The Miliband future will not be televised….not by the BBC, not by anyone.

That may come as a surprise to anyone who has been following the BBC’s election coverage and had been left with the impression that Miliband was a force to be reckoned with, one that was growing in popularity and stature as the momentum of his campaign grew and carried him inevitably into No10.

Nicola Sturgeon didn’t rate Miliband as PM material and even little Owen Jones is now pointing out that he wrote up Labour’s policies as lacking any real substance last year.

And that indeed was Labour’s problem, one the BBC did its best to bury.  Miliband was the eternal student, lacking any experience of the world outside politics he fought the campaign on clever wheezes designed to catch the voters eye with guaranteed headlines whilst hoping no one would challenge the viability and substance of each new populist policy.  In that he had a valuable ally, the BBC, which rarely bothered itself to examine in depth his policies whilst giving him massive headlines and a write up that suggested he was leading the way, shaping the political narrative.  Energy price freezes, mansion taxes, predistribution, paying for the NHS with ‘whatever it takes’ and claiming he had it all paid for, the ending of non-dom status, the Falkirk selection scandal, stabbing his brother in the back….all variously ignored, downplayed, bigged up or defended to the hilt by the BBC.

Jon Pienaar now says that he always knew Miliband’s non-dom policy ‘didn’t ring true’ and indeed he originally said that the revelation of Ball’s own defence of non-dom status was ‘The mother and father of all banana skins’ however as we pointed out previously the BBC then carried on as if Balls hadn’t said that or that if he had, then things had changed and Labour, with their ‘independent economic advisor’, not, had found a way to make the policy pay.

Pienaar is now also saying that he knew Cameron would get a majority and had been saying it around the office for a long time….why did he not share his thoughts with the public if this is what he believed would happen?….after all that is what he is known for…providing analysis using his own interpretation of the political situation…he isn’t normally so shy about giving us his thoughts.

Some interesting comments from others today….Uber lefty Ken Livingstone blamed New Labour’s legacy for the current failure…saying that millions of quality jobs were lost under Labour to be replaced by low paid, low status jobs.

Dan Hodges admits Miliband stabbed Miliband….‘There were other eyes watching him. From the very beginning, when he stood on that stage in Manchester and looked directly at his own brother and told him “David, I love you”. Straight after he’d killed him off.’

We also kept hearing today that Labour had moved too far to the left under Miliband….when did you ever hear the BBC raising that criticism of Red Ed?

The BBC was all too enthralled by the ‘new political landscape’ (as they were with Occupy)…..apparently we were all fed up with the old politics and there was supposedly a massive move to the left, it was definitely the end of two party politics…..and curiously this election was the first that would bring that about…ignoring the fact of the last 5 years having been a coalition government.  No one party would ever get a ruling majority again…..indeed even today after the Tory ‘landslide’ shock, relatively speaking, the BBC bods were pushing the line that Labour would never get a majority again after losing so badly in Scotland….they never learn…..filling the airwaves with endless speculation that is nearly always proved wrong by events.

We also hear from Labour that the problem was that they didn’t challenge the narrative that they caused the financial meltdown….bit hard to do that when they did cause it as even Miliband himself admits the recession was due to the lack of bank regulation..however the BBC has always preferred not to examine Labour’s record on that  if at all possible.

Labour lost despite the massive support of the BBC, and Russell Brand….his fleeting support now withdrawn as he blames the Establishment and the right wing Press for stitching up Miliband….but he’s just a comedian with a laptop and a bit of mouth he tells us, what does he know?….if you can’t beat the Establishment get compassionate with your neighbour….

The BBC got their campaign, sorry, reporting, massively wrong….the whole tenor of their reporting giving Miliband a substance and credibility he just didn’t have. Miliband’s policies were all show and no go, Miliband himself would never have been able to withstand the SNP assault and he’d have been reliant on them to stay in office…in other words Fallon was right to raise the concerns about what Miliband would compromise in order to stay in No10.

