We hear endless sob stories on the BBC about tenants having to move house due to the governments ‘bedroom tax’….or spare room subsidy reduction if you prefer.

We hear the ‘vulnerable’ are being targeted and discriminated against, the poorest in society victimised and cities being ‘cleansed’ of the poor.

Well you can argue about that endlessly but what about at the other end of the scale….those high earners who refuse to budge from their social housing subsidised by the tax payer?

Guido certainly had several pops at the likes of Bob Crow who has such a home.

But how often do we hear about the government’s ‘Pay to Stay’ initiative where the higher your income the more you must pay to stay in social housing?

Can’t say I have ever heard the BBC mention it.

In the Guardian there are objections to taxing the rich!:

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation and others have persevered with ideas of mixed communities and the benefits of mixing households with different income levels in the same physical space. Now it’s full steam ahead for the ghetto.

Inside Housing objects too claiming it is more a political stunt than a proper policy:

Pay to stay has probably already achieved its political purpose in generating headlines about Bob Crow and Frank Dobson. As a housing policy it is at best a contradictory distraction from the real issues. 

And:

‘…on a deeper level it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that this is really about accelerating the Conservative end-game for social housing: reducing it to a residualised rump reserved for the very poorest while leaving everything else to the market.’

Well…er….yes…isn’t that the idea of council/social housing…to provide subsidised/low rent homes for those on low incomes?….or are we to look on the likes of Bob Crow as some sort of missionary?  Before we had well intentioned priests who used to travel to darkest Africa to bring civilisation to the natives…now it’s the well heeled union barons bringing ‘gentrification’ and  fine dining to the ‘Chavs’.

Guess when you are a Tory led government you  just can’t win.

Would be nice to hear Victoria Derbyshire and Co expand their repertoire and at least pay lip service to the fact that the rich are being targeted along with the poorest….the rich of course being hit with proportionately far bigger tax rises than any other income level.

Harriet Harman suggested a cap on ownership of  the media but wanted to exclude the BBC from such considerations:

No, the BBC is not included…there is all the difference in the world between a privately owned broadcaster and a public broadcaster which has its own mechanisms for accountability [ha ha] and no I don’t include it as a monopoly…it’s not a private monopoly.

I put it on one side….the standards the BBC offers are important..it offers a gold standard for other broadcasters…the role of the BBC is absolutely essential…there is no need for protection from the BBC, far from it, we need to strengthen the BBC.

The government may though include the BBC:

The BBC could be included in any potential move to limit media ownership, the Government will announce today.

Culture Secretary Maria Miller will launch a consultation on rules governing media plurality, asking for the first time whether the state broadcaster should be covered.

If the BBC was included in rules designed to prevent any one media organisation becoming too powerful, it could be forced to rein in its dominant news website.

The BBC said:

In its own submissions to Ofcom’s review of media ownership and plurality, the BBC argued that it should be excluded from calculations because of its public service role.

The DCMS said:

‘It also makes sense that when you are trying to ensure that a particular viewpoint does not dominate the media that you ask whether the BBC should be included.’

The BBC more often than not will reveal to us, in the interest of transparency and impartiality, that a think tank is right leaning.

It is a rarity to see left wing think tanks or charities similarly defined.

I have yet to hear The New Economic Foundation so described despite being not just left leaning but out on the fringes of the loony left, the Resolution Foundation or the Rowntree Foundation are never called ‘left leaning’ despite that obviously being the case.

Today the BBC brings us the Million+ think tank, ‘a think tank that also represents newer universities‘ which is telling us that ‘England’s teacher training system ‘broken down’

The system of planning teacher training in England has broken down and risks a future shortage of teachers, a university think tank says.

In her evidence to the committee, Pam Tatlow, chief executive of Million+ – a think tank that also represents newer universities – said School Direct, , which is focused around on-the-job, school-based training, had been introduced “without any robust assessment of its impact on teacher supply”.

