Roger Harrabin, a strange conflicted, tormented soul unable to square the ethics of being a professional journalist with his desire to campaign for the climate change lobby.

He’s settled for the green blob.

Harrabin admitted he was a climate change campaigner:

I have spent much of the last two decades of my journalistic life warning about the potential dangers of climate change.

 

Harrabin knows many of the Public are sceptical about climate change, especially when they see their bills falsely inflated by green taxes.  He goes so far as to suggest Sceptics should be brought in from the cold and given a hearing…here and here he toys with the idea…and yet still manages to slip in a few sneers for the Sceptics and some cheerleading for the likes of the CRU’s Phil Jones.

Even today Harrabin whilst luring in an unsuspecting ‘sceptic’ to the BBC can’t help trying to discredit that ‘sceptic’ whilst supposedly taking him seriously.

The Today programme announced to us that the IPCC was about to reveal its latest thinking on climate and would tell us that we will suffer irreversible climate change if we continue pumping out CO2…..the Today programme tells us that such reports are ‘resisted by a very vocal minority’.

So you get the idea….sceptics are noisy, a minority, a bit of a nuisance and…no mention of just how credible they are….but we are told Sceptics are coming into line with mainstream thinking.

Hmmmm…..isn’t it more true to say that the ‘settled mainstream science’ is being forced by facts on the ground to admit that they have got things serously wrong and it is they who are now coming into line with the sceptics rather than sceptics now ‘agreeing’ with the mainstream?

On the Today show Harrabin spoke to Nic Lewis (15 mins) whom he pointedly called ‘Mr Lewis’ in an attempt to persuade us that he is not a scientist and has little real authority to speak on the subject of climate change.

Harrabin ‘interviews’ Lewis but we don’t actually hear the interview just Harrabin’s interpretation of it…here he tells us the three points that apparently sceptics and the ‘Mainstream’ agree on….

• CO2 from humans has contributed to warming the planet.
• The current pause will end…sometime because of CO2.
• If we double CO2 emissions it will result in a rise of 1.7°C

I rather think all those points could easily be contested.

That last point for  instance….Harrabin goes on to say that the range of likely temperatures given by Lewis matches the IPCC’s.

No, it doesn’t.  Harrabin is spinning, this Today report is all about trying to make out that sceptics have suddenly seen the light and have slowly come to the same conclusions as the IPCC.  They haven’t.

Here is Nic Lewis’s own report from March this year in which he says….

‘…a lower observationally-based temperature range of 1.25–3.0°C, with a best estimate of 1.75, for a doubling of CO2. By contrast, the climate models used for projections in AR5 indicate a range of 2-4.5°C, with an average of 3.2°C.’

In other words his range of temperatures is far below that of the IPCC…and the figure for temperature when CO2 levels double is almost half that of the IPCC…1.75 and 3.2 °C respectively….not as Harrabin claimed both agreeing on 1.75.

Again here Lewis says the same:

The CMIP5 [IPCC] models ultimately warm on average about 3.2° C when the concentration of CO2 is doubled. This is approaching twice the level suggested by the best observational studies

 

Lewis tells us that:

Virtually all the models that the IPCC uses in its report have been running too hot over periods as long as 35 years, long enough to judge them on a climatic timescale

Harrabin himself last year reported the IPCC’s doomladen predictions:

Harrabin admits that that was only a theory…it may be that climate is not as sensitive to CO2 as ‘mainstream scientists’ told us…..it maybe we get no temperature rise above 2.5° C but he says ‘that is very optimistic…and we will probably see much worse.’

Mainstream scientists, he tells us, suggest that 2 – 4.5° C is more likely and ‘there is little reassuring about that’

 

2-4.5° C?  So an average of 3.2 not 1.7 as Harrabin today claimed the IPCC suggests.

Harrabin slips in a cheap couple of sneers telling us that ‘Mr Lewis’ is a Cambridge educated mathematician with a career in financial consulting…though unlike most sceptics he’s published his findings in scientific journals.

Harrabin doesn’t mention that he also studied physics at Cambridge and is a highly skilled statistician as well as having spent many years studying climate change.

Harrabin curiously omits to mention that Lewis is also an expert reviewer for the IPCC….so credible enough for them to utilise his expertise.

We might ask just how many times Harrabin has published his scientific research in science journals…the answer would of course be never….Harrabin being an English graduate.

By his own standards Harrabin should not be reporting on climate change due to his lack of paper credentials….and yet he consistently attacks sceptics for their apparent lack of professional qualifications.