The BBC’s election reporting was ultimately one huge fail having set out to defend and prop up the faltering Miliband instead of sticking to reporting the facts. Every time Miliband made a cock up the BBC would desperately cast around for something negative about Cameron to balance out the negative press Miliband was getting…Miliband is massively slated for his ‘Edstone’ and suddenly all we hear on the BBC is that a Libdem has suddenly remembered an amazing conversation between Clegg and Cameron in which Cameorn said he thought he wouldn’t get a majority….non-news plastered all over the BBC….was someone trying to distract us from the Miliband farce?  Lucy Powell, Miliband’s strategist, admits damningly that the pledges carved in stone didn’t actually mean he would not break some of them….and Pienaar comes on to tell us she of course didn’t mean that at all, that wasn’t what she was saying…well yes it was Jon.

All in all the BBC had a bad election, not as bad as Miliband’s, but bad.  Their analysis of what is happening in politics proving to be way off course…..a single party has won a majority and the population is not moving to the left, Miliband would have been absolutely dominated by Sturgeon and his policies were so much smoke and mirrors.

If you’d relied on the BBC for your news you’d never have guessed the true state of politics in the UK.

The Mail says…

BBC must now pay the price for its blatant anti-Conservative bias

As the results filtered through, and the scale of the Tory victory became clear, the BBC seemed to go into official mourning over the phenomenal losses suffered by Labour and the Lib Dems.

It was as if the Corporation, in its despair over the collapse of the Left, believed the whole nation shared its anguish. 

Nothing could have been further from the truth, and once more the BBC missed the real story — the remarkable, historic triumph of conservatism.

This abrogation of its responsibility as a public broadcaster will, inevitably, have an effect on its future, as the BBC’s licence fee comes under increasing scrutiny.

Undoubtedly, a new and energised Tory Government will look closely at the issue of whether this Left-leaning, management-heavy behemoth should be subsidised by a compulsory tax on TV viewers.

Well then, the BBC are in mourning as the UK returns a majority Conservative Government. Thoughts on BBC coverage?

The BBC has spent a good deal of time either downplaying or ignoring the Muslim Trojan Horse scandal in Birmingham schools, often resorting to saying that the claims of a Muslim takeover were merely the deluded ramblings of racists, Islamophobes and the paranoid…..before suggesting that if that is what Muslim parents wanted then perhaps that is what they should have in the interests of that old dangerous standby ‘community cohesion’.

How different is the BBC approach to similar religious fundamentalism in Georgian schools…

The church’s conservative message is increasingly at odds with the country’s liberal, pro-Western direction, which paradoxically most Georgians also support.

Schools have become an ideological battleground.

Children under pressure

In 2012 Saakashvili’s government lost the election to the more traditionalist “Georgian Dream” coalition, which was enthusiastically backed by the church and grassroots Orthodox groups.

Since then, “collective prayers, preaching and indoctrination in public schools have been on the rise,” says Eka Chitanava from Georgia’s Tolerance and Diversity Institute, which recently conducted a survey of 33 religious minorities. All said their children are facing pressure at school, especially Muslims and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Ah….especially Muslims under pressure…..that explains the BBC’s concern.

Doesn’t this all sound familiar?…just replace Georgian Orthodox with Muslim, and Russia with Saudia Arabia….

The Georgian Orthodox Church denies being an instrument of Russia, saying the links are historical.

But it cites modern religious Russian literature in its teachings, and Father Iotame told me visiting Russian priests started organising annual religious “boot camps” in Georgia three years ago – where he learned about “paedophile parties taking over Europe”. He wants to save the young from “a wave of filth” from the West.

In weekly sermons, hundreds of priests are delivering the same message: Georgia’s Western aspirations are no longer compatible with its ancient Orthodox faith. And they are telling Georgia’s young people they have to make a choice.

All so familiar and yet the BBC has a completely different reaction to the same religious extremism in British schools.

The sheer hypocrisy of the BBC’s Julia Macfarlane’s Tweet about democracy….

