like to portray.

The programme is a mixed bag of messages which confuse and contradict….for instance she tells us that managers are to blame…and yet ‘ultimately Ministers pull the strings….maybe that’s why managers hold staff’s feet to the fire to get the performance they want.’

But she rapidly disassociates Labour’s era of ‘Targets and terror’ from management decisions.

She tells us of the introduction of ‘Consensus management’ in 1973 by the then Tory government…this had boards of doctors, nurses and administrators all making the decisions for hospitals….and all having a veto on any decision.

There was in fact too much bureaucracy…to many tiers of administration.

What happened was that often no agreement could be met on what might be the best probable practise so they plumped for the ‘lowest denominator’…the system was ‘deeply flawed’ but the BMA liked it.

It of course involved the very clinicians, the frontline staff that Curwen is now saying should be involved in management….but paradoxically she tells us resulted in something that ‘truly was a monster’ in the 1970‘s.

Curwen then skips over Labour’s stewardship of the NHS during the 70’s…which is odd…as Thatcher based her policy upon that of Wilson and Callaghan…who …em…advocated a ‘value for money’ policy.

The irony of Thatcher’s introduction of management, based upon the ’Griffith’s Report’, was that it was implemented as a consequence of the failures of the ‘management consensus’ regime and 20 deaths at Stanley Royal Hospital due to food poisoning for which no one would take responsibility.

Curwen blames Mid Staffs on Thatcher but the introduction of ‘management’ was supposed to prevent such occurrences…..and might have if it hadn’t been for the ‘era of targets and terror’.

Curwen tells us a ‘them and us’ attitude developed when non-clinical management came in……what she didn’t say was that it was the managers who were ‘demonised’, indeed the RCN ran a massive advertising campaign against them being introduced.

Were nurses and doctors involved in management? Curwen gives the impression that there were very few at all.

However there were certainly many nurses taking on management roles…though that was slow to begin with:

“One old style consultant was heard to say, ‘She used to be our matron, now she’s come back as our boss’.”

Eventually organisations revised the initial management structures that had excluded nurses.

“So to a degree the RCN campaign was successful,” says Mr Rowden, who became a general manager in 1986 after hearing a speech by health minister Kenneth Clarke. “He said, ‘Stop whingeing – anyone can go into general management.’ In three years there were more than 100 nurses in unit and district general manager posts.”

And the doctors and consultants wielded huge power and authority still:

He was quick to grasp the importance of getting on with the “power broker medics” who could block change. “I was told it was impossible to deal with inefficient or lazy doctors directly. If I took on a doctor directly, that would be the end. We did get rid of several, but not by the direct method.”

Ultimately doctors and consultants didn’t want to manage….and even Christine Hancock, originally a nurse and someone who has served in various senior roles in the NHS, including head of the RCN said:

‘In my experience we are the only country where doctors don’t manage the health service….doctors don’t want to manage.’

 Curwen, though interviewing Hancock, didn’t manage to winkle that out of her.

I don’t think Curwen can have read much of what is written about Griffith’s Report judging by her incomplete take on events and the ultimate overall effectiveness of the new management regime.

This is an indepth look at the report with those involved from politicians, civil servants and NHS staff: The Griffith’s NHS Management inquiry: Its origins, nature and impact

And from the Health Service Journal look at Griffiths after 25 years:

Yet no one suggests the NHS should abandon general management, nor even that any viable alternative exists. It has enabled the NHS to attract high calibre chief executives, rationalise management structures and sharpen accountability for how it uses taxpayers’ billions.

“Management is much more an advocate of the patient and public voice than clinicians, because managers play a neutral role in services. They are not a vested professional interest,” says King’s Fund director of leadership development Karen Lynas.

“The NHS is better now at responding to what the public want, and a lot of that is to do with general management.”

The blame for Mid Staffs lies squarely at Labour’s door…staff shortages, not mentioned by Curwen, and the imposition of the ‘Targets and terror’ regime that forced management to take certain actions.