Harrabin demonstrates his own lack of understanding by confusing CO2 emissions with CO2 concentrations….from Nic Lewis himself via Bishop Hill:

As you know, Roger Harrabin’s piece on global warming that included excerpts of his interview with me aired at 7.15 this morning on Radio 4.

Unfortunately, his piece confusingly muddled up both CO₂ emissions with CO₂ concentrations and equilibrium climate sensitivity with the transient climate response level.

For an English graduate words and meaning must surely be something you could grapple succesfully with…so even in his own field of expertise Harrabin can’t cut it.  Not too good with either numbers or words it seems.

Harrabin’s Today report was pure spin that tried to undermine the Sceptic case by saying that they were now agreeing with the IPCC.

However Nic Lewis has never been a ‘sceptic’ in the sense that Harrabin uses.  Lewis believes that man-made CO2 is warming the planet but that the planet is not as sensitive as the IPCC makes out…but in fact he goes further than the IPCC….

In AR5 the IPCC felt even more certain (95% certain, compared to 90% inAR4) that humans have caused most (more than 50%) of the warming since1950. The media treated this as the major conclusion of AR5, but it is in fact a relatively trivial finding. The high-quality observationally-based estimates for climate sensitivity discussed in this report assume that virtually all the measured warming (not just since 1950, but over the last 100–150 years) is due to humans.

The far more important question now is how much warming is likely in the future under various scenarios.

Curiously when you read the Global Warming Policy Foundation’s blurb they say almost the exact same thing….they accept global warming is happening but that they disagree with the level of warming and the policies adopted to combat it…..

The Global Warming Policy Foundation is unique. We are an all-party and non-party think tank and a registered educational charity which, while open-minded on the contested science of global warming, is deeply concerned about the costs and other implications of many of the policies currently being advocated.
We are in no sense ‘anti-environmental’. There is a wide range of important environmental issues, which call for an equally wide range of policy responses. Our concern is solely with the possible effects of any future global warming and the policy responses that may evoke.

 

And yet Lord Lawson is banned by the BBC from appearing.

So we have a climate sceptic who isn’t really a sceptic but whose positon is presented by Harrabin as the new dawning of reality in the sceptic’s camp as they merge with mainstream thinking. Harrabin spins the figures to make it appear the IPCC is correct on likely future temperature scenarios. Harrabin sneers at sceptics.

In summary we have Harrabin spinning like mad, misleading listeners and trying to discredit sceptics….what’s new in his approach to reasoned debate on climate change?  Nothing.

BBC’s Mr Climate Change and £15,000 grants from university rocked by global warning scandal

I declare this thread open.

Nigel Farage is in the Independent today asking why the BBC et al mocks or simply and lazily vilifies UKIP when a great, great many people support its stance on immigration and Europe…..

Liberal shows like Mock The Week just can’t understand why Ukip has so many supporters

Where does Mishal Husain get her news from?  Al Jazeera?

Mishal Husain, the BBC’s Muslim presenter who thinks that Hamas rockets are pretty harmless and that it is part of her job to improve the image of Islam made a slight factual error this morning claiming that (08:52)

‘The Israeli authorities have reopened access to the Al Aqsa Mosque this morning….closed yesterday after unrest following the fatal shooting of a Palestinian.’

 

Trouble is that’s just not true as even the BBC reported yesterday…..

A spokesman for Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has described the closure of a disputed Jerusalem holy site as a “declaration of war”.

The move came amid tension and violence after the shooting of a Jewish activist. Israel’s PM urged calm, saying Mr Abbas was stoking unrest.

The holy site will reopen on Friday, Israel’s economy minister says.

 

And what of that ‘Palestinian’?

Israeli police later killed a Palestinian suspected of shooting him. Moataz Hejazi, 32, was shot after reportedly opening fire when police surrounded his home.

 

So the mosque was closed because a Palestinian shot an Israeli Rabbi and then that Palestinian killer was shot resisting arrest.

Not quite the tale Husain cobbled together.

Later in the day we had Kevin Connolly giving us an analysis of the historical context and background to events in Jerusalem….apparently the start of the problem was the Israeli’s ‘supreme conquest’ of Palestinian territory in 1967.

Strange, I thought 1967 had the Israelis routing the massed Arab armies who were ready to annihilate Israel but instead fled the field leaving Israel in charge of the land by default…..they didn’t ‘conquer’ it as Connolly suggests.