 Julia Macfarlane ‏@juliamacfarlane 19 hrs19 hours ago

Tomorrow I’ll have what people protest, bleed and die for across the Middle East, Asia, Africa. A vote. I hope everyone uses theirs. #GE201

So Bush and Blair were right then to bring democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan and give the first chance to determine their own lives to the Muslims of those countries? A chance that Muslims, and not just the so-called extremists, in Britain decry and oppose violently…so much so many went to fight in Iraq, and now go to Syria to impose the sovereignty of Allah, and happily murder vast numbers of other Muslims…..and blithely supported in their ambitions by the BBC whose opposition to the wars and Western foreign policy fed directly into and bolstered the recruitment process of those who wished to exploit the Muslim communities’ own opposition.

 

   Robert Peston ‏@Peston 7 hrs7 hours ago

• So if I can’t talk about the election, what on earth can I talk about today? #GE2015

I guess he could do what he always does and ignore the BBC impartiality rules and just shout ‘Vote Labour’ as loud and as often as possible.

What is the BBC trying to say with this subliminal message?…..

  BBC Breaking News ‏@BBCBreaking 7 hrs7 hours ago

Millions casting ballots in UK #GE2015 with polls open until 10pm – our live coverage http://bbc.in/1IiJALc 

Taiwanese News high on something……..

David Cameron teaches young Miliband the ropes…starting with how to eat with dignity whatever the situation…

  Larry the Cat ‏@Number10cat 7 hrs7 hours ago

Meanwhile, in Tower Hamlets… #GE2015

Well, the day of the General Election 2015 is upon us and here is a thread that can be used JUST to cover how the rotten BBC covers it. I’m afraid I won’t be around for the next few days due to a family bereavement so will catch up the other side of the Election.

Peston has really outdone himself on the eve of the election….seemingly coming down openly, in a subtle/non-subtle manner, in favour of Labour.

You have to ask why he felt the need to tell us that this is …

An election that really matters

That title indicates he has a view, a view that suggests he thinks one party is the one which will have significant impact on the way your life goes, and the following body  of the article gives a fair indication of what his preferred line might be…and it’s not ‘vote Tory’.  Peston gives us an either/or but it is not hard to guess which way his heart lies and which arguments he finds the more preferable…….

On the EU you can see a gentle nudge towards staying in…..

‘The issues that are on the table are huge, arguably the most important of my political lifetime.

The choice between whether to have a referendum on membership of the European Union (EU) – offered by Tories and UKIP, declined by Labour, LibDem and SNP – is massive.

Leaving the EU would have a profound impact on our economy, immigration and culture. For better or worse it matters.

For what it is worth, the consensus among mainstream economists and leaders of big businesses is that David Cameron’s aim of using the referendum to secure EU reforms is a laudable one.

But they would also argue that the costs of leaving the EU, reformed or not, would be big.’

On the SNP you are led to believe that one party looks to break up the Union and one will defend it….and it is the Tories who are being presented as the ‘enemies’of the SNP whipping up Scottish Nationalism by the BBC today (remarkable that it isn’t the SNP that is whipping up nationalism!  The BBC ignoring or downplaying SNP related violence, intimidation and rampant nationalism in a way that they wouldn’t with UKIP for instance)….

‘Likewise what is going on in Scotland will shape the whole UK…you should ponder which other parties best capture your views about whether the Scots should be ushered towards the exit or urged to stay in the union.’

So to keep the Union together vote Labour!

Then onto Labour itself…the shiny new ‘socialist’ party breaking with the war mongers and false economic prophets of the past (ie Old New Labour) seeking a fairer , more equal society battling the evil money makers….

‘Ed Miliband represents a big break with the New Labour of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, because of his explicit promise of higher taxes on the highest earners and the wealthy, and with his shift to much greater economic interventionism.

Whether you think his mandating of a higher minimum wage, his cap on energy prices, his determination to break-up banks and his raid on non-doms are wealth-destroying meddling or fairness-enhancing reforms, they are not same-old, same-old.’

Then onto the Tories…on the one hand making prudent economic choices…or on the other hand callous, heartless people grinding the poor’s nose in yet more poverty…..the dramatic phrasing of the last sentence indicates how you are supposed to think….

