Category Archives: pro Labour at all times

It’s a real toughie for them, isn’t it? I mean the BBC seemed so delighted, ecstatic even,  that Bob Diamond has gone but now..gulp… Labour have been dragged into the whole “Who fixed Libor” scandal. And with Brown and Balls in the frame, along with other luminaries such as Darling, damage control has to be exercised.

Anyone catch Lord Myners on Today this morning being given a gentle canter around the topic. His line is that no one in Government would have been talking to the BOE about the need to lower LIBOR and that this is just a Tory wind up to distract from their own problems.  Thing is – I am sure that you, dear reader, like me, well remember the BBC droning on and on about the fact that the evil banks were NOT lowering LIBOR back in 2008. This was presented as a major impediment to economic recovery back then yet now,  as scandal threatens Labour, the memory banks are erased. It wasn’t a big issue it seems; no one in Government talked about it; wheat production was at record levels. HOW can the BBC let Labour get away with this outrageous revisionism? How can we let the BBC away with their duplicitous role in this? The FACT is that the BBC raised LIBOR lending as a massive issue, I can remember discussions on Today and elsewhere, but now it accepts the sanguine line spun by Liebor that it wasn’t an issue for discussion. That would have been inappropriate, it seems!! This is damage control being facilitated by the State Broadcaster.

The BBC had quite a rattle at the alleged “exploitation” of the unemployed by the wicked employer CPUK at the River Pageant yesterday. This Guardian/Labour/BBC assault now looks a little shoddy when we read…

“The company has also received messages from other volunteers. One said they were ‘treated with the utmost respect and highly praised for the work we had done’, while others said they were looking forward to working with CPUK again at the Olympics. The 80 or so volunteers were taken on through the Government’s apprentice and work programme schemes, which aim to help the long-term jobless back into work.

Of these, 50 under the age of 25 were paid the Government’s standard rate for apprentices of £2.60 per hour and the other 30 either accepted the same rate or refused payment because it would adversely affect their benefits.

The complaints were reported at length by The Guardian, which quoted two unnamed jobseekers claiming they were forced to camp overnight under London Bridge before they started work on the river pageant.

They were then picked up by BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, becoming the subject of its main interview slot at 8.10am, and again by The World At One at lunchtime.”

As was also brought to my attention, did the two anonymous complainants receive payment in any form for their story from the Guardian and if so, will they ensure this income is reported to the Department that pays their Benefit?

The only sort of hunting the BBC seems to delight in is that of Conservative MP Jeremy Hunt. I see they are now flogging this story as if it were the single most important issue in the UK.  The origin of this latest nonsense lies – if you notice – in the complaint of a single Labour MP. That’s good enough for the BBC to instantly escalate this to MAJOR news status and the scent of conservative blood is in the air. Tally-ho…..

Biased BBC’s Alan notes

“As you know the BBC had  Mervyn King do a speech for them last night but seem rather shy about revealing some the contents so far…

Mervyn King in a speech for the BBC Today programme states that because Labour’s economic policies and failure to control the banks we have lost 1 million jobs in the UK.
The Telegraph has a report here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9242161/Labour-lost-a-million-jobs-says-Bank-chief.html

The BBC website hides the high profile speech on the politics page and fails to mention Labour losing us 1 million jobs but does blame King for the recession and states that ‘He also admitted the BoE should have done more to avert the banking crisis.’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17929120

The BBC then bring on Labour’s pet economist who writes for the New Statesman and the Guardian promoting Labour’s policy of more borrowing and spending ……
‘However, David Blanchflower, a former member of the BoE’s Monetary Policy Committee, accused Sir Mervyn of being “disingenuous”.
“If Mervyn King had thought more regulation was important he could’ve done something about it. And because he didn’t he must take responsibility for the fact the Bank of England missed the biggest financial crisis in a century,” he told BBC Radio 5 live.’

What did King say?

