What’s the US military doing in a remote corner of the Philippines? Kate McGeown’s gone to find out.(12mins 30 secs)

International terrorism brought the US troops to the islands….to advise and assist…‘and its clearly paying off’.

And  look, the Filipino Jollibee restaurant chain is opening up franchises….

‘The place is a bit safer now but also a bit more American too.’

Do I detect a bit of regret about that?

Gotta celebrate that diversity and cosmopolitan atmosphere generated by all those ‘foreign’ food restauraunts as in the UK where having Chinese, Indian, Thai, Pizza and US burger chains all add to the wonderful multi-cultural mix that is the UK.

Seems a little bit of doubt about that applying to American food chains in non Western countries perhaps?

Much as Western influences were polluting the pure and noble savages of Qatar where the BBC’s Razia Iqbal suggests:  ‘ ‘importing’ Western culture such as orchestras will dilute what it is to be Qatari’……only to be rebuffed with a dose of reality:  ‘No, we have opportunities now beyond our wildest dreams in education and business and in daily life.’

The Qatar Philharmonic was established in 2008, the first western symphony orchestra in a Gulf state, and just one of a number of institutions intended to demonstrate the country’s cultural ambitions.

Razia Iqbal visits Katar, the official cultural village of Doha, and talks to members of the orchestra, many of whom have been imported from Europe. And she interviews the country’s ‘culture queen’, Sheikha Mayassa Al-Thani, daughter of the Emir of Qatar.

No such concerns about diluting British culture and what it is to be British from the BBC.

The Guardinianista’s are up in arms about the Sun’s frontpage:

But not too bothered about the Star:

The Guardian’s Paul Harris though is most upset to see similar frontpages in New York and says:

‘But after having read about the scandal in the UK, what I was not expecting to see as I walked to work in New York was the same offence repeated in New York’s daily newspapers – and, apparently, not a word of anger about it.’

Possibly the lack of interest in the Star’s frontpage and the American’s lack of outrage is connected…neither are related to Murdoch or News International….that is purely a BBC, Guardian and Fellow Traveller’s bête noire…no one else is really interested.

The Guardian itself seems entirely unconcerned about the Hard Left Mirror’s frontpage which seesm even more in bad taste….almost celebrating guns, being titled ‘BladeGunner’:

At least someone else noticed:

Andrew Bloch ‏@AndrewBloch

Blimey! Daily Mirror front page… “Blade Gunner” pic.twitter.com/fQmieHuE

The BBC itself is happy to use a not too dissimilar in style photo in their write up:

‘There is no living musician who has been more influential than Bob Dylan.’

So he must have something worthwhile to say….

“I realized at the time that the press, the media, they’re not the judge – God’s the judge,” says Dylan. “The only person you have to think about lying twice to is either yourself or to God. The press isn’t either of them. And I just figured they’re irrelevant.”

Yeah.

Kind of puts Billy Bragg in perspective….

Speaking of whom….The Picket Line Poet strikes again…As DV noticed, Billy Bragg has been putting in another appearance on R4.…anymore and he might as well be put on the payroll.

Now…there’s an idea…the BBC want an authentic working class tinge to their output….who better than Billy boy?   Make sure there’s somewhere for his whippet and pigeons  in the studio,  a spittoon, and nurse on standby…these working class heroes have had such a hard life they might just keel over from the stress at any moment. Gor blimey guvn’r.

Isn’t it an incongruous paradox that it is a lefty boot boy who is the über middle class R4’s favourite pet….do they have him like some form of performing monkey wheeling him in for a bit of amusement…..ever seen Trading Places?  Are they all laughing at him really whilst at the same time somehow horrified?

Looking for ‘bias’ on R4 on a Saturday morning is like shooting fish in a barrel…almost too easy to be worth the effort….but this morning had such a rich vein of worthy codswallop you’ve just gotta have a go….the Reverend Cole, Billy Bragg, Peter Oborne and FOOC…deep joy.

Bragg  is just beyond parody, more Bob Hope than Bob Dylan….a living cartoon stereotype of a corny old act dragged in from the 70’s and 80’s.  The simple trite leftwing tripe that he spouts, the soundbite slogans, the thoughtless makebelieve signifying nothing that trips off his tongue…..all no doubt just the right size to fit on a student placard….ironically it’s probably those very middle class students that he despises so much who paid Bragg’s mortgage.