Facts and language….the proper use if which determine people’s perceptions and reactions.

The BBC’s mis-use of both is fuel to the fire for the ‘radical Islamist’s’ narrative.

It is interesting that Connolly talks openly about the Muslim reaction to any Israeli incursion into the Mosque….it would set off violent repercussions across the Muslim world.

Connolly mentions the Crusades, no doubt doing the usual BBC thing of trying to suggest that Christians have a history of violence in religion’s name thereby intending that we should not judge Islam for its violence…trouble is…Christianity doesn’t tell you to hate the non-believers, it doen’t tell you to kill them.  The Koran does.

But it is that Muslim reaction to any Israeli incursion that is interesting because Muslims continually refer to the Crusades as something that even now radicalises Muslims, just another point in history that Muslims have suffered persecution at the hands of Christians.

Never mind that Muslims attacked and conquered Jerusalem and the Crusades were an attempt to regain Christian land.

Connolly’s admission that Muslims would set the Middle East alight to get the Al Aqsa Mosque area back, Temple Mount to the Jews of course, tells you something of the hypocrisy of the Muslim narrative that feeds their grievance industry and the subsequent terrorism.

They complain about the Crusades and yet would do exactly the same thing should they be excluded from the Mosque.

We’ve had Alvin Hall’s interesting and original treatment of Black musical history on the BBC and now we have another attempt to rewrite it and turn everything any Black person ever did or said in history into an act of resistance against the white ‘Massa’…..

Dr Hepcat and the Hepster’s Dictionary

In this programme we hear about the music of Cab Calloway and his ‘Hepster’s Dictionary’ the roots of which, we are told, are the slave slang of the plantations invented as a code to befuddle and undermine the authority of the white ‘Massa’.

The language and Cab Calloway’s jive talk was ‘racial politics’, Calloway was a cultural warrior battling aggressive eurocentricism….white culture in other words.

Or so we are told by the BBC whose interpretation of Calloway’s intentions is somewhat self-serving.

Desperate to make us realise the suffering of the Black American they tell us that the word ‘Pounder’ used as a description of a police officer, was because the police used to ‘pound’ on Blacks…nothing to do with them being ‘pavement pounders’ out ‘pounding the beat’.   There’s one they missed…cops on the ‘beat’.  Must have a deeper significance.  Similarly we are told that ‘Bebop’ was actually a reference to the sound truncheons made on Black heads as they were set upon by white ‘pounders’.

Or it could just be this:

bebop, also called bop,  the first kind of modern jazz, which split jazz into two opposing camps in the last half of the 1940s. The word is an onomatopoeic rendering of a staccato two-tone phrase distinctive in this type of music.

Did the slaves create a secret language to enable them to resist white oppression?  Or did the language develop its own unique shape in the same way that any language does when a group of people are essentially isolated from other groups and develop their own language…its just a fact of life not a conspiracy, not a revolution.

The BBC is talking crap…..or racially motivated, politically charged, emotive language designed to create a particular misperception of history to suit Black activists intent on stirring up racial grievances.

Here’s a different interpretation…..

Each generation has their own slang and lingo, a language that defines them. Each generation also has a purveyor of cool who creates a language that only the initiated understand. During the 1950s and 60s, Frank Sinatra created a personal lingo that influenced a generation of swanky and swaggering men.

But before Sinatra, there was Cab Calloway.

In addition to writing and performing great swing music, Calloway created an entirely new lingo. He never took his hepster slang too seriously; it was all about having fun and being unique. Soon lots of people wanted to speak just like Cab. To help facilitate this, Calloway produced a Hepster Dictionary in 1940 that accompanied Cab Calloway sheet music.

 

So rather than being a political statement the Hepster chat and dictionary was in fact all about having fun and being different….and helping people to understand his music and life….so being different but not that different.

What the BBC and its Black activist presenters don’t tell us is this:

Cab Calloway: On the Yiddish Side of the Street

In 1930s New York, no cat was more of a “hepster” than Cab Calloway. The son of a lawyer father and a church-organist mother, Calloway met Louis Armstrong while at Chicago’s Crane College. There he learned to scat-sing so well that he left school to relocate his well-trained tenor voice, and his band, to an extended engagement at Harlem’s Cotton Club. He soon hit the dance halls and stages of the wider world, barely stopping to breathe until the 20^th century was almost over. Along the way, he took it all in: the sights, the sounds, and the fine points of the language of the streets, eventually publishing the first-ever dictionary of African-American slang, The New Cab Calloway’s Hepsters Dictionary: The Language of Jive, in 1938.