‘So why, you might ask, did the Bank of England not do more to prevent the disaster? We should have. But the power to regulate banks had been taken away from us in 1997. Our power was limited to that of publishing reports and preaching sermons.
With the benefit of hindsight, we should have shouted from the rooftops that a system had been built in which banks were too important to fail, that banks had grown too quickly and borrowed too much, and that so-called ‘light-touch’ regulation hadn’t prevented any of this.
From the beginning of 2008, we at the Bank of England began to argue that UK banks needed extra capital – a lot of extra capital, possibly £100 billion or more. It wasn’t a popular message. But nine months later, market pressure forced banks to raise new capital or accept it from the state. UK tax payers ended up owning large portions of two of our four biggest banks, Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds TSB, but almost all banks would have failed had not taxpayer support been extended. That bold action in October 2008 could have happened sooner.
Bailing out the banks came too late though to prevent the financial crisis from spilling over into the world economy.
Over 25 million jobs disappeared worldwide. And unemployment in Britain rose by over a million.’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9718000/9718062.stm
　
Couldn’t be much clearer even in diplomatic speak….power to regulate the banks was taken away from the BoE by Labour in 1997, Brown’s ‘light touch’ regulation failed to control the banks, the BoE warned Brown from the start of 2008 to pump capital into the banks, a warning which was ignored, and that Labour’s failure to control the economy cost over 1 million jobs.

Astonishing cover up for Brown who fails to get a name check. This is a speech commissioned by the BBC itself, for its most prestigious political news programme ‘Today’ and yet the story is buried on the ‘back pages’ and anything detrimental to Labour removed or ‘neutralised’ by an opposing voice.

It is a sure bet that if King had said Osborne must change tack and adopt the mythical ‘Plan B’ it would be front page news. Labour does not need large political donations to fund its campaigns when it has the taxpayer funding its  propaganda arm through the BBC license fee.

It all seems so plausible.

Here’s a classic clip from BBC Today this morning with Evan Davies showing his OUTRAGE that someone might suggest that a LABOUR party appointed panel to review future UK policing needs may be somewhat unbalanced. Poor old Blair Gibbs of the “right leaning” Policy Exchange think tank  is constantly interrupted, laughed at and contradicted because he has the temerity to suggest that Labour is biased in terms of how it seeks to review UK policing. Davies gives such a robust defence of Labour that I am sure Miliband will be on the phone later to express his deep appreciation…

The strange quality about BBC coverage of the Labour Party conference is the way in which 6th May 2010 has become Year Zero. The 13 years of Labour mismanagement of the economy are now being deliberately erased as if they never happened. This, of course, is the only way that Miliband and his cheer-leaders can try and reinvent themselves and even then it is highly dubious if most people will buy the lie. I listened to a remarkable Today interview with Yvette Cooper on the issue of Immigration this morning. Any neutral observer will accept that Labour deliberately pursued an Open Doors policy during their years in power. The traumatic consequences are transgenerational (Not least in some core Labour voting areas) and include such further disturbing facts as 40% of the growth in households between 2001 and 2008 being down to Immigration. But Cooper has no intention of taking any responsibility for this and Naughtie has no intention of interrogating her on it.  Instead, she was allowed to make general blandisments, waffle about points based rules, and then attack the Coalition. It is stunning to see Labour get away with all this revisionism, be it on Immigation, on the Economy, on Employment, on Health, on Education – but then again when we consider that the BBC was an enthusiastic propagandist for all of this societal nihilism, may be should NOT be that surprised?

I take a great interest in the Economy and so I am increasingly perplexed at the BBC/Flanders/Balls meme which suggests the UK can choose either “austerity” or “growth”. This makes no sense but it is how left wing politicians like to portray the situation. I keep hearing BBC interviewers ruminate on whether we should be adopting “Plan B” and choosing growth AS IF this was a real option. It’s not!! The current UK government – indeed any government – will always prefer to see economic growth. But that is virtually beside the facts that; a/ We have a massive structural debt as a result of years of Labour fiscal recklessness that must be addressed even if it means fewer Diversity Czars  and b/ Economic growth is a desirable outcome, not a specific policy. This is an entirely bogus argument which has been advanced by the BBC on behalf of Labour for some months now. It is also shameless because the very Labour politicians such as Balls who wrecked our economy are now posturing as the saviours of it and rather than interrogate the inherent hypocrisy and fiscal folly of what is being advocated, they simple cheer-lead for this mindlessness. I disagree with plenty of things the Coalition are doing but for anyone to pretend that it is wilfully ignoring “growth” is just plain nonsense and the BBC really needs to get to grips with itself on this issue.

It seems no one has told the BBC that Tessa Jowell is no longer in Government. The shadow Olympics minister is the go-to gal for the BBC when it comes to 2012 and true to form she was afforded the prime time slot on Today this morning – with no one from the Government on! It looks like the BBC want to ensure that Labour bask in any glory of the Olympics and their flame for the dreadful Howell burns bright.