Bragg thinks you shouldn’t be allowed to succeed however good you are, however popular…if you’re not working class…..ironic for this man who espouses equality he wants success handed on a plate to those from the council estate….hardly ‘authentic’.

Just wonder how many of these artists, groups and bands are from the 6percenters?  Not  many I’ll bet.

I don’t suppose Bob Dylan is working class, certainly not in attitude, and he went to university…..would Bragg allow him to be a success?…has he earned the right?

‘There is no living musician who has been more influential than Bob Dylan.’

I heard that said on the BBC recently as well…so it must be true.

What does Bob think about ‘authenticity’ and ‘roots’?……

“You’re born, you know, the wrong names, wrong parents. I mean, that happens. You call yourself what you want to call yourself. This is the land of the free.”

Ah….so no matter what your ‘birth’ you’ve still got a right to have a go?

So what made Dylan different? What pushed him out there?

“I listened to the radio a lot. I hung out in the record stores. And I slam-banged around on the guitar and played the piano and learned songs from a world which didn’t exist around me,” says Dylan.

He says that he knew even then that he was destined to become a music legend. “I was heading for the fantastic lights,” he writes. “Destiny was looking right at me and nobody else.”

So hard work and self belief and a bit of luck no doubt.  The secret of success….not a Billy Bragg quota system.

What really amused me was Braggs assertion that what you get when you have ‘Markets’ is ‘horsemeat’.  When you have ‘Bragg’ you get ‘hogwash’.

Horsemeat?  Tell that to the Chinese, they‘d have killed for some horse meat…they know what State controlled enterprise really means…..and it didn’t mean a land of bread and honey…it meant being treated like horses, workhorses….and having to eat grass to survive…before turning to cannibalism,  finally succumbing to starvation…just like the millions in the Socialist haven of Soviet Russia…never mind the marvels of the Socialist Republic of North Korea.

Yes, State control.  Stuff that nightmares are made of.  Never mind Billy you keep sweating away banging out the tunes for the Brothers and Sisters oppressed by Capitalism.  I’m sure you’re making a difference.  Meanwhile they’re off to Magaluf on  cheap RyanAir flights, knocking back the booze and dancing to the beat of those middleclass minstrels you so love to hate.  Stuff their grandparents could only dream of in austere, rationed 1950’s Britain before Capitalism was spread to the masses.

Hilariously Labour’s Frank Dobson turned up on ‘Week in Westminster’  interviewed by Peter Oborne (22 mins 30 sec) chatting about ‘Capitalism in Crisis’…no not banking…but horsemeat in your burger following on from Bragg.

Strange how this bloke who also spoke of the whistleblowers in the NHS and boasted here of having put in legislation to allow ‘whilstleblowing’ didn’t seem too keen to boast about Labour’s record running the Stafford Hospital.

If a few traces of horse meat in a burger is a crisis in capitalism…what’s a few thousand deaths in state run hospitals Franky baby?

I can’t understand why you don’t want to talk about it…not want to blow the whistle Frank old son?

The BBC have made no effort at all to take to task the Labour politicians at the heart of that genuine crisis….they do however seem keen to lay some blame at the Tory led Coalition’s feet…despite them coming to power long after these events.

Oborne interviewing Dobson raises the subject of politicians dodging the Stafford scandal but allows Dobson to sidestep it as he put the blame on the Media and then told a joke about the horsemeat scandal.

Ironic that when given the chance to tackle Dobson, a former Labour Health Secretary, Oborne ducks out of the fight as he seems pretty keen to nail them in this Telegraph column:

‘At any given moment, there exists at least one delicate subject that all mainstream political parties would much rather not discuss.
Now the subject which nobody wants to talk about is the National Health Service. It is just over a week since the publication of the Francis report into Stafford hospital, where some 1,200 patients died in appalling circumstances. Had any other institution been involved in a scandal on this scale, the consequences would have been momentous: sackings, arrests and prosecutions.‘

Guess Dobson might be right…the Media seem to lack the will or the backbone to target the real culprits…the politicians who like to take the credit but dodge the blame when things go wrong on their watch….and it’s not as if Oborne doesn’t know that Dobson was dodging the bullet and diverting attention with his joke as he finished his article with this:

‘Psychologists would call the events of the last week “transference”. And if British politicians (of all parties) carry on changing the subject, the more certain it is that there will be fresh Staffords to come.’