But there was another “hep” language floating around 1930s New York: Yiddish.

Yiddish laced the speech of Irving Mills, a man of Odessa Jewish stock who became Calloway’s manager. The language of meshugas, dzhlubs, and mamzers resonated more than a little with Calloway.  In partnership with Mills, he soon found ingenious ways to infuse his act with retooled Yiddish folksongs, hilarious, if ironic, parodies of Jewish black-face performance, and mock cantorial melismas that incorporated his own unique brand of pidgin Hebrew, morphing into jazz-jive jargon at the drop of a white Panama hat.

It all started with “Minnie the Moocher,” a tune he co-wrote with Mills in 1931, and which became his first major hit, the first number-one song by an African-American performer, and his theme song for the rest of his career.

So Calloway’s most famous song, his big break, had some Jewish influences. Guess they were slaves too once.  It all works.

The BBC must love that.

Still, as long as you’ve got the message that Blacks have suffered, and continue to suffer, at the hands of their white oppressors, the BBC’s job is done.

The Significance of Muslim growth in the UK

Peter Allen told us yesterday that ‘It is very difficult to wake up the world and make it care about North Korea.’

Of course no one takes North Korea seriously.  Thank God that we have the BBC to remind us of what a dangerous and nasty regime it is!

Of course the BBC, in the shape of John Sweeney, had a famous stab at uncovering North Korea as they went undercover for 8 days.   So desperate were the to bring us the terrible truth about the ‘neo nazi’ communists of North Korea that they were willing to put the lives of several students at risk…but…it was worth it the BBC tells us…

North Korea is….‘A state that is more like Hitler’s Germany than any other state in the world, It is extraordinarily scary, dark and evil….. We maintain all of the students were aware of the risk.’

We didn’t learn a great deal from Sweeney’s Great Expose.

We did learn more yesterday as a girl who escaped from North Korea told Peter Allen that she witnessed the execution of a woman whose sole crime was to be caught watching a Hollywood movie.

That for some reason made me think that there is a striking similarity between the extraordinarily scary, dark and evil North Korea and the BBC.

North Korea doesn’t want its population watching films and reading journalism that might open its eyes to the real world outside the bubble imposed by the regime.

Similarly for the BBC which imposes its Big Brother approach to censoring the news in a similarly brutal fashion…not with a bullet to the back of the head but with a bit of character and reputational assassination…..ala the EDL’s Tommy Robinson or UKIP’s Farage.

That Big Brother was once again in action yesterday as Peter Allen, having obviously read the Guardian’s Today’s key fact: you are probably wrong about almost everything, started preaching to us about our misconceptions about Muslims and immigration……he mixed in other figures but you and I know the real message he wants to impose upon us….it is highly political….as the Guardian admits….

Britons overstate the proportion of Muslims in their country by a factor of four, according to a new survey by Ipsos Mori that reveals public understanding of the numbers behind the daily news in 14 countries.

People from the UK also think immigrants make up twice the proportion of the population as is really the case – and that many more people are unemployed than actually are.

Such misconceptions are typical around the world, but they can have a significant impact as politicians aim to focus on voter perceptions, not on the actual data.

Bobby Duffy, managing director of the Ipsos Mori social research institute, said:

These misperceptions present clear issues for informed public debate and policymaking. For example, public priorities may well be different if we had a clearer view of the scale of immigration and the real incidence of teenage mothers.

 

 

Just so we’re clear…you are absolutely wrong about the numbers of Muslims in this country…and the numbers of immigrants and the effects they have upon communties.

Muslims and immigrants are wonderful and bring huge benefits to the country.

Your ignorance, stupidity and prejudice is all that stops you from recognising this.

The BBC is here to help you overcome such prejudice and hatred.

Not sure just how reliable the survey was…The research, carried out by an online survey of approximately 1,000 people aged 16 to 64.

Pretty indepth then.

And em…

Here is a much more honest appraisal of how the Muslim population is growing in size and influence…and what the future might hold….an assessment made by a Muslim:

The Significance of Muslim growth in the UK

Surveying what was written about the figures from the 2011 census confirms what was expected; the Muslim population has grown by 73% in just 10 years making it the fastest growing group in the UK excluding those who describe themselves as having no religion. The Muslim population in the UK jumped from 1.7 million (3%) to 2.8 million (4.8%) establishing itself as the second largest religious group after Christianity. In fact, as researchers have confirmed, the increase is potentially greater than this as it is very likely that a large percentage of the 7% of the population who did not answer the optional question regarding religion are Muslims.