It was not a failure of the concept of management but the distortion of its implementation by politicians out to win the PR war in the studios of the BBC or on the front pages of the news papers with headlines about ever shorter queues and more money going into the NHS…..all based on highly suspect statistics as management was forced to massage the figures to meet the targets…so in fact they didn’t meet those targets and treatment, as we see from Mid Staffs, in reality got worse.

And patients died as a result.

It seems that the BBC not only are intent on continuing to hide Labour’s part in that but seek to spread the blame, or shift the blame,  to the ‘usual suspect’.

This winter is possibly make or break for the BBC’s pro-AGW stance.  If the winter is harsh it would take a remarkably brass neck and lack of ethics to continue pressing ahead, Al Gore-like regardless of facts, with its global warming propaganda.

The time would come when it would have to reconsider that and start to take seriously the likelihood that things aren’t panning out the way the climate alarmists have told us, backed up by their ‘science’ and computer models.

A relatively mild winter of course would allow them to shrug off criticism and carry on regardless telling one and all that the stalling of temperature rises is merely a blip…’natural variation’.

At present the BBC are ignoring the ongoing debates and the questions being raised by people like David Rose in the Mail:

Global warming is just HALF what we said: World’s top climate scientists admit computers got the effects of greenhouse gases wrong

We had the recent reports of a 60% increase in ice in the Arctic this year, ignored by the BBC….but they did rush this story out at the same time as the increases were being reported:

Esa’s Cryosat mission observes continuing Arctic winter ice decline

Can’t help thinking that was a ‘spoiler’ intended to cast doubt onto the reports of Arctic ice increasing.

The BBC can wait out the doubt and in the mean time we are paying for the doubling up of our energy industry and the commensurate fuel bill increases that come with that.

The poor being the hardest hit of course….not that the BBC seems concerned about them in these circumstances…’Bedroom’ taxes hitting the poor, yes that BBC is on the frontline…Quantitative Easing transferring wealth from the poorest to the already rich…the BBC is on the case,  but fuel poverty, caused by climate change policies…not so much….guess it’s that old Leninist attitude….sacrificing the present for the future at whatever the cost.

Consider the road tax….many new cars are now very fuel efficient and have low emissions…and therefore attract no tax or very little tax….a 2.4 litre Volvo V60 doesn’t cost the earth…a mere £30 road tax a year, first year free of course. 

So once again those wealthy enough to afford these new, efficient models get the benefits, the double benefit…of fuel efficiency and low road tax…whilst the poorest are stuck with their old gas guzzling smokers…and having to pay far more than the better off.

Curious that the BBC isn’t haranguing good old Ed Davey over that…or who gets the benefits of the wind turbine subsidies, or solar panels…how many ‘social houses’ have the benefit of that?  Most people I know who have the most ‘tax efficient’ cars or solar panels or even a wind turbine in a field know how to work the sytem,  have the money to help them take advantage of whatever is on offer and are quite happy to milk that system for their own advantage.

They are, you might say, upmarket benefit scroungers.  But the BBC can’t rock the climate change boat….the planet is warming, they say, and something must be done….and we’ve all got to pay…just it seems some pay relatively vastly more than others and see little to no benefit from it…and all potentially to no effect other than to line the pockets of the already well off if AGW proves a damp, cold squib.

BBC staff, underpaid as they are, as we all know, are having trouble making ends meet.

In order to keep body and soul together they have been forced to take second jobs.  A bit of baby sitting, bar work at the local tavern, stacking shelves on the night shift at Tescos you might think.

Not a bit of it…they are running large scale corporate enterprises whilst at the same time carrying out their duties at the BBC….at least you would hope so.

Commons to probe BBC second jobs: Fury over the £270,000-a-year corporate boss who somehow found the time to set up a coffee chain

But all that makes reporting and challenging something like this rather difficult for any BBC journo when taking to task a politician for the same doubling up of jobs.