Pretty clear and damning…and yet….

NHS boss Gary Walker was ‘gagged’ by the NHS from talking about the circumstances of his dismissal from his job….but the BBC are on the trail of the Department of Health and the responsible Minister as they may have known about the ‘gagging order’ in 2010.

The BBC are not bothered about the mass deaths of patients under Labour…but are about the horrible unfairness of a man paid £500,000 to keep schtumm….

Walker made this statement:
“I don’t think it’s simply about the Lincolnshire Trust,” he added, calling for Mr Hunt to investigate the “chain of command” that led to the gagging, which he said included the Department of Health, the East Midlands Strategic Health Authority (SHA) and the Lincolnshire Trust.
“I don’t think Mr Hunt can investigate his own department so I think he should be looking for someone exceptionally independent from all of this.”

And the BBC have latched on to the part about investigating the Department of Health….as  you listened during the day that part of the story was highlighted increasingly by the BBC.  It is certain to be  a major line in any interviews to come…much like the new line that is growing like topsy about horsemeat in burgers….that it is yet another attack on the poorest in society by an uncaring Capitalism.  Another soundbite that Labour politicians and their fellow travellers are increasingly splashing vigorously around like Holy Water on a vampire.

So how ironic…BBC gear up for attack on Tories for a supposed ‘cover up’ after the event but fail entirely to tackle the real villains…Labour who for years ignored the scandalous and deadly lack of care.

BBC Bias…maybe I should write a song about that!

Harry’s Place explains it all:

Lone voices against Terror

…expanding on Nick Cohen’s piece in The Spectator:

‘British Asian feminists and their supporters had gathered to launch the Centre for Secular Space an organisation whose work I would say is close to essential. It is not fashionable, however, because its focus is the collusion between the Anglo-American left and the Islamist right, which has betrayed so many Muslims and ex-Muslims, most notably Muslim and ex-Muslim women.

The failure of Britain’s liberal establishment and white left to combat reactionary religion, or even call it by its real name, stuns them.

All emphasized how many in the British state and British left were racists hiding behind liberal masks.

This would be bad enough if we did not see from the far Left way into the liberal mainstream supposed progressives allying with clerical reactionaries and clerical fascists. They ignore the victims of theocracy and accept their oppression.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch look with horror on those who speak out about murder, mutilation and oppression if the murderers, mutilators and oppressors do not fit into their script. The Guardian, New Statesman and BBC turn away with embarrassed coughs. The police want to keep the natives of the East End quiet by cooperating with Islamic Forum Europe. Although Labour ministers, particularly Labour women ministers, tried to speak out against the double standards during the last government, the policy of the Labour establishment has been to do nothing to upset the ethnic block vote.

I hope you could hear a lot more in that vein. The trouble is that because the Centre for Secular Space argues against our shifty consensus it has no money. They need everything from computers to wages for secretaries. If you can help at all, even by giving them an old laptop, please contact them via the link here‘

The BBC is one of those who remain silent in the face of Islamic violence and threats.  Worse it often makes excuses for that violence.

One day, BBC,  they will come for you…and who will be there to speak out for you?

Thirteen years of Labour mis-government have been airbrushed from history by the BBC just like the Medieval Warm Period.

We once had a Labour Prime Minister called Tony Blair and a Chancellor named Gordon Brown, who went on to become Prime Minister himself.

If you only get your news from the BBC that all might come as a bit of a shock.

Today all that changed.  The archives have been rifled and dusted down, the story fixed and the tone set right.

We are now offically allowed to hear about Blair and Brown and even that they made the odd mistake….all in the best possible interest of the country naturally.

How so?  What has changed?

Well for a start the BBC has a new/old recruit dragged in through the BBC’s revolving door that connects it directly to Labour Party HQ as ex Labour MP James Purnell is given the job of Director of Strategy at the BBC….but it’s OK….he quit his Labour government job in disgust at Gordon Brown’s policies.

What’s the strategy?  Get the Labour Party elected naturally.  I joke.

The BBC clearly have to now mention Brown and his misdemeanours and Purnell’s antipathy towards Brown so that their ‘new boy’  is cleared of any likely charge of bias….a good try…unlikely to succeed.

