The city centre has seen a 40% increase in private sector jobs, and one of the UK’s largest expansions in recent years

Here is the truth about Labour’s job’s record, showing how they destroyed manufacturing jobs in Britain….the blue area showing job losses in manufacturing from 2001 to 2013….note from 2011 the jobs started to grow:

Labour is now proclaiming itself the party that will bring jobs to the regions.  History tells a different story….most of that famed growth and financial wizardry was in…London…the spectacular collapse of which left the rest of the country having to dig deep to rescue the City whilst the BBC smoothed over the politician’s embarrassment by mostly ignoring their guilty part in that downfall.

However the BBC has been giving plenty of airtime to broadcasting Labour’s ‘new’ regional plan based upon figures provided by the ‘Centre for Cities’ think tank.

Miliband has claimed that 80% of new jobs are being created in London…and therefore this proves that the regions are being left behind…..and the Coalition is failing to spread the recovery nationwide.

Ever get the feeling we’ve been here before such as earlier this year when I asked  ”Will Miliband be announcing a new policy on cities in the next few days?” (A few months out!)

In January this year we looked at the very same claims….

This morning [January] the BBC were trumpeting on the radio some research by a think tank called ‘Centre For Cities’ that said London was growing much faster than other UK cities as the much vaunted ‘Recovery’ left them behind as economic also-rans…presumably hinting they were being ignored or abandoned by the Government.

The BBC said it was an independent think tank, but admitted that it had been set up by Labour peer Lord Sainsbury…er …the man who donated nearly £20 million to Labour.

Apparently…. Centre for Cities was launched in March 2005 as part of IPPR and became independent in November 2007.

 So independent of the IPPR now…Labour’s very own think tank.

Just as today, in January the BBC, and Labour, ignored that inconvenient growth occurring in the regions…..

The story seems to ignore some other truths about ‘the Regions’…the streets may not be paved with  gold but things are moving:

Record growth for business activity

Business activity rose at a record rate in the West Midlands in December according to the latest purchasing managers report for Lloyds Bank Commercial Banking. West Midlands private sector companies reported increases for the eighth month in a row with the rate of expansion the strongest in the 16-year-old survey’s history.

This is from Manchester which they tell us is doomed:

It’s double joy for regional growth

10 Jan 2014 05:59

The city centre has seen a 40% increase in private sector jobs, and one of the UK’s largest expansions in recent years 

So why is the ‘Centre for Cities’ claiming, and the BBC reporting, this:

Manchester ‘underperforming’

So not a lot has changed since January…the BBC is still guilessly reporting Miliband’s every word without challenge….here is the BBC’s ‘expert’ Nick Robinson, who doesn’t bother to fact check Labour’s figures…reporting the ‘stark facts’ as given to him by Labour…until corrected by Tory MPs:

Labour is promising to give more power and more money to cities outside London and the regions that surround them.

It is one part of a series of policies designed to mend what the party is calling the “fractured economy” symbolised by one stark fact – eight out of 10 new private sector jobs created in the past four years have been created in London.

Robinson, the ‘expert’ political and economic journalist, who should be doing some spade work, has had to backtrack and ‘update’:

UPDATE 12:20 BST

When Ed Miliband spoke he dropped the quote in the press release of his speech about four out of five jobs being created in London since 2010.

This was after the Tories pointed out that his figures were 2 years out of date and highlighted the latest official ONS statistics that in the last year four out of five jobs were actually created outside London. This is the link to the latest data.

Robinson adds:

When I asked the Labour leader about this he replied that he was using the “best data I’ve seen”.

So why didn’t Robinson ask about the provenance of the figures in the first place?

The BBC seems all too ready to report Miliband’s claims without questioning the facts or whether the planned chnages are workable or not.

It is a different game with the Tories when Mark Easton is straight on their case should they make any questionable claims based on ‘dodgy’ statistics:

Are the Tories being honest with their claims on violent crime?

5 Live is having a shake up and a reshuffle  …..women are getting thinner on the ground and not much to keep Lenny Henry happy.

Derbyshire and Bacon are out….Adrian Chiles and Peter Allen doing Derbyshire’s shift on a job share basis….any bets Derbyshire won’t be working from Salford anymore?  Peter Allen slipping into Derbyshire’s high heels means there will be no shortage of comment on this site.

Sheila Fogarty is also off unfortunately, and no mention is made of Campbell.

Derbyshire told us of her departure today and said we could find details in the Press and on the Guardian’s website….not sure why anyone at the BBC would be promoting the Guardian website.

Richard Bacon and Victoria Derbyshire to leave 5 live

Richard Bacon and Victoria Derbyshire, two of the biggest names on 5 live, are to leave the station later this year.