Pam Tatlow?   Ever heard that name before?  You might have…she was in the news not so long ago….as a short listed Labour party candidate.

You’d have thought that might just be a bit relevant when you have a person strongly criticising government policy and yet is Labour through and through.

Apparently the BBC doesn’t think that to be the case.

Kebab Time has some taxing questions for Labour…I wonder if the BBC has any…though Labour’s Margaret Hodge threatening legal action if the BBC asked any questions about Stemcor’s tax affairs silenced them pretty quickly….that and the fact that they weren’t very keen to ‘kebab’ her any way.

Kebab Time posts this from the Times:

Will Hodge be demanding Labour cough up some of that £24 million they took from the Unions over the last 3 years…you know…..moral duty and all that…just as she suggests all those commercial companies do…above and beyond their legal requirements?

No doubt there is a completely valid technical reason why Labour dodges tax…..still….moral responsibility and all that…eh?

I imagine the BBC would be just as disinterested if it was the Tory party dodging tax…..the Tories paying, according to the Times, £521,000….Labour nothing…and yet Labour has more funding than the Tories…work that out.

Labour tops party funds league table

Labour remains the best-funded UK political party, reporting income of more than £33m in 2012.

Accounts for 2012 show it received more than the combined figure for the Tories, £24.2m, and the Lib Dems, £6m.

No ‘Labour Tops Party Funding Tax Avoidance League Table’ report from the BBC?

The Energy and Climate Change Committee published its thoughts on energy companies and pricing today which the BBC has concentrated on….but the ECCC also released its latest publications on smart metering.…they will cost us £12 billion…but save us £18 billion….because that’s the way government, publicly funded ,computer projects always work…they always come in under budget and save us money…don’t they?

The BBC has been running quite a few studies looking at the introduction of smart meters.

But one thing it hasn’t told us is this:

Smart meters will be rolled out as standard across the country by 2020.

But there will not be a legal obligation on individuals to have one.

Energy companies will be required to install smart meters and take all reasonable steps to reach everyone. However, we do not expect energy companies to take legal action to fit a smart meter if they cannot get the householder’s co-operation.

That came from the government’s own information and advice site on smart meters.

Nothing to do with BBC bias but it would have been nice to be told such a relevant thing when these meters are so controversial….just a failure to report the basic, essential facts.

The meters are a security threat, not just to your own data but to the national grid….apart from that they are unlikely to reduce your energy use….you may switch using energy at peak times for cheaper periods…but that doesn’t reduce overall energy consumption.

This is how to successfully reduce energy use:

If you really want to reduce energy consumption, extreme social pressure is the way to do it, says Prof Anderson.

A “pervasive surveillance structure” for society with a public hall of shame, singling out worst offending households to ridicule, would work, says Prof Anderson. “But the implications for social liberties are appalling.”

All made possible by the smart meter recording your every move.

Just been treated to Nicky Campbell talking to Ed Davey about energy companies in relation to the Energy and Climate Change Committee’s highly political statement that the companies are not doing enough  to make company profits transparent.

Campbell fully accepted that statement and didn’t challenge it in the slightest and only wheeled in Ed Davey to confirm the statement and back it up with yet more government waffle.

Not a hint that prices have risen enormously because of the government’s green taxes….probably because the ball was set rolling by Ed Miliband and his legal requirement to reduce CO2 by 80% by 2050….and of course the BBC supports that line of thinking.

Not a hint that this might be a politicised response to the energy companies recent statements that it is government taxes that are raisng prices inordinately.

The real question about transparency is just how much extra tax burden is loaded onto consumers by those government green taxes?  Just how many people are forced into fuel poverty by that, just how many died because they couldn’t afford to heat their homes…having to choose…as the BBC so often likes to state in other contexts…between eating and heating?