Secondly Ed Miliband has relaunched, rebranded and rebooted his Party with a little ‘mea culpa’…..Brown got it wrong on taxes and abandoned the working class.

“We would put right the mistake made by Gordon Brown and the last Labour government.”

The BBC has to again mention Brown and his little errors of judgement, just enough for Miliband to apologise and then promise it will all be so different under a  new Labour…no that’s been done hasn’t it?  It’s good old Old Labour under Red Ed.  Back to the future, with lessons learned, fingers burned.

Two mentions of Gordon Brown in one day on the BBC….with the BBC you know you really are history once they start airbrushing you back into the picture.

In ‘In Our Time’ Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss ice ages, periods when a reduction in the surface temperature of the Earth has resulted in ice sheets at the Poles.

Melvyn Bragg has the decency to be seemingly embarrassed during this programme, presumably forced upon him….yet another global warming ‘persuader’ moulded to bring us into the fold….it was always clear where it was going to end up…and sure as snowballs will melt in the burning hell of a CO2 polluted world the final words were ‘We’re doomed’.

Having said that listen to the programme and I doubt you will be at all convinced by it that global warming is a man made threat….never mind Bragg saying that warming benefitted mankind…but ‘we’d  better park that idea.‘  Why?  Wasn’t it in the script?

There clearly was a script..not just the usual one to guide the drift of a debate to search into all corners of a subject…this one was definitely heading in one direction only…however not even the guests seemed convinced.

For instance they kept revealing information that seemed at odds with the global warming story….the history of the earth is that for only 15% of its existence has it been covered in ice…the other 85% it has been in a ‘Greenhouse’ state.

We were told that the Antarctic became frozen as the continents drifted away from it and the vast expanse of sea meant that it became colder…..the narrative of that was interrupted by a second guest who said ‘Remember that CO2 is driving this of course’…..‘Oh yes‘ said the narrator, ‘CO2 of course…yes it drives this’.

Convincing?  Not at all.  Was someone off script?

What else?  Oh yes…CO2 levels have been 12 times higher than at present and the greenhouse state is the normal one for the planet.

At the end of the programme the BBC, after 40 or so minutes of interesting stuff about ice ages, decides that’s enough of that….whatever you the listener has concluded yourself you’re going to be given the summary of what you really should be thinking…whether it really embodies the content of the programme or not….and of course that conclusion is…‘We’re doomed’.

Despite my scepticism, about the BBC motive, it’s very worth a listen in its own right if you have the time.

The BBC used to mock Prince Charles for talking to his plants…now they have recruited him to chat to us, to persuade us that we are doomed by global warming unless we change our behaviour….we all know his views….and if you don’t here’s a clue:

The BBC presumably thinks we are rather plantlike…mushrooms maybe?

The BBC’s Countryfile has 7 million viewers allegedly…so a vast potential recruiting pool for green propagandists that is not to be wasted. Prince Charles has agreed to be guest editor for the 25th anniversary show.

The Prince of Wales is to guest edit a special edition of the BBC One flagship Countryfile programme as part of its 25th anniversary celebrations.

Charles will talk about his passion for the countryside in interviews with Countryfile presenters Julia Bradbury and Matt Baker and will also explain his choices for the special edition of the weekly rural affairs programme.

The final shot?  An earnest Charlie leaning on his stick telling us how important the environment is and that we must become ‘one’ with the environment to save the Planet from certain catastrophy.

OK…obviously the show hasn’t gone out yet…but any bets I’m wrong about the content and the final ‘wrap’? …and the BBC’s reasons for having him front their show piece propaganda?

You can always tell what the BBC line is on any subject by seeing what they don’t report and of course what they do carefully select to highlight.

Bishop Hill has noticed this:

‘….the comments of Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England at the launch of the Bank’s quarterly inflation report. Environmental policies it seems are an “own-goal”.

Sir Mervyn blamed the Government for the overshoot, claiming that the Coalition had scored an “own goal” by damaging household incomes with a range of environmental and education policies that have pushed up energy bills and tuition fees.

He said: “It’s a bit of an own goal as it looks as if inflation is worse without any change in the underlying behaviour of the economy. And clearly the attempt to put up prices charged by utilities – to pay for green charges, green policies – are pushing up administered prices in a way that [is] … self inflicted in terms of damage done to real take home pay.”