Labour has called for a ban on MPs holding paid directorships and consultancies during an opposition debate – but the government dismissed the party’s motion as “chaff”.

Shadow Cabinet Office minister Jon Trickett said there should be no doubt in the public’s mind that MPs are there to serve them, “and not diverted into defending their own private personal interests”.

 You might remember this from a while back: 

The BBC executive responsible for an IT debacle which has ‘wasted’ more than £100 million of licence fee-payers’ money has been allowed to hold down a second job while working for the corporation.

John Linwood, currently suspended from his £280,000-a-year post as BBC head of technology, became a non executive director of a private technology firm called DRS in January last year. He was paid £28,000 by the firm in 2012.

Sure he never took his eye off the ball once.

Nothing new of course to the BBC’s double standards and conflicts of interest when their own chaotic management suddenly finds itself in the spot light and held up for comparison to the very thing they have been castigating for example on the Today programme…such as government employees being paid as private companies with all the possible tax advantages that might have…only to find that the BBC had forced its own stars to use exactly the same format…but of course the BBC insisted there were absolutely no tax benefits for its staff….which makes you wonder what all the fuss was about then…from the very same BBC.

 Just hope the new coffee chain enterprise, ‘Here’,  pays its corporate taxes.

Perhaps the BBCers can get some tips from their colleagues at the Guardian on how to run a coffee based enterprise:

Oh…perhaps not as Guido tells us:

At the time of going to pixel, before Guardian Coffee sadly removed their data infographic from the internet, on their big opening day they had sold just 60 coffees. Another Guardian financial success…

They came from fort William, with murder in mind,
the Campbell had orders, King William had signed,
put all to the sword, these words underlined,
leave no one alive called MacDonald.

In 1692 the Campbells, in cahoots with the English, set upon the MacDonald clan in an attempt to massacre them in an infamous moment in Scottish history….a ‘murder under trust’.

Thirty eight men were slaughtered and forty women and children died of exposure when their homes were burnt to the ground.

Nicky Campbell likes to remind us of past infamy and point the finger of blame however unjustly.

On Friday Campbell was discussing the arms trade (25 mins ) and had on Labour MP Fabian Hamilton who wanted to stop all arms exports.

Campbell suggested a cunning plan:

‘Would you like to do to the arms industry what people say Mrs Thatcher did to the coal mining industry, would you like to phase it out and close it down?’

 It’s a small but significant comment, a telling comment, that illustrates the mindset of many of those inside the BBC bubble.

Hard to know how such a highly educated, intelligent and scrupulously fair minded journalist, backed by the extensive resources of the BBC, and Google, could make such a schoolboy error….in 1990 there were still 50,000 miners toiling down pit.

The ‘Untold history’ indeed.

We all know that Labour has closed more mines that Thatcher ever did and put more miners on the dole than she did:

Wilson closed more coal mines than Thatcher

“…there is the charge that it was Margaret Thatcher who ‘destroyed’ the coal mines and the mining communities. How many times have the BBC broadcast that claim without refutation? Yet the facts show that far more coal mines closed under the Labour prime ministers Harold Wilson and James Callaghan.”

(However many times you can add one more thanks to Campbell.)

Perhaps Campbell utilised the data mining services of ‘Left Foot Forward’ who tell us that:

Tory spin on coal masks fact that 80 per cent of coal jobs were lost under Thatcher

 The historical data shows that while 212,000 coal mining jobs were lost under the 1964-1970 Labour Government, under Mrs. Thatcher’s 1979-1990 government, the percentage decline in jobs was actually double that.

43 per cent of mining jobs went in the 1960s under Wilson while 80 per cent were lost under Thatcher.

That’s perfectly true….but..

Unfortunately when there is a change from hard figures to percentages you know you are being sold a pup.

Under Thatcher 193,000 miners found themselves without work…..that’s less than 212,000 by anyone’s reckoning…and all for ‘the good and safety of the country’.