As a matter of fact, the Muslim population has become a significant percentage within the fabric of the total population in the UK. Furthermore, Muslims have become the majority in one of the main boroughs in London, Tower Hamlets, reaching 34% while the proportion of Christians is at 27%. Moreover, in a number of places Muslims make up one of the major groups, reaching 34% in Newham for example, while the proportion of Christians is 40%. There are at least 1 million Muslims in London forming at least 10% of the capital’s population notwithstanding the significant Muslim populations in Birmingham and Manchester.

Although it is difficult to perceive how such figures are viewed by thinkers, journalists, politicians and the general non-Muslim mass, there have appeared a number of reasonable analysis and recommendations from the results of the census. Dr Leon Moosavi who is a Lecturer at the University of Liverpool, (specialising in the sociology of race and religion and an expert on Muslims in Britain) concluded, “by the next census Muslims may even double again and make up 10% of the population. These statistics encourage us to think more carefully about the provisions made for British Muslims and the ways in which they are an integral part of the nation” including many other positive statements in the article that are worth reading.

Here is why you should pay attention to their words and what they could mean for your society….. you’ve heard fo the ‘Trojan Horse’ haven’t you?:

Muslims must rise up and publicly debate the role of Orthodox Islam in Public life.

British Muslims should re-think how they view their presence in Britain, realising that it is their country in which they will spend their future as Muslims. Muslims must work hard to establish Islam in the UK, or at least ensure that the UK is a suitable place where Muslims can live without compromising their faith and such may entail the involvement in the socio-political dynamics of the country.

The British Government must be extremely cautious not to fail its people by making the detrimental mistake of ignoring the real needs of the second largest religious group in the country. The official recognition of Islam and what it entails will solve the many problems Muslims face today. Incorporation of the Muslim personal law within the judicial system should be looked into more constructively and Muslim lawyers and scholars should work hand in hand to integrate the key elements of the Muslim civil law.

The Educational system should furthermore recognise the specific needs of the Muslims while the Ministry of Education should accommodate them. However it must be clearly understood that the responsibility will always remain on the Muslim educationalists along with law experts to engage with the system such that they influence the necessary changes. Similarly, it is high time for Muslims to consider building a strong Islamic financial alternative for their needs such as housing and education.

The census additionally shows that the Christian population of England and Wales is ageing whilst the Muslim community is relatively young.

This sends a very strong message to Britain and to the international community that it is almost impossible to change Orthodox Muslim norms. Is it then worth the effort of liberal Muslims to continue in their attempt to promote liberalism while it is the pure Orthodox Islam that is flourishing and penetrating people’s lives?

If the BBC doesn’t understand what that means here’s a hint…..the Mooslims are coming.

Peter Allen on the previous day was talking about immigration (11:27)….he told us that ‘Nobody puts the case for the advantages of immigration and yet they’re clear enough…I want to hear some positive things about immigration.’

Clearly he doesn’t listen to the BBC….but at least we know that we can rely on Allen to give us an impartial and accurate picture of what is going on.

The benefits of an influx of 270,000 foreign immigrants, every year, swamping our towns and cities must be enormous.  I’m sure.

Good old BBC, and Guardian, moving into gear to make sure we are thinking the right thoughts.

Curious that the same IPSOS survey came out last year….note the same anxieties about our ‘misconceptions’…

The Perils of Perception

People are wildly wrong when we ask them about many aspects of life in Britain, as highlighted in a new survey by Ipsos MORI for the Royal Statistical Society and King’s College London.

Just to pick out three big errors on who lives here: on average, we think 24% of the population (one in every four people!) are Muslims – when the real figure is around 5%; we think 31% are immigrants – when the official figure is 13%; and we think 36% are aged 65+ – when in fact only 16% are.

 

The man bringing us this ‘research’ is Bobby Duffy, head of IPSOS with links to Demos and the IPPR, and a campaigner it would seem for open borders…he tells us that immigration concerns are the preserve of the ‘Far Right’ which of course intentionally fails to recognise that a majority of the population have legitimate and reasoned concerns…

Remaining sensitive to these concerns will be important for politicians who are conscious of the need to keep the extreme right marginalized.

The EU needs to hold fast in its defense of Schengen. To give ground would not address the real problem—the porous nature of a small portion of the external border. It would also threaten the free movement of people, trade and money that European economies need now more than ever.