 

The BBC miss out the ‘environmental costs of green policies’ paragraph and skip to the next one, happy to highlight the government scoring an ‘own goal’ for its economic policies reducing take home pay:

‘Own goal’

Sir Mervyn said that factors outside of the Bank’s control – increases in university tuition fees and utility bills – had added to inflation recently.

“If you like, it is a bit of a self-inflicted goal in terms of the damage done to real take-home pay, perhaps another way of trying to implement fiscal consolidation through moving up the price level,” he said.

 

 

And whilst reporting this:

Although economic output has been broadly flat for the past two years, Sir Mervyn said that masked “a more encouraging underlying picture”.

Manufacturing and services – which make up the bulk of the economy – had grown during 2012, seeing a similar performance to that in the US and considerably stronger than in Japan and the eurozone, he said.

 

They do not give the figures…which say that growth for 2012 was 1.2%….just below the US 1.5%….despite its massive stimulus, Labour like Plan B, spending!

I imagine they prefer you to think along the lines of a measily 0.3% or some such figure…they certainly aren’t going to give the government an inch on good news.

 

Curious what catches the eye of a BBC journalist.  And what gets suppressed.  The massive inflation in fuel prices cause by green policy is surely something of importance and something that should be discussed.   But that would rasie all sorts of awkward questions not just about the ‘renewables’ policies but about the cause iof it as well…ie ‘global warming…man made or not?’  for instance.

 

I suggested in my last post that the BBC has given up on promoting Labour’s Plan B as its main line of attack and has now targeted unemployment, long term youth unemployment in particular as a government weak point on which it can be undermined.

Just clicked on ‘People Like Us’ on the iPlayer only for a different programme to appear…  one called ‘Freespeech’ presented by a bearded Nicky Campbell apprentice.  (Probably disappear by the time you read this but no doubt ‘Freespeech’ will have its own spot on the iPlayer later…yep….here’s actual programme link)

First subject of this first programme….youth unemployment….‘call them shirkers call them strivers….long term youth unemployment is continuing to cause concern…tripling since 2010.’

We get the message.

A trendy yoof version of Question time…nothing to do with free speech….the panellists are what you would expect the BBC to round up…a Muslim woman (a Tory candidate and knicker entrepreneur…but she never herself admits, see here also, to being Muslim…but she is…BBC subtly trying to alter your perceptions of what being ‘Muslim’ means?),  a socialist, a yoof journalist and to  be fair, the trendiest Tory MP they could find, David Morris ex musician and hairdresser (Straight).

If it was truly freespeech it would be on absolutely any subject and the only voices we would hear would be the Public’s and not a panel chosen by the BBC for their very obvious political or social/cultural  adopted positions.

A film made by a non-political, non professional person, given time to expand their ideas and thoughts and explore all the issues from their point of view would be freespeech…to have everything stage managed and choreographed in the usual BBC manner is anything but freespeech.

The BBC sets the boundaries for what can be said…limiting the subject, choosing the panel of people to speak and then having the power to edit anything they don’t think ‘fits’ with the narrative.

As Chomsky said:
‘The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.’

You think they’re listening and taking note….they’re not.

The BBC has failed to persuade the Public that Labour were not responsible for the economic crash…and they have not been able to persuade the Public that Labour’s Plan B is the answer.

Flanders admits as much:

‘…if you ask business leaders, or most economists, which government decisions taken over the next few years will have the biggest long-term impact on our economic future, I’m not sure that Plan A versus Plan B would even make it to the top three.’

So why has she spent so much time lecturing us on the merits or otherwise of both?

The BBC has come up with a new plan……concentrate on unemployment, especially youth unemployment, long term youth unemployment, attempt to undermine the upwardly surging employment figures, and incite ‘generational conflict’….attacking the ‘baby boomer’ generation for apparently being greedy, robbing the future leaving nothing for the kids.

As they seem to have given up on Plan B and on persuadng us that Plan A is failing perhaps that explains why the BBC has unusually ignored a strong attack on George Osborne’s policies.…and one that came from inside the Tory Party itself…reading it you might understand why the BBC ignored it….as it pillories Osborne for essentially continuing Labour’s own failed policies when in government:

Douglas Carswell, Conservative MP for Clacton, 08 Feb 2013

Yep, you can see why the BBC ignored that.