Not only that but under New Labour 60% of miners lost their jobs….8,000 of the remaining 14,000 left in 1997.

The MacDonald’s were ‘murdered under trust’  by the Campbell’s,  and Campbell has murdered the truth under the aegis of the BBC Trust…as do his fellow BBC journalists who like to propagate this anti-Thatcher propaganda whenever they get the chance.

Ironic that in the aftermath of the Glencoe Massacre it was ‘campaigning journalism’ that resulted in an official inquiry about events which were sensationally publicised and became part of the politics of the time.

However it’s not all bad for the Campbells…..‘just think for a moment of the great gifts our clan has bestowed upon the universe – Glen Campbell’s Rhinestone Cowboy; Naomi Campbell’s beauty and diamonds; Ming Campbell’s sprints and liberalism; Sir Malcolm Campbell’s land-speed records; Campbell’s soup; and Alastair Campbell’s spin-doctoring.

The name Campbell is derived from combining two Gaelic words – Cam, meaning crooked and Beul meaning mouth. Which possibly explains why Alastair became such a fine modern exponent of the dark arts of – but sadly not even he could put a positive spin on the name.

History has judged us and I don’t suppose that all the soup in the whole world will redeem it.’

You are hereby ordered to fall upon the rebels, the McDonalds of Glenco, and put all to the sword under seventy. You are to have a special care that the old Fox and his sons doe upon no account escape your hands, you are to secure all the avenues that no man escape. This you are to putt in execution at fyve of the clock precisely; and by that time, or very shortly after it, I’ll strive to be att you with a stronger party: if I doe not come to you att fyve, you are not to tarry for me, but to fall on. This is by the Kings speciall command, for the good & safety of the Country, that these miscreants be cutt off root and branch. See that this be putt in execution without feud or favour, else you may expect to be dealt with as one not true to King nor Government, nor a man fitt to carry Commissione in the Kings service. Expecting you will not faill in the fulfilling hereof, as you love your selfe, I subscribe these with my hand  att Balicholis  Feb: 12, 1692

For their Majesties service

To Capt. Robert Campbell

of Glenlyon
(signed) R. Duncanson

The UN’s Special Rapporteur on adequate housing landed on our shores recently.

The BBC seemed to take her seriously.  No mention of her loony, animal sacrificing, hard core Marxist, witch doctoring proclivities though.

Just as well that we have Guido Fawkes to bring us the low down on her.….not to mention the Daily Mail:

Raquel Rolnik: A dabbler in witchcraft who offered an animal sacrifice to Marx

Couple of questions the BBC might like to ask, apart from what are her own politics?….

First who asked her to bring her unique skills to this country and pronounce on the political process here?

It seems that it might have been the Unions…GMB and Unison seem to be in the frame, amongst others….no doubt the Labour Party were ‘kept informed’ of developments.

It is clear that this was part of the political fight and that she must knowingly have supported that fight…as the video from Guido shows….in which she is talking at an ‘Axe The Bedroom Tax’ meeting.

Second, what exactly does the UN say about ‘adequate housing’ provision?

The BBC tells us that…

The UK is a signatory to a number of international treaties which protect the right to adequate housing and non-discrimination.

Hardly informative…doesn’t give you the full picture of exactly what the UN requires a government to do….if it did you might start to question the UN’s role…and possibly the BBC doesn’t want to encourage that sort of independent thinking and questioning of authority…left wing type authority anyway.

So let’s hear it from the horse’s mouth….

The obligation to recognize the human right dimensions of housing and to ensure that no measures are taken with the intention of eroding the legal status of this right.

As defined by the first Special Rapporteur, “the human right to adequate housing is the right of every woman, man, youth and child to gain and sustain a safe and secure home and community in which to live in peace and dignity”.

This definition is in line with the core elements of the right to adequate housing as defined by General Comment No. 4 of the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

According to the Committee, while adequacy is determined in part by social, economic, cultural, climatic, ecological and other factors, it is nevertheless possible to identify certain aspects of the right that must be taken into account for this purpose in any particular context. They include the following: a) Legal security of tenure; b) Availability of services, materials, facilities and infrastructure; c) Affordability; d) Habitability; e) Accessibility; f) Location; and g) Cultural adequacy.