Shelagh Fogarty will also move on in the autumn as part of a daytime shake-up for the BBC talk radio station.

Derbyshire said it would be “a huge wrench to leave”, while Bacon said he would “always be grateful” to 5 live.

The new schedule will see Adrian Chiles and Peter Allen host a new mid-morning programme, 5 live Daily, and a new afternoon show on every day but Friday.

Chiles will host 5 live Daily in the 10:00 to 13:00 slot on Mondays and Tuesdays, with Allen hosting for the rest of the week.

BBC Sport presenter Dan Walker and BBC Northern Ireland’s Sarah Brett will co-host the other new show, Afternoon Edition, from 13:00 to 16:00 on Monday to Thursday.

Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode’s Film Review show will retain the afternoon slot on Fridays after a new Friday Sports Panel between 13:00 and 14:00.

Tony Livesey will take on Allen’s current role as co-presenter of Drive, with Chris Warburton taking over Livesey’s slot on Weekend Breakfast.

Punditry show Fighting Talk will also have two new hosts in Georgie Thompson and stand-up comedian Josh Widdicombe.

“Victoria, Shelagh and Richard have all played such key roles delivering fantastic live radio and I wish them every success with their future projects,” said 5 live controller Jonathan Wall.

“This Autumn feels the right time to refresh parts of our schedule as we follow on from what’s already proving to be a wonderful sporting summer.”

“5 live has been a spectacular place to work, I’ve got nothing but good things to say about it,” said Bacon, whose new projects include a BBC One talent search for “Britain’s best amateur painter”.

“It’s been a hugely important part of my career and life, and I’ll always be grateful, and a listener.”

In her own statement, Fogarty said 5 live had given her “some of the happiest times and richest experiences” of her working life.

“I’m very sad to be leaving but it’s definitely time to do so,” she went on. “I’m spending the summer exploring a number of opportunities, before deciding what’s next.”

I tuned into the BBC Today programme this morning before 7am. I was informed that the savage murder of the three young Israeli boys “may” have been “an unauthorised kidnapping” that “went wrong” and thus is no reflection on the good name of Hamas. This is EXACTLY how the BBC responded to the IRA’s bombing of Canary Wharf if you will recall – they instinctively default to the position that any terrorist act carried out is somehow a rogue one, not planned and most certainly not authorised. Just wait for this story to develop when Israel responds to the Hamas barbarism and John Humphrys can sigh about how this “sets back the peace process”.

“Three dead Israeli teenagers responsible for innocent Palestinian deaths….”

The BBC moves on swiftly. It most certainly annoyed Cameron’s humiliation over Juncker and will give Labour one more chance today to rub as much salt into the wounds as possible. But the BBC is keen to allow Germans such as Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble to suggest that the UK can now trust Merkel to be more sympathetic to our aims. He was on Today this morning being given a very sympathetic hearing so that his siren voice could add to that chorus of those europhiles around Cameron who seek to delude us that things will somehow, magically, be different the next time the UK seeks to stop “the project” The BBC is deeply committed to the EU and plays a very clever and treacherous game.

I am sure you will have seen this from the BBC.

Islamist militant group Isis has said it is establishing a caliphate, or Islamic state, on the territories it controls in Iraq and Syria. It also proclaimed the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, as caliph and “leader for Muslims everywhere”. Setting up a caliphate ruled by the strict Islamic law has long been a goal of many jihadists.

This suggests that only Jihadists want to see a global caliphate but surely this is not quite the case. Many Islamic scholars around the world also advance the idea of a caliphate, it’s just that the Jihadists are the cutting edge to achieve this. I wish the BBC was not so dhimmified that it fails to confront the core dynamic behind Islam – Dar al Harb.

Here you go, on-time and all ready to go, a NEW Open Thread. Please detail the bias here….

The BBC has a new series, The Honourable Woman, starting next Thursday.

It is about a Jewish woman on a one woman peace mission to the Middle East.  Wonder who the villains will be.

Here’s the Telegraph’s take:

Gyllenhaal plays Nessa Stein, a British citizen but an Israeli Jew by origin, whose father– a Zionist gunrunner – was murdered in front of her when she was a child. She has inherited his ill-gotten fortune and used it to create a foundation that forges relationships between Israel and Palestine. When we first see Nessa, she announces a contract to lay fibre-optic cables in the West Bank, but the ghosts of the past haunt her and the internecine plot shows that her father’s murderous legacy is a curse.