But they also ignored this which slams Labour’s research and development funding which should help drive the fabled Growth:

‘The lack of taxpayer support over the past decade may have “eroded” Britain’s competitive edge, given that R&D capital is seen as one of the major drivers of economic productivity, the OECD said.
The study, based on spending figures from 2008-9, shows the UK ranks last for funding support out of all 27 OECD countries, including America, France and Germany. The OECD said the decline in R&D spending in Britain is largely “historical”. The share of R&D expenditure in output fell from around 2.2pc in 1985 to 1.8pc in 2010, with both public and business R&D contributing to the decrease. ‘

The BBC has continually ignored or played down good economic news whilst headlining the bad.

It has indulged in an unflagging attack on the ‘Tory led Coalition’  (TLC) cuts portraying them as if it was the German army sweeping across the Russian Steppes slashing and burning as they go….a scorched earth policy reducing everything to ruin.

There has been little reflection or perspective….for instance when Labour councils took the politically motivated choice of closing libraries because of ‘cuts’ did the BBC ever stop to ask how those libraries survived wars and depressions over the last century…and yet now, at a time when council resources are higher than ever, they are being closed?

The fact is that there is still a huge amount of spending going on…a huge amount of investment in infrastructure by government and councils…but you wouldn’t know it from the BBC’s coverage.

Then of course we get onto tax…..the poor are suffering so much worse than the richest in society….taking a bigger ‘hit’ in the recession than the wealthy.  Aren’t they?

The BBC ignored this:
Top 14 per cent of taxpayers pay 60 per cent of all tax .   Britain’s wealthy are expected to
pay 60 per cent of the money raised by the Treasury from income tax official figures have shown.
According to a report in The Sunday Times, the number of people liable for the 40 and 50 per cent tax rate has increased from 3.25 million in 2010-2011 to 4.13 million in the current financial year. Their share of the income tax burden has risen from 54.2 per cent in 2010-11 to 61.3 per cent in 2012-13. The wealthiest one per cent of taxpayers, nearly 300,000 people who earn more than £150,000 a year, are shouldering 26.5 per cent of the income tax burden.

Here’s a table which shows how much better off the lower income earners are now than under Labour, and how much more the rich are paying:

Check the statistics for yourself:

Income Tax statistics and distributions

Income tax liabilities by income range 2010-2013

Income tax liabilities by income range 1999-2010

Income tax liability by income range….1999-2008

Here is Flanders kicking off the new Plan X
Long-term thinking for the UK economy

Why do we spend so little time talking about what really matters?
That’s the question I once again asked myself, reading the final report of the London School of Economics’ Growth Commission.
Reading and listening to the political debate about UK economic policy, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the most important economic decisions the government makes are all fiscal: Will they or won’t they press ahead with Plan A, or Plan A-minus? How much, exactly, will it cut from welfare? And when?
Strategic failure
These are important short-term issues. They might have some impact on the recovery. And, of course, they are exciting politically, with lots of opportunity for the main parties to lay into one another…..But if you ask business leaders, or most economists, which government decisions taken over the next few years will have the biggest long-term impact on our economic future, I’m not sure that Plan A versus Plan B would even make it to the top three.
Far more important, to them, would be the kind of long-term strategic choices highlighted in the LSE’s report….infrastructure, planning and funding….To economists, all of these things probably matter more, to Britain’s economic future, than the short-term debate between Plan A and Plan B.
 
I’ve been speaking to one respected economist and policymaker who thinks I’ve forgotten one big way that short-term decisions on UK fiscal and monetary policy could affect the UK’s long-term economic health. That is through their effect on youth unemployment.

The authors of the report (and the secretary of state for work and pensions) would probably agree – one of the greatest investments that any government can make in its future workforce is to help get unemployed young people into work.

The BBC continue to downplay rising employment whilst highlighting youth unemployment as the worst….they totally ignore the fact that it was youth unemployment that fell the most in the last set of figures.

I heard the below as a 5Live broadcast….it was a 5Live ‘investigation’….that seemed to consist solely of having a few people ring in with their experiences….naturally there is no way of knowing just who these people were…especially as most refused to give their names.

