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Time for a new Open Thread, slightly early as the last one is bulging at the seams.

Good hunting!

The BBC presents  a fairly unsophisticated picture of this country’s economic state and the debate surrounding it.  It allows them of course to control the debate and what is said more easily….at a basic level it can invite on speakers who it knows may not be very good at getting their views across (probably a Tory)…or someone who is rather good at ‘soundbite’ debating (usually a Labour person).

AA Gill in The Sunday Times a few weeks back said this about the BBC’s TV approach to debate (and I think it is a fair comment on the Today programme):

‘[This raises] a bigger question about how we treat politics and current affairs on television. It is almost always confrontational and rabidly partisan, a four-minute, invigilated slanging match that is  intellectually bankrupt and obtuse. Television’s way of exploring issues is always more about the desire for lively television than illuminating arguments. The cast list of pugilists, hack and thwarted politicians who will turn up at any studio, anywhere, in the early evening has become the constitutional version of Mexican wrestling: shouty and phoney. Question Time, in particular, needs to be seriously reimagined. None of this is about involving the viewers in political debate or thought. It’s thuggish and dispiriting and adds to the general disgust with the whole political caste.’

Even the grand Paxman himself agrees the BBC has dumbed down:

We all remember Paxman telling us all about it in 2007:

“In this press of events there often isn’t time to get out and find things out: you rely upon second-hand information-quotes from powerful vested interests, assessments from organisations which do the work we don’t have time for, even, god help us, press releases from public relations agencies. The consequence is that what follows isn’t analysis. It’s simply comment, because analysis takes time, and comment is free.”

The biggest and most important debate right now is whether the Coalition is making ‘savage’ cuts that are bringing the economy to a grinding halt and whether Labour’s plan to spend more are the only way forward….in other words does ‘Austerity’ work….This suggests it does…but you won’t hear it on the BBC.

Which is why the most important questions are just how much is the Coalition cutting and how much are they borrowing? This is the heart of the matter…the crucial difference between Balls and Osborne, but….

…they are two questions that the BBC singularly fails to ask never mind answer.  To do so would cut the rug from under Balls completely when the Public realise debt is rising now even with ‘cuts’…so imagine how much bigger the debts burden would be under Labour’s profligate ways. 

John Redwood, Tory MP, has been consistently trying to get his point across that there are no real cuts in government overall spending at the moment….the NHS for example is having more money spent on it…but that money is being reallocated within the NHS…so some sectors are losing money others are gaining..but overall the NHS spend is going up.

The fact is debt is going up, just at a slower rate. 

Look at this from the Spectator’s Fraser Nelson who talks about how the truth is being hidden (and Osborne gets some of the blame himself to be fair)

 ‘Like Brown, Osborne’s reaction to economic trouble is to borrow more. He may well be right to do so, but he ought to be honest about it. This matters, because it’s not his money. Every penny of money his government borrows has to be repaid by ordinary people.’

He goes on to suggest we are being badly served by the BBC who fail to make the debate  understandable and wide ranging enough:

 ‘Osborne ought to be shocked at the opinion polls showing that only about a tenth of the public understand that he’s massively increasing the debt, and that most people think he’s reducing it.’

‘The BBC ought to be the custodians of this, with its role as a public service broadcaster. But the BBC has adopted a Balls-lite narrative of harsh, radical cuts – and won’t back down from it.’

In the comments ‘#88′  links us to this which reveals the effect on manufacturing  employment that Labour’s massive Public Sector ‘national service’ scheme had: 

‘The Keynes vs Hayek debate is at its sharpest on the issue of employment. Can government create jobs (as Balls says)? Or does large public sector employment simply displace economic activity that would happen elsewhere (as Osborne says)? A fascinating study has been released today by the Spatial Economics Research Centre at the LSE showing the damage done by public sector employment to the real economy. Drawing on a huge amount of local-level data over an eight-year period, it’s a serious piece of research that is worth looking into and deserves to impact our economic debate.