The obligation imposed by the UN seems to be almost regardless of finanacial considerations…and indeed suggests that in time of economic hardship even more be spent on housing.

The obligation of States is to demonstrate that, in aggregate, the measures being taken are sufficient to realize the right to adequate housing for every individual in the shortest possible time using the maximum available resources.

This obligation “to achieve progressively” must be read in the light of article 11.1 of the Covenant, in particular the reference to the right to the “continuous improvement of living conditions”. The obligation of progressive realization, moreover, exists independently of any increase in resources. Above all, it requires effective use of resources available.

The UN’s demands seem based upon a utopian wish list that barely recognises the realities of the real world.  They are amorphous and unlimited in scope…they are so open to interpretation that any government would be committed to housing anybody and everybody who turns up demanding a house…and not just a house…but the right to ‘security, peace and dignity’….and all at a price they can afford….and if that isn’t sufficient the government must ensure that people being housed also have the full enjoyment of other rights such as the right to freedom of expression and association…. ‘indispensable if the right to adequate housing is to be realized and maintained by all groups in society.’

Individuals, as well as families, are entitled to adequate housing regardless of age, economic status, group or other affiliation or status and other such factors.

In the Committee’s view, the right to housing should not be interpreted in a narrow or restrictive sense which equates it with, for example, the shelter provided by merely having a roof over one’s head or views shelter exclusively as a commodity. Rather it should be seen as the right to live somewhere in security, peace and dignity.

 “Adequate shelter means … adequate privacy, adequate space, adequate security, adequate lighting and ventilation, adequate basic infrastructure and adequate location with regard to work and basic facilities – all at a reasonable cost”.

Those ‘vulnerable and disadvadvantaged’ who need the UN’s help include…..

‘…in particular, homeless persons and families, those inadequately housed and without ready access to basic amenities, those living in “illegal” settlements, those subject to forced evictions and low-income groups.’

Reading the UN’s ‘Rights’ you come to the conclusion they are very worthy but unworkable being so open to interpretation and making such open ended demands of any government.

It would seem anybody could demand to be housed by the government as a ‘human right’ under this  ‘Right’ and if there was no housing in a particular location, say near to someone’s job, the government would have to build it….‘adequate location with regard to work and basic facilities’….and be forced to provide provision for those in ‘illegal settlements’….so all those travellers or the numerous Romanians sleeping rough in London would have to be housed on demand….and presumably any other immigrant to this country who just strolls in legal or not.

All sounds pretty sensible and reasonable to me.

Can see why the BBC might not want to dig too deeply into that…might make people question the UN, and why an unelected body can interfere so radically with the internal politics and economic running of a country, overturning the legal, and approved by Parliament, policies of a sovereign government…and why any government would sign up to such overbearing and intrusive legislation especially if it can seemingly be imposed by the ruling of one, highly partisan, person who seems to have invited herself into the country and pronounced judgment based on a few days roaming around the UK whilst having her hand held by campaign groups opposed to the government’s housing policy.

Finally from 1944 and the first inklings of what the UN might look like are suggested…by newspaper editor Cecil H King:

As a result of the conference at Dumbarton Oaks, a tentative scheme has been put forwrd for a world security organization.  It is very like the old League of Nations and quite clearly won’t work.  There are to be five permanent members of the Executive Council: Russia, America and Britain, together with China and France!  The first clause of the proposals records the sovereign freedom and independence of every state represented in the new league.  This means that we go on record with the statement that Nicaragua and Russia are equally free, independent, sovereign states.  This is mischievous rubbish.  The fiction that France is one of the world’s great powers and that Germany and Japan are not, is another obvious source of trouble.  The Russians, moreover, are insisting on the right of veto in any case involving sanctions.  If ever there was a stillborn scheme, this is it.