So yet again the BBC covers up the adverse side effects of green policy….all those green BBC pension funds must be kept solvent ….and covers up for Labour’s Leader just as it did over his ‘Unite scandal’…..refusing to be ‘transparent’ about his knowledge and cooperation with Unite’s vote rigging.

Oh look…here is the ECCC’s summary….the first paragraph:

Rising energy prices are a worry for households across the UK. Since 2007 average prices of gas and electricity have risen by 41% and 20% in the UK in real terms, according to DECC. This has had an adverse impact on fuel poor households and thrown Government targets to eliminate the problem by 2016 off-course.

The main driver behind energy price rises has been wholesale gas and electricity costs, but network charges, energy and climate change policies, and company costs and profits also contribute. In future, DECC estimates that its energy and climate change policies will add 33% to the average electricity price paid by UK households in 2020, in addition to any potential wholesale price rises.

The Government must not forget that rising prices are exacerbating fuel poverty.

Energy is becoming increasingly unaffordable for low-income families living in poorly insulated and inefficient homes. Yet just as the situation for the most vulnerable is worsening, it appears that fuel poverty policy has effectively been frozen. Spending on the problem has been cut in England and some of the Government’s fuel poverty programmes appear to be in hiatus.

Ministers have been unacceptably slow to respond to the Hills Review and take action to stem the problem. It is imperative that the Government’s new fuel poverty strategy, expected at the end of this year, is not delayed any further. It should be published and implemented as an urgent priority.

Note that ‘ In future, DECC estimates that its energy and climate change policies will add 33% to the average electricity price paid by UK households in 2020.’

Note that ‘urgent priority’ for the  government to get on with dealing with fuel poverty…and yet the BBC concentrates on company profits.

Odd how the BBC highlight the bit about company profits, especially as prices are driven up mainly by wholesale prices and not increasing profit margins,  but sidelines the bit about fuel poverty caused by government green policies.

Here the BBC’s web report….note the small bit tagged on at the bottom:

Fuel poverty

The Energy and Climate Change Committee also reprimanded the government for not doing enough to help low-income families struggling with fuel poverty.

The committee argued that the use of levies on fuel bills to raise funds for social and environmental programmes could end up hitting those on low incomes

The BBC misses out the bit about government failures on tackling fuel poverty and the urgent priority to do so.

The BBC has been hailing the efforts of John Kerry in the past few days as he cobbles together another doomed set of “peace talks” in the middle east between Israel and Palestinians.  The BBC have been pontificating about the tough choices that BOTH sides have had to make to even get this far. On examination (mine!) this reduces down to Israel releasing 100 Palestinian criminals (bad call, btw) and Abbas agreeing to talk!! Hardly a concession from the Palestinians and yet portrayed as momentous. Throughout this new charade, the BBC will do everything possible to posture for the Palestinians “Judenfrei” solution and if Netanyahu thinks he will win media approval in the likes of the BBC by releasing Palestinian thugs he is in for a nasty surprise in my view.

When it comes to the ongoing friction between Spain and Gibraltar, and in particular the current bully boy tactics used by the Spanish Government to inconvenience Gibraltarians  crossing the border, it will be interesting to see the BBC approach. I thought this was a pretty fair commentary on it but am aware that Today are covering it later this morning and one can’t help but feel rather in the Argentina/Falklands situation, BBC sympathies must lie with the Spanish bullies.

Yes, here is an Open Thread ON TIME! Enjoy it and fill it.

BBC Sunday Morning Live was particularly appalling this morning. The lead debate asked whether whether Muslims were being demonised. We had Mehdi Hasan asking the question and talking over everybody else. We had Anne Atkinson who agreed Muslims were being demonised and Douglas Murray who opined that they weren’t. We had Fiyaz Mughal, from Tell Mama, lined up to back the meme but when the poll result came in, once again viewers rejected the notion  by some 4:1.  Naturally Mehdi was allowed the last word on this and claimed this proved just how demonised muslims were!!!