1. First, what is seen. In the short term, hiring someone to work for the government means another worker, who in turn spends. As the report puts it, ‘additional jobs may be generated as a result of increased demand for locally produced goods and services’. That is what is seen. In the short term — 2003-07 is the time period looked at — the study finds that for every 100 extra public sector jobs you get 50 additional jobs in the service and construction industries.

2. Next, what is unseen. Namely, the effect on other industries. For every 100 extra public sector jobs, the study finds 40 fewer jobs in manufacturing, because local businesses find it harder to hire people. This essentially cancels out the benefit in the service industry. As the study says, ‘Public sector employment has little effect on total private sector employment in the short run’. Over that four year period, expanding the public sector didn’t crowd out the private sector, but it didn’t help it grow either.

3. In the long-term, the public sector crowds out the private sector. Crucially, over a longer period (1999-2007) the study finds that enlarging the public sector causes even greater pain to manufacturing with no gain in the services industry. In fact, adding 100 extra public sector jobs leads to 100 fewer private sector ones, and leaves the overall employment level unchanged.

What the study does not say, but is blindingly obvious, is that manufacturing jobs are a whole lot more beneficial to the economy than public sector pen-pushers. So the net effect of all this is to make government bigger, but everyone poorer.’

If the BBC are not discussing this study that Nelson has summed up for you above then you have to seriously question the BBC’s professionalism and impartiality and its ability to inform and educate the public about the  most serious and important issues in the public domain.

Today’s interview by Evan Davis of Ed Balls did neither of them any credit. Davis failed to get Balls to reveal what his actual plans are for the economy and how much they will cost in borrowing, and Balls ignored all the questions and ploughed on battering us over the head with his ‘Plan B’……or ‘Going For Broke’ as you might like to call it.

Nick Robinson ‏@bbcnickrobinson
Think it’s time someone arranged for a re-match in which @edballsmp interviews @EvanHD. One for Children in Need if not @BBCr4?!

Davis became so frustrated that he almost lost his temper at one stage…though he did get a small ‘Grrrgh!’ out of Balls when Davis stated the obvious…that Balls’ plans for more borrowing would merely burden future generations with debt….so why not try monetary policy first?

David Smith ‏@dsmitheconomics
‘I think Ed Balls might be advised to steer clear of Evan Davis for future Today interviews. And Ed needs to brush up on the 1930s’

Balls of course would have none of it…..he had his story and he was sticking to it….the Coalition’s ‘fiscal crunch’ had choked off the economy and growth, monetary policy and liquidity weren’t the answer……because they didn’t answer the fundamental problem…which is…lack of confidence in the future economy by the public and businesses.

Lack of confidence might be a problem…along with lack of cash….but you could ask who caused the confidence shortfall in the first place?

Apart from the BBC itself contributing to the atmosphere of doom and gloom (see also the recent survey on the NHS which bore little relation to the real state of the Service and claimed everyone was deeply worried about it….likely due to the BBC’s relentless doom mongering about the NHS) could it be one E. Balls Esq who likes to shout from the roof tops that we are ‘doomed, all doomed’……

“These are the darkest, most dangerous times for the global economy in my lifetime. Our country – the whole of the world – is facing a threat that most of us only have ever read about in the history books – a lost decade of economic stagnation.”
He said: “This is not a crisis of debt as the government claims, which can be solved country by country, by austerity, cuts and retrenchment, but truly a global growth crisis which is deepening and becoming more dangerous by the day.”

or this….
Ed Balls: ‘Lost decade’ for economy looms if George Osborne fails to act
Shadow chancellor warns of Japanese-style stagnation without plan for jobs and growth.
The British economy risks being plunged into a lost decade of Japanese-style stagnation unless the government tempers its austerity drive with a plan for jobs and growth, Ed Balls warns today.