‘Finally even the often sterile debate on how, and how fast. to reduce the gap between taxes and spending – how rapidly to shrink the deficit and start cutting the record national debt – is a big one.

Take just one aspect, the Tories’ plan to reduce welfare bills by a further £12bn.

You can see this as either essential to make the nation’s balance sheet more resistant to inevitable shocks and an imperative to improve work incentives.

Or you can see it as an attack on the poorest and most vulnerable.’

And finally………LOL……

Now even if I were not constrained by BBC impartiality rules, I would not have the chutzpah to tell you how to vote.

But please don’t moan to me that this vote does not matter.

When the party leaders tell you this is the most important election in a generation, for once they are spot on.

Peston has had a bad election with reports and articles that bulge with pro-Labour nuances whilst doing down the Tories.  Peston defends Labour’s economic past suggesting there was no reckless ramping up of debt pre-crash even as John Humphrys said that Miliband must be the ‘last man standing’ who didn’t think that Labour spent wildly and helped make the recession far worse than it could have been.  Peston also suggest that getting the debt down is not important…how times change…..let’s have a look at previous statements made when there wasn’t an election in the offing……

First here’s John Cridland, the CBI director general, said: “Labour has form spending money it does not really have.”

And here’s Peston in 2011 saying pay down the debt…that may take a decade with low growth as a result…but is necessary…and you cannot borrow to run the public finances….

The Future’s Overdrawn

What became clear in 2008 is that we will have to find a way of paying much of that debt back.

That will take at least a decade.

And when we repay debt, we’re spending less. Which means economic activity slows down, growth grinds to a halt.

It is reasonable to assume that growth will be as little as 1% in the coming 10 years….which wouldn’t look so bad after a contraction of 6.3% in output during the 2008-09 recession.

 When essential public services start to be financed through borrowing rather than tax, it is immensely difficult to cut the borrowing.

 

And there’s more  of the same from him……the importance of reducing debt and the likelihood of many years of low growth, maybe just 1%, as we battle to get our economy and spending under control…

It has now become widely recognised that perhaps the greatest economic policy failure in the UK, US and eurozone during the 16 boom years before the crash of 2008 was the explosion of borrowing by banks, households, businesses and governments – or, to use the jargon, the unprecedented and massive leveraging up of entire economies.

 That is why getting the debt down to prudent levels is the most important economic challenge of our time.

 So what’s going on? Why are UK debts still going up?
Well partly it’s to do with a phenomenon I’ve discussed here many times, that debt has been shuffled from the private sector to the public sector.
When banks stopped lending, and private-sector spending and investing collapsed, governments continued to spend, even though tax revenues were falling. So public-sector borrowing exploded.
To be clear, if governments had not continued to spend, our recession might well have become something much worse, a 1930s-style depression.
But it is fair to say that a consequence of banks, households and businesses trying to repay their debts has been a big increase in government borrowing.

We haven’t as yet found a way to get the debts down so that we can be confident that our economy’s foundations are solid and sound again.

What it means is that we must brace ourselves for many years of relatively low growth, perhaps 1% versus the 3% of the 16 boom years before the crash, because we no longer have the fuel of borrowing more and more every year.’

How soon we, and Robert Peston, forget.

And what did Stephanie Flanders have to say way back in 2005 about Labour’s economic miracle?  It’s a miracle based upon borrowing and spending…and it couldn’t go on…not only that but productivity, Labour’s latest ‘concern’ in this election, was dire when they were in control…….

On running the rule over Gordon Brown’s economic record

Britain is growing slower than it has in more than a decade. The high street has ground to a halt, and inflation is the highest it has been under Labour.

 When we look back, in a few years’ time, at Brown’s economy, will we still see an economic miracle? Or another old-fashioned spending binge that, sooner or later, had to run dry?

 Our trade gap has widened almost every year since Labour took office.

 Ed Balls was with Gordon Brown every step of the way until he became MP for Normanton in May 2005. I asked him whether he was disappointed by Britain’s continued low productivity and widening trade gap.

