Category Archives: UK economy

THINGS ARE NOT LOOKING UP – EVEN WHEN THEY ARE!

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I am sure the BBC must have been gutted with headlines such as “Economy recovering better than expected” as the UK defied many of the “experts” and posted decent growth. However it is vital that people don’t get the impression that after a decade of socialism we are now on the right path to recovery and so the BBC runs the story today that “UK Economy to slow in 2011.”  The BBC is looking forward to waging war on the Coalition next year and it will use every opportunity to convey the impression that things can only improve if we allow Labour back in!

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Dirigism rules, ok!

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Well, maybe not that exactly, but something close to the BBC’s heart- the idea that Government should intervene as much as possible in the economy. In this article the BBC gives us a tale of two factories, one in Wales, one in England. One helped by the Welsh Assembly, one not helped by Westminster, you see where this is going?

It would be a neat little comparison were they not comparing a dishwasher assembly plant with LDV van manufacturers. It’s surely apples and pears. Subsidies of the sort offered in Wales may work for light industrial jobs, but probably not for complex manufacturers like LDV. Yet the BBC give vent to their conviction that Government should be helping, and there is no balancing voice.

A second dimension to the article is the free publicity and praise it offers to the devolved Welsh Assembly, which is made without reference to the Barnett formula by which the Welsh get a thousand squid more per head than the English from the central kitty- thereby potentially more than funding the scheme the BBC is set on praising, the so-called “ProAct”.

Naturally I sympathise with the workers who are struggling, and I also resent the Government’s preference for their corporate socialist big banking buddies, but the BBC is trying desperately to pretend that from the crisis there are good socialist lessons to be learnt. There aren’t. But even if there were some, there are other sides which should be considered alongside- such as the question of the long term sustainability of certain businesses (eg. especially automobile) in changing times, and the need for a low tax environment to help swell investment.

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Credibility Gap

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The BBC and the Government are constantly on the look out for good news about the economy, while bad news is given the heave ho. For the BBC, this is big news, this, not so much. Then you have fatuous features like this one.

My point is that it doesn’t do any good to demean journalism for political purposes. Gordon Brown doesn’t do himself any good pretending that his actions aren’t dictated by his need to avoid responsibility for past mistakes. He’ll be far better off when he follows Susan to the Priory. The BBC does no good pretending that the crash isn’t a crash but merely a hiccup in domestic demand which is being overcome pronto. It’ll be far better off when it’s being looked after by someone who understands the media in society, like Simon Cowell. Denial is the way to turn a crisis into a greek drama.

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THE SUN SETS IN THE EAST

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I noticed the BBC reporting the latest shockingly bad economic figures from Japan. The first three months of 2009 saw the Japanese economy shrink at its quickest pace since records began. Output in the world’s second largest economy contracted by 4% during this period, or by 15.2% on an annualised basis. Given that Britain under Prudence Brown is following the same disastrous path of “quantitative easing” and “stimulus” that is failing in Japan, I look forward to Robert Peston and the rest of the BBC’s crack economic experts flagging this up.

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