Iain ‏@Iain_31
Ed Balls really needs to stop smirking with saying the country is in recession

As well as using Japan as a ‘gold standard’ example of why austerity doesn’t work he harks back to the 1930’s to claim we spent our way out of the Depression.

Firstly Japan spent billions to try and dig its way out of recession and famously failed. Secondly Britain implemented far more swingeing ‘cuts’ in the 1930’s  than we have now at present…and only began tax cuts when the economy was on a firmer footing.

‘Myths about the 1930s abound and not just among Labour politicians. Ed Miliband and Ed Balls join many historians, filmmakers, and novelists in wrongly painting Thirties Britain as a
universally hopeless, destitute place, rendered poor and miserable by a heartless, Conservative-dominated National Government. The mood was depressing indeed in 1931, but the economic data is decisive: by the middle of the decade, recovery had come and in much of the country an unrivalled boom was underway.’

‘The cuts of autumn 1931, which were far more immediately fierce than anything put through by the Coalition today. They were felt particularly harshly by ratings in the Royal Navy, some of whom were told they would receive pay cuts of 25%. A few days after the Budget, the North Atlantic Fleet anchored at Invergordon refused to muster.’

‘[The policies] enabled the Bank of England, the commercial banks and building societies to embark on a “cheap money” policy which would henceforth underpin the economic recovery.’

Some lessons from the 30’s…..
First, to stabilize the public finances.
Second, to ensure cheap money was available for
investment by households and businesses to underpin a
recovery.
Third, to reduce taxes, especially on those with low incomes
and families, once it was safe to do so.

‘This was a sort of proto-Thatcherism, ahead of its time.’

So first…Austerity and balancing the books, then cheap money….today Osborne announced just that, then when economy is recovering some tax cuts.

So pretty much as is occurring.

Now Evan Davis, and nearly all in the BBC who comment on finance also claim Japan was a ‘victim’ of Austerity…not only that but here you can hear Davis going along with Balls and his description of the 1930’s policy…..only trick they missed was to mention the USA and the ‘New Deal’…..but Americas massive spending programme didn’t work in reality…the war saved the US.

Both Balls and the BBC experts, such as Stephanie Flanders, like to say that Britain is not a safe haven, that we would not lose the valued triple A credit rating that allows us to borrow money cheaply if we decided to kick over the traces and start borrowing massively in the style of Gordon Brown again…..not so says….‘Senior German and EU officials [who] have expressed concern that the Socialist policies will bring market turbulence to France and increase French borrowing costs, threatening the country’s long-term credit rating.
“France needs its AAA or else the euro cannot bear the debt burden. Germany cannot do it alone,” said a eurozone official.’

And: John Cridland, the CBI director general, said: “Labour has form spending money it does not really have.”

Just how much is Balls really against the Coalition cuts?

“No matter how much we dislike particular Tory sending cuts or tax rises we cannot make promises now to reverse them.” He added: “I won’t do that and neither will any of my shadow cabinet colleagues.”

Perhaps his attitude informs the Public when they come to assess his character as a ‘untrustworthy opportunist’

or indeed what the Boss of Biased BBC says about Balls:

David Vance ‏@DVATW
Ed Balls praising Eurozone growth and damning UK economy. He has no shame and demonstrates why Labour are unfit to EVER govern our country

And it would seem that even inside the Labour Party ‘machine’ austerity is order of the day:

From: Iain_McNicol
Subject: *Confidential: Message from General Secretary
Date: 14 June 2012 14:17:58 GMT+01:00
To: All_Staff
14th June 2012

In November, I announced a new structure designed to modernise our organisation and address the issues raised through the review. Each of the Executive Directors reporting to me has been asked to work on plans to optimise our organisation, in order to make us more efficient, refocus and re-energise our work in critical areas and to strengthen and professionalise our operations.
All of this must, however, be achieved against a backdrop of the financial challenge we are all familiar with.