Can’t say he was wrong…..Russia is proving to be the exact thorn in the side that King predicted and the UN a toothless, ineffective, corrupt body….Though Sheila Fogarty claimed that Russia was only interested in ensuring the survival of the UN security council as a bulwark for peace….no mention of its own extensive interests in the survival of the Syrian regime.

More than a century ago, British engineers and their African and Indian labourers spent five years carving a railway through what would become Kenya in a bid to open up East Africa’s interior.

Not everyone was convinced and the radical MP Henry Labouchere denounced it memorably:

“Where it is going, nobody knows, what is the use of it, none can conjecture … It is clearly naught but a lunatic line.”

When the HS2 train was first announced it seemed that the BBC were all in favour if it….perhaps the thought of keeping their London pads whilst commuting up to Salford swayed their initial opinions.

Of late I get the impression that they take a more measured approach to the scheme, if anything a more sceptical tone overall.

It would be nice to have some figures though and some deeper analysis of the costs and benefits of HS2…for instance I have heard a lot recently about the government’s new claim that the train will bring in £15 billion per year…and will pay for itself in no time at all.

What’s missing is any scrutiny of those claims….at least when I’ve been listening…just how do those figures stand up to close inspection?  The BBC is keen to ‘do the maths’ when it feels the need….say over immigration or crime stats.

On such a controversial and highly expensive project, in an industry renowned for never making  a profit and high public subsidies even though privatised, I would expect a far more rigorous and detailed approach from the BBC.

Just for some light enterainment here is a story from the Telegraph about the last ‘Lunatic Express’ built by Britain in Africa (and of course ‘massively over budget’) and now being rebuilt by China for £3.2 billion….and that includes the price of a couple of hydro-electric schemes and other infrastructure development projects:

China moves in to rebuild Kenya’s lunatic line

The Chinese are exploiting the rift between Britain and Kenya to revamp a delapidated colonial railway nework, reports Mike Pflanz

Stephaine Flanders said this about George Osborne’s recent speech about the state of the economy:

“The chancellor isn’t declaring victory on the recovery just yet – he’s too careful for that. But he is declaring victory over Ed Balls”

The BBC report on the speech opened with these words:

The UK economy is “turning a corner”, Chancellor George Osborne has said in a speech in London.

Mr Osborne cited “tentative signs of a balanced, broad based and sustainable recovery”, but stressed it was still the “early stages” and “plenty of risks” remained.

Mr Osborne said that recent months – which have seen more upbeat reports on the economy – had “decisively ended” questions about his economic policy.

From that you can infer that Osborne didn’t say that the economic crisis is over, merely that the economy has started to recover, it is still a long term project and that many risks remain…but that the one solid conclusion you can draw is that his ‘Plan A’ has worked.

Osborne tells us that industry and productivity are being supported and encouraged for long term sustainable development and growth:

‘…as I said right at the start, in the long term, the only sustainable way to raise living standards is to raise productivity by tackling the underlying structural weaknesses in our economy that were exposed by the crisis……..

Our corporate tax system is now amongst the most competitive in the world, with companies that left the UK now bringing investment back home.

A new industrial strategy is finally providing the long term stability and leadership that is needed in so many sectors such as aerospace, automotive, agri-tech and bio-science.

And British science is scaling new heights with its budget protected for the future and rising capital investment in new facilities.’

All of which makes you wonder what speech John Humphrys was listening to as a basis for challenging Vince Cable who in a recent statement said pretty much the same things as Osborne but Humphrys interpreted the comments as an attack on Osborne.

Cable said this:

‘We can’t rest on our laurels. The kind of growth we want won’t simply emerge of its own volition. In fact, I see a number of dangers. One is complacency, generated by a few quarters of good economic data….It isn’t difficult to see evidence of confidence returning, and there are positive trends in production. Taken together with success stories like the car industry and export growth in emerging markets, we have the beginnings of a recovery story.