Any link that this ‘new research’ has been released as we head for the Rochester by-election with UKIP the front runner?

A guy without a television has successfully sued TV Licensing for costs incurred dealing with its threatening demands for payment. In a wonderful twist he even threatened to send in the bailiffs. Read all about it at the TV Licensing Blog.

The Brand wagon keeps on rolling courtesy of the People’s BBC.

Kind of ironic really, a multi-millionaire living the celebrity lifestyle complaining about the plebs not having a voice, excluded by the Establishment…and yet it is not Joe Bloggs from Peckham who is given the chance to air his views, it is that multi-millionaire celebrity who has decided we all want a revolution and has been given the privileged position of a platform on the BBC to make sure we have to suffer one whether we want one or not….Brand apparently ‘giving voice to the populist resurgence of a serious but controversial idea: anarchism.’

Can’t say I have ever heard anarchism on the ballot sheet coming up as a topic in conversation…so just how ‘populist’ is it?

Brand has once again been thrust upon us by the BBC on Start the Week which tells us that…

Here you go, a new Open Thread,  detail the bias here!

The BBC has been hitting us hard in the last week with what is without any shadow of a doubt pure Labour Party propaganda about living standards, the minimum wage and ‘breadline Britain’….the central message at the heart of Labour’s election strategy

More on that later but as a run up to a more indepth look at the BBC’s coverage in which we are presented with ‘Jason from Stockport’ who has nothing to eat in his cupboards, you might like to hear what Stephanie Flanders, now off the leash, admits in the Sunday Times today……

The Treasury likes to point out that overall earnings figures make things look worse than they actually are, at least for people who have been in jobs for a while.  On average, people in full-time jobs who have been in work for at least a year have seen their wages go up faster than inflation from 2012 onwards.

But…

It’s a lost cause trying to get people to admit that they feel better off than before.

A decade of reporting on the economy for the BBC proved to me that it was incredibly hard to get people to admit on camera to having become richer.  That was true even in the boom years, let alone now.

I could be standing in a supermarket, surrounded by ‘lowest ever’ price signs, on the day wages werer rising at the fastest rate in a decade and inflation had fallen to a record low:  everyone who talked to us would doggedly insist their grocery bills were heading through the roof and they were haiving trouble making ends meet.  British people find it difficult to be upbeat on television.

So when the BBC wheels out those poverty stricken families and the ‘Jason’s in Stockport’ as evidence of ‘Breadline Britain’ it all needs to be taken with a huge pinch of salt.  We are being very deliberately lied to and manipulated.

Flanders tells us that the economy is 15% smaller than it would have been had we ‘trundled along at our long-term average rate of growth since 2007.’

Bt that’s not the fault of this government….she tells us ‘we are not alone.  Nearly every advanced economy is facing the same shortfall…[but]….we have handled this difficult new reality better than many.’

Flanders also tells us that….

Labour will want to play down Britain’s relative economic success to focus on the ‘crisis in living standards’.  What it is easy to miss is that it’s the squeeze in living standards that as largely made that relative success possible by pricing British workers into work.

That fall in wages has one  enormous beenfit; it helped make it affordable for business to keep workers and hire new ones, even in very tough times.

That made for a very different kind of recession and recovery from what we have seen before.

In previous recessions the pain of the downturn fell on the relatively small chunk of the population who lost their jobs.  Anyone laid off saw their living standards collapse.  Everyone else saw their earnings tick along much as before.  Not this time.

This time we really were ‘all in it together’.

Lower wages have kept people in work and allowed more to be employed……..Labour and the BBC are pushing the line that benefits are higher because people are in low paid wages which conveniently neglects to say what the bill would have been if all those on lower wages had no wages and had to receive full unemployment benefit…never mind the effect on their standard of living.

Last week on Peter Allen’s show(11:10) we heard that the top 20% of earners had seen a large fall in income of 5.2% whilst the lowest 20% had seen growth of 3.5%.

We were told that the average UK disposable income level was £28,700….now the BBC’s Panorama told us a family who had an income of £29,000 including benefits were on the breadline…..as a result of this government’s policies…and yet average incomes have only fallen by 4% compared to pre-crash levels.

A fall of 4% does not suddenly put people into poverty as the BBC seems to be claiming.

That’s, as I said, just a warm up for the real exploration of the BBC’s coverage of ‘Breadline Britain’ as it pumps out material like this…

Low-paid Britons now number five million, think tank concludes

…on behalf of the Labour Party.