The objective of all of us is that the Party should be a “one term opposition”.
To achieve this we need to make changes which are sometimes painful but necessary like those I’ve described above. I know this is not easy, but if we are to show people we are serious about cutting the debts of the country then we must also cut the debts of The Labour Party.

However Balls does have at least one fan….

@ElliottClarkson ‏@ElliottClarkson
Ed Balls is right. Throwing money at banks doesn’t work. I stood outside Natwest throwing 2p coins at the window and now I have an ASBO.

But what to make of this?…..

‘A female contemporary of Mr Balls at Keble said: ‘Eddie was always very ambitious, and he was hardly a sex magnet so I can’t remember him having any interesting girlfriends.‘

Ouch…bit rough on poor old Steph Flanders!

Shame the BBC can’t find the time or inclination to ‘fisk’ Balls properly…however as Guido says of their Leveson coverage….‘If you have been watching BBC news or reading the Guardian you would think that Brown’s testimony was proven and Rupert Murdoch had made up the whole claim about Brown “declaring war”.’   They clearly have their own little agenda which doesn’t include a Coalition Government lasting any longer than necessary.

A fresh open thread for Friday….let ’em know you’re watching and holding them to account!

Neil Turner in the comments has a campaign up and running:

His ePetition is now up:

 “Do you want to keep BBC’s Licence Fee ? Yes or No “ 

The Telegraph is thinking along similar lines.

Isn’t it time for a shareholder revolt at the BBC?

‘Isn’t it time that shareholders in the BBC – that means all of us – took a similar stand? Blissfully unaffected by the economic turmoil out there in the real world, it pockets a fixed annual income of £3.6 billion. It doesn’t have to struggle to make money, only to spend it. And it loves to splash it around. While it is notoriously difficult to get any hard info out of the Beeb on the salaries it pays – commercial sensitivity and all that – there’s enough in the public domain to have the hard-pressed licence fee payer reaching for their pitchforks. Last year the Corporation revealed it was paying £22 million to just 19 of its “stars”, all of them earning more than half a million a year. That included a reported £2 million for Graham Norton and Gary Lineker (why?) and £1.4 million to Alan Hansen (an even bigger why?). Is Anne Robinson worth £1 million a year and Jeremy Paxman £800,000? Most licence fee payers will have a view, but unlike shareholders in a company they have no way of expressing it. Surely it’s time they did.’

Relax everyone, fold up your tents and steal away into the night knowing you have done your job.

The BBC is no longer biased….or rather it is biased but against both the Tories and Labour, so, em, it is not biased….I guess that only leaves Ken Livingstone and UKIP in the BBC’s good books.

Guido Fawkes brings us this, a letter from a Labour ‘communications facilitator’ who is aggrieved at having too many government ministers being dragged in for the inquisition and ritual disemboweling they normally get on the Today programme.

He seems to have chosen a time frame to suit…one over a longer term  might show  more often than not that we get Labour shadow ministers given a free ride and essentially given their own mini party political broadcast.

From Guido:

It seems Miliband’s normally jovial spinner Bob Roberts has had enough of the Beeb. Media Guido has got hold of his letter to the BBC Director General Mark Thompson:

Dear Mark
I am writing to complain about the striking lack of balance on the Today programme this week.
From Monday to Thursday, the following Ministers and MPs have appeared on Today:
Government: Eric Pickles, Richard Benyon, Simon Burns, Tim Loughton, Hugh Robertson, Grant Shapps, Louise Mensch, Don Foster, Theresa May, Iain Duncan Smith, Crispin Blunt, David Davis, Nicky Morgan (Total 13)
Labour: Margaret Hodge, appearing as Chair of a Select Committee (Total 1)
By any measure, it is neither fair nor balanced for the Today programme to interview 13 Government MPs and 1 Labour MP over the course of four days.
Why are listeners hearing so much coverage being given to the Government and virtually none to the official Opposition?
We have previously raised our concerns with the Today Programme Editor and with the BBC’s Westminster News Editor, but we have not received a satisfactory response, hence we are writing you as Editor-in-Chief of the BBC.
I look forward to an urgent explanation why this unacceptable lack of balance has been allowed to occur and reassurances that it will be remedied immediately.