Another daunting aspect of The Honourable Woman was its subject matter, bound to provoke strong reactions. “[The Israel-Palestine question] is so polarising because everyone has such a tight grip on their feelings. Throughout the eight hours we veer from one way to another and people will say, ‘Oh my God, they are being totally pro-Israeli or totally pro-Palestinian.’ But because the piece has been written with such compassion, I hope people will loosen their grip on either side.”

This may sound naive but Gyllenhaal is aware that a few hours of drama is unlikely to aid the peace process and she was sensitive to the intransigence of the situation throughout filming.

Here’s the Guardian’s:

“It’s about Israel and Palestine, refracted through the prism of a family,” Blick explains, fully aware that this sounds like a tough sell. He reveals that he took the idea to Janice Hadlow, the controller of BBC2, who made two recommendations. “She said, ‘Not too much sand’, by which she meant, ‘Make it make sense to a UK audience,’” Blick says. And the other? “The other was, ‘Don’t kill too many children…’” he says, laughing.

It casts Gyllenhaal as Nessa Stein, a British businesswoman with a bird’s-eye view of the intractable conflict in the Middle East. Her father’s company sold munitions; Stein, though, wants it be a force for good, and has moved the company into telecommunications. It’s an eight-part thriller that finds as much drama in affluent London as it does in the West Bank, and articulates the conflict there in personal as well as political terms. It travels back and forth in time, revealing ghastly truths in a beguilingly casual way.

I am certain that it would be foolish to prejudge the BBC and the arts world when it comes to creating the ‘ghastly truth’ about Israel and the Palestinians, and all without killing ‘too many children’….based upon the nefarious activities of a Zionist father who flooded the Middle East with arms, a daughter who wants to right his ‘wrongs’, and a murdered Palestinian businessman.

Any bets there will be a Palestinian suicide bomber blowing himself up in a restaurant,  ‘driven’ to do the deed by the oppressive and vicious illegal occupation of the West Bank by the nazi-like, Zionist IDF.

Enjoy.

Mail: Police hunting for group of ‘Asian men’ who took a 17-year-old girl into woods and gang-raped her

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2673311/Teenager-17-taken-woods-gang-raped-group-Asian-men-Berkshire.html

BBC: Police seek group of men in Slough after teenager raped

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-berkshire-28072433

Muslim men might be more precise…..

The BBC’s early morning Labour Party Indoctrination broadcast, Wake Up To Money, is always worth a visit if you need a good laugh, the two usual presenters offering us a resolutely unusual world view….fortunately most of the guests, with some exceptions, talk a lot of sense…which is then completely ignored by the dynamic duo in charge.

Tuesday was an exception (34 mins) when the guest was brought in to bolster the BBC’s pro-HS2 stance and we had a bit of a love-in and not many hard questions about HS3, the newly proposed East/West high speed line.  As the guest, Sim Harris from Rail News, is a hardened advocate of HS2 we were hardly likely to get a reasoned and measured line from him….as his own thoughts on objectors to HS2 show.

WUTM has always been highly dismissive of the government’s claims about job creation and an improving economy, pouring large amounts of cold water, scorn and derision upon any ‘good news’….for instance still telling us we narrowly missed a triple dip recession even after we knew that there had not even been a double dip recession.

How different when it suits though.  On Wednesday the ‘Living Wage Commision’ pronounced that the government must ensure everyone gets a pay rise to a level determined by the LWC.

WUTM was doing a bit of cheerleading on Wednesday morning on their behalf. (05:47)

Some businessmen were brought in to tell us their thoughts…unsurprisingly they suggested it depended upon the state of the economy whereupon the BBC’s Adam Parsons leapt into action and said:

‘But we’re out of recession, there comes a time when we can’t keep saying we’re barely out of a recession…. because we are out of recession, there is growth’

Funny that the usual refrain  on the programme is just how ‘fragile’ the economy is…heard them say it several times this week.

Mickey Clark, the other presenter, added his thoughts and stated that we could afford to pay a living wage because the ‘jobs situation is so vibrant now’.

This is the same Mickey Clark who consistently, day in, day out, tells us that we can’t trust the government figures, that the jobs created are rubbish being all part time, ZHC or self employed, or worthless jobs like gardeners or painters.

How different when it suits.  Suddenly the economy is booming and the jobs market is vibrant and healthy.

And just who or what is the Living Wage Commission?  You might have thought from the way the BBC introduces it that it is an official government body….but it isn’t….it’s just the usual left wing pressure group campaigning for issues close to Labour’s heart.

The Church heads it, along with various charity leading lights, the head of the TUC, a Unison member, and one possible ‘righty’ from the British Chamber of Commerce.

The ‘Living Wage’ is of course a central Labour Party policy.

Good of the BBC to be so obliging in pushing the Labour Party agenda so discreetly.