 “There’s an ability for people to plan ahead, invest in the future, which we’ve not seen in the last 20 to 30 years.”

 Quite a few people around the country echoed this view – especially the property developers (before the property crash of course….causing the credit crunch). There is just one problem. Businesses are not investing more. They are investing less.

 Total investment as a share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the lowest it has been since those records began in 1965.

 Saved by spending

 The miracle, if there is one, is that we carried on growing. But looking around the country, you see it is a miracle built not on investing, or exporting, but on a miraculous capacity to spend.

 The public spending prop

 What is left of the miracle economy, if you strip out the cheap imports and the consumer spending? What is left is a lot of public spending. The only part of the economy that has grown faster than spending by all of us the past few years has been spending by the government.

In the north-east, one recent estimate puts the public sector of the economy at close to 60%.

 But all of that public spending, sooner or later has to be paid for. Ed Balls denies that Gordon Brown’s decision to move the goal posts on his golden rule this summer has done his reputation real harm.

 What Gordon Brown would like to be his final years as chancellor could be the most testing yet.

‘

And a final thing of note…the BBC is usually keen to tell us that all the rising number of self-employed people isn’t a sign of a healthy economy on the up but an indication of a weak economy in which people are desperate to scrape a living and end up as self-employed as a last resort because there are no jobs out there…..the Guardian in 2006 puts the lie to that when it predicts that maybe a third of workers will be self employed by 2011….

‘Become your own boss. And many of us want to. According to research by Vodafone, the number of UK businesses could rise from 3m to 10m over the next five years. That would mean a third of UK workers running their own business by 2011. The government will have to rethink its view on migrants. Otherwise our hourglass economy will become top heavy, toppling into the North Sea and causing a tsunami that would wipe out Scandinavia.’

Will the BBC, the dominant news broadcaster by far, be the Kingmakers for this election?  Some think they may well be, either by design or happenchance.

The prospect of Labour ‘stealing’ the election having less seats than the Tories but able to conjure up a majority with a ‘Bauld’ Alliance has been highlighted recently in the Press.  This morning on the Today programme, and elsewhere it seemed that the BBC were countering that suggestion of Labour snatching the election using the rule book but having no legitimacy with fewer actual votes.  I had the impression that the BBC was coming down on the side of Labour.

The normally pro-BBC Cardiff University journalism and media studies unit has come up with a frightening prospect and a warning to journalists…that the Broadcast Media could, by the way they interpret events post-election, influence how the Public perceive the legitimacy of any likely political scenario and annoint the ‘winner’…making themselves the Kingmakers.

How broadcast media could be kingmakers after the election

Depending on the electoral arithmetic, the next 48 hours could be a real test of how broadcast journalists interpret public perceptions towards any post-election coalition deals. If, as polls continue to suggest, a hung parliament is imminent, the debate will almost exclusively focus on which party can (or should) lead a coalition government over the next five years.

How broadcast journalists interpret “public” legitimacy could be crucial in policing the boundaries of negotiations between parties, in the post-election period.

Broadcasters, beware

If the vote is a close as predicted, parties will inevitably squabble between themselves about who “won”. But the public will rely on journalists to mediate. And since TV news remains by far the most widely used source of news for general and detailed information about the election, the impartiality of broadcast journalists will be put under the spotlight.

This puts a huge amount of responsibility on broadcast journalists interpreting the results as they come in, during the early hours of Friday morning. Tired but full of adrenaline, broadcast journalists may well be influenced by the pace of the news cycle and the pressure to call out a “winner”. No doubt many of the partisan newspapers – most of whom have endorsed the Conservative party – will be seeking to sway readers in their Friday and Saturday editions.

As public attitudes are formed over the next 48 hours, broadcast journalists will therefore need to be careful in how they interpret the “public legitimacy” of the election results and any possible coalition deals, in light of their impartiality requirements.

I am absolutely certain that the BBC’s best and brightest will be conscientiously watching every word for a hint of bias, marshalling their thoughts in an impeccably impartial manner to bring us their verdict….not.