Fascinating watching the BBC at work as 4 of its finest tried to get to grips with the budget, sifting desperately through it in a frantic search for the big ‘un, the scoop that would blow Osborne away.
The best that they could come up with was that he had failed to meet his target of reducing debt as a proportion of GDP….Huw Edwards said sagely that this was ‘significant’. [at 3 hrs 16] unfortunately Paul Johnson from the IFS was in the studio and pulled the rug from under Edwards by saying it was ‘economically not signifcant at all’…Edwards looked chastened and rolled his eyes but recovered with a ‘I meant politically significant of course’...and all his workmates chimed in with a similar line to help him out of his embarrasment, and funnily enough the BBC’s Kamal Ahmed made no mention of its ‘insignificance’ in this report.
Odd that the BBC should now think this figure significant because last year they were dismissing this way of measuring debt out of hand telling us it was an Osborne trick to cover up a failure to lower the deficit.
Huw Edwards wound back the clock as he interviewed Matt Hancock and stated that it was wrong to continue with austerity when the world economy was so weak when instead the government should be stimulating the economy. Heard that before from the BBC…in fact we heard it everyday for 5 years…it was called Plan B…and it was Labour’s policy.
He also thought it ‘illuminating’ that much of the surplus would come from cutting government spending and not massive growth….hmmm…this from the BBC that was warning us of massive cuts to come in this second Parliament for Cameron, cuts so bad they would take us back to the Thirties and the road to Wigan Pier…..the cuts were going to be ‘utterly terrifying‘….never mind that they would actually take us back to the level of government spending in 1998 under Labour….not the terrifying Thirties then?
To achieve the Office for Budget Responsibility’s forecast of a budget surplus of £23bn by 2019-20 would require “spending cuts on a colossal scale ..
If reductions in departmental spending were to continue at the same pace after the May 2015 election as they had over the past four years, welfare cuts or tax rises worth about £21bn a year would be needed by 2019-20, at a time when the Conservatives were committed to income tax cuts worth £7bn, according to the IFS.
We have always known that the surplus would come from cutting spending…it is not a surprise nor ‘illuminating’ to rediscover this today….the BBC wants us to think that Osborne’s plans are in chaos and that he is flailing around using ‘magic’ as Edwards suggested…..oddly the Guardian also uses that line….Budget 2016: magical thinking from charmed world of the chancellor.
As for the sugar tax….the jury is definitely out on that one, effectiveness wise, despite the BBC’s assertion that Mexico provided proof positive that a sugar tax works……however the studies done were funded by the people who lobbied the Mexican government to impose the sugar tax….and the New Zealand government has looked at this and concluded there is as yet no proof to suggest the tax works.
The Science Media Centre also casts doubt on the findings.
Even the Guardian admits….The evidence that a soda tax can reduce obesity and disease, however, comes largely from theoretical models.
The BBC though were delighted for Jamie Oliver…..as I am.
Guido is not so sure about the hypocritical little chap….
Jamie Oliver is all over the BBC celebrating his punitive sugar tax – but this is sweet hypocrisy. On his website, Jamie offers a series of recipes aimed at children. A bowl of granola for a child’s breakfast, advertised as “a healthy and delicious start to the day”, contains an unbelievable 20.9g of sugar. That’s 23% of an adult’s daily recommended intake, and this is supposed to be for a child.
Experts recommend 4-8 year olds should have 12g of sugar per day, teenagers should have 20-32 grams. A single serving of this Jamie recipe surpasses the maximum recommended teenager’s sugar allowance, and three times that of 8 year olds…
Oh and there’s this from Guido’s site…..gotta love it…..