‘But there are risks, not least the housing market getting out of control. Recovery will not be meaningful until we see strong and sustained business investment.’

He said we are at the beginning of a recovery, so did Osborne, he said there are many risks still, so did Osborne, he said we shouldn’t take things for granted and become complacent….so did Osborne….

‘So the evidence suggests tentative signs of a balanced, broad based and sustainable recovery, but we cannot take this for granted.’

So why did Humphrys say  (08:11) this speech was ‘Not a message that George Osborne would want to hear…you’re  raining on his parade’?

Cable replied that Osborne had ‘Got the tone exactly right’  and that the comment about complacency was in regard to some in the Media especially.

Humphrys then questioned the ‘Recovery will not be meaningful until we see strong and sustained business investment’  comment suggesting that this meant the recovery was not a recovery in reality.

But Osborne said the same thing….the recovery is showing tentative signs of starting…and many risks remain….it is a long term programme to get the econoimy back in shape….and includes measures to help industry improve…just as Cable suggests.

Failing to make much headway with taht line of attack Humphrys then switched tack and tried to suggest this was a political stance, electioneering in effect, by Cable to put clear blue water between the Conservatives and the LibDems.

But if  Cable’s comments were in support of Osborne, which they were, that isn’t a correct analysis.

Humphrys seemed  to be working all too hard to make something out of Cable’s speech that wasn’t there and when he couldn’t succeed at that he tried a different approach…..which also didn’t hold water.

Altogether a waste of everyone’s time and yet another example of Humphrys believing the hype about his skill as an interviewer…those days are long gone in my opinion.

You can see from Flanders intepretation of Osborne’s speech that even she saw exactly what he menat….why couldn’t Humphrys?

A shame Humphrys didn’t feel the need to tackle Cable on his hypocrisy on housing, it could have been amush more prodcutive 5 minutes.

Cable has been praised on the BBC for his warnings about a ‘housing bubble’ being possibly caused by Osborne’s incentive schemes however just last year Cable said this in a speech about delivering growth whilst reducing the deficit:

There are now some interesting ideas out there for government guarantees that could trigger a significant volume of housing investment, replicating the recovery model of the 1930s and leading hopefully to a virtuous circle of new building lending to increased affordability and also increased private demand……

And like in the 1930s, there is no reason in principle why such innovative thinking should not be applied at a local level instead. There are already examples: some councils, Eastleigh, for example, use prudential borrowing powers – at negligible interest rates – to invest in projects with a commercial return.

So one year ago government schemes to encourage the housing market were a grand idea….what has changed?

Osborne says in reply to Cable’s self serving warning:

Some claim that Help to Buy will boost demand but not supply, but again the evidence suggests otherwise.

Not only are the government’s planning reforms already increasing the flow of new planning permissions, but the lack of mortgage availability at higher loan to value ratios has itself been one of the biggest factors holding back the supply of new housing.

That’s why a report last week by former MPC member Charles Goodhart, now at Morgan Stanley, estimated that Help to Buy could increase housing starts by more than 30% between 2012 and 2015.

As the BBC shoots itself in the foot again and again, pressure is mounting with questions about its governance, structure and funding being asked…again and again.

This from the Spectator:

How to save the BBC? Privatise it

A reckoning is long overdue. The BBC may not know the value of money, but those prosecuted for not paying its fines certainly do. Many of them struggle to make ends meet and would not dream of paying £145.50 for BBC services that they could happily go without. Sky now produces some of the best arts coverage in Britain. The market for drama is now global, and British living rooms are filled with American (and even Danish) DVD box sets.

The BBC can easily compete in such a market, its programmes have a global appeal. It could easily find people willing to pay to watch or listen. But if it wants to be tax-funded, it should restrict itself to a public service remit and focus on reducing the license fee — and the fancy salaries must go for good.

‘Is the BBC biased’ has come up with the ‘real politik’ analysis of just when the BBC will be privatised:

When Hell freezes over