The BBC classed such calls as ‘evidence’ and proceeded to attack government policy based mostly on that:
Work advisers ‘pushing jobless into self-employment’
By Hannah Barnes 5 live Investigates

It was part of the BBC’s desperate scramble to explain away the good news on the jobs front….the jobs aren’t real, they’re self employed but in odd jobs…or lower wages….lower productivity…so why are employers employing people?
They can’t explain it other than GDP figures must be wrong…but they can’t accept that.

Here the BBC stir up inter-generational strife and conflict:

Generational theft?
The argument that young people have never had it so bad

Rising wages and low house prices helped the baby boom generation to prosper. Today’s young face high unemployment, expensive education, and a lifetime of renting. Have they never had it so bad?
The question for today’s young might be, have they ever had it so bad?
There have been eras indisputably worse. A whole generation went to war in 1914 and 1939. There was the hunger and unemployment of the Great Depression. And child labour in Victorian times.
Today, for the first time, a person in their 80s has higher living standards than someone working in their 20s, the Financial Times reported in October 2012.
A student who started university in 2011 will graduate with average debts of £26,000 and bleak career prospects.
Despite austerity, the state pension has been bolstered, winter fuel payments are outside the reach of means testing, and free bus pass and TV licence retained for the elderly. At the same time the government has cut benefits in real terms and axed the Education Maintenance Allowance in England.
Pensioners have traditionally been portrayed as vulnerable or deserving. But it is time for a rethink,
It comes down to fairness, says James Sefton, professor of economics at Imperial College Business School, who has done economic forecasts at the Treasury. Government debt is stacking up for the young.
So why are the young not taking to the streets?
The generational squeeze hasn’t hit home yet, says Sefton. But it’s coming.

The reality of that is that Labour piled on massive future obligations on the young….to pay for its apparent largesse when in government…Gordon Brown borrowing massively to hand out jobs in the Public Sector, buying, he hoped, Labour voters, voters who didn’t think where the money is coming from to pay their wages and how their pensions will be funded when the time comes….and not forgetting all those PFI schemes that only later, when it is too late, do the bills start appearing for them… bankrupting the NHS…meanwhile Brown swans off around the world being praised for his ‘genius’ when he should be in prison.

That portrayal is so far from the truth by the BBC that it almost defies comment…the poorest of the young today are so much better off than 20 years ago…the life opportunities are so much wider and easier to attain…..the Internet has made setting up a business vastly easier, travel has never been cheaper, goods are extraordinarily cheap now, and no, tuition fees are not ‘debts’…..and it is a fact which the BBC quietly slipped out that more people applied to be students this year than last….despite the rise in fees….the opposite effect the BBC have constantly trumpeted.

As for housing the Smith Institute figures say that…to suggest that the norm is to be a house owner throughout recent British history is dishonest.

In 1918 home ownership was 23%, private rentals at 76% and public housing 1%.

Home ownership peaked in 2003 at 70% and has declined slightly since….In England in 2011 there was over 67% home ownership, 17% social renters, and 15% private renters.

That is still very high and a historically unusual figure for home ownership.  As the Smith Institute makes clear the numbers will go up and down…that is to be expected.

Those expectations of home ownership should be lowered to a realistic level…and not raised by the BBC to the level of a ‘Right’ that is being denied.

The BBC is uninterested in delving too deep into the real causes of the economic crash, and not too interested in the real solutions…nor in any good news that appears on the economic front…their sole aim is to make sure the economy is perceived as a basket case destroyed by Tory policies so that Labour get re-elected.

A Labour minister once said the below in an unattributed quote:

‘There is a rather excellent piece in the Sunday Times today about Brown and his constant lying on spending that is well worth a read. Most tellingly in it though is the following quote from an unnamed minister about the real driver behind the entirely stupid dividing “line of cuts vs ‘cuts’ as ‘investment'” :

‘We don’t care if the commentators or the economists turn against us… This is all about shoring up the base in the northern heart-lands, which we lost in the European elections. We don’t want or need them to understand the nuance of the argument. We just want them to hate the Tories again.” ‘

That’s the policy….make sure the voters hate the Tories.

The BBC’s very own Jeremy hardy agrees it’s a good policy:

‘The Tories have taken on human form, which is when they’re at their most dangerous…..Something weird is going on.  People don’t hate the Tories as much as they should. ‘