Yours sincerely,
Bob Roberts

Question Time tonight comes from Stockton-on-Tees. This market town is Europe’s largest producer of huge chavvy earrings, amphetamines and inca hats. It has an exceptionally low unemployment rate for the North East of only 73%.

On the panel we have Housing Minister Grant Shapps MP, television executive and former Director General of the BBC Greg Dyke, President of the Liberal Democrats and serial stirrer Tim Farron MP, Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens, and Shadow Attorney General Emily Thornberry MP.

Quiz question – when was the last time that we had a coalition loyalist LibDem on QT? They have been usual suspect troublemakers for months now. Deliberate? You decide…

David Vance is currently en vacances dans la belle France but his rules about politeness during the LiveChat still apply (TheEye has a sicknote from his mother and is exempt from that rule). Please respect David’s wishes and in return we will respect your free-flowing banter and satire.

There will be no This Week this week. The trivial affairs of the country and the world are replaced by the much more important football highlights.

Update: the ever-splendid Billy Bowden [blog here and twitter @ontablets] has pointed out that This Week has strolled randomly across to BBC2. Good spot and my appreciation.

You are very welcome to join us. Please play nicely though.

Right folks, even veteran bloggers need a break so I am off to la belle France for a few weeks. I will try to pop in as and when I get the chance. Hope other writers can keep things moving along and wishing you all well. Speak soon.

The BBC website announced as its headline story on its Frontpage earlier, in big, bold type ‘Hunt: I did not lie to Parliament‘.

Now it could just me being sensitive or is that  phrased to be reminiscent of Nixon’s ‘I am not a crook’ …..when of course he was?

Is the BBC trying to give us the impression that perhaps Hunt did lie to Parliament. It manages to give the correct headline on the actual story itself….‘Jeremy Hunt denies Labour’s claim he lied to Parliament’….that is that the totally impartial Labour party are making this claim.

What else is strange today? Labour are demanding an inquiry into Jeremy Hunt’s activities….and a vote was held in Parliament today on whether that inquiry will be held…they voted ‘no’.

The LibDems were ordered to abstain in the vote by Nick Clegg.

That might be seen as rather an odd order from Clegg….as he said this today at Leveson…. ‘Mr Clegg in his evidence to the Leveson inquiry, repeated his backing for Mr Hunt, saying the culture secretary had given a “full, good and convincing account” of his handling the BSkyB bid.’

Note how far down the BBC story Clegg’s comment is….right at the bottom…where you might not read it…they hope.

Clegg’s comment is probably the most important one of recent times…it is somewhat of a game changer….certainly for the BBC’s narrative which has always been that Hunt is guilty of colluding with the Murdoch empire and Cameron is isolated after having made a very badly judged decision….and yet the BBC seem to be ignoring its significance.

Ed Miliband in today’s PMQs claimed that ‘even Cameron’s own deputy didn’t support him in his assertions about Hunt’….clearly Clegg does support Cameron’s view.

John Pienaar on 5Live (after PMQs) brought up Clegg’s comment and noted its hypocrisy in conjunction with the order to abstain…..but listen to the news and the comment gets very little, if any coverage and is relegated to an also ran in terms of significance.

It is always a wonder how a BBC journalist will actually give you the facts, the real ones….but when you hear them regurgitated and filtered through the news or other BBC programmes  those facts take on a whole different life and meaning….if they are repeated at all.  The BBC is very fast at plucking out information from a report say on the Today programme, when it suits them…the news team will have disinterred the information, shaped it, edited it, and mashed it together in an instant for the next news bulletin…’hot off the Press’…..however Clegg’s comment was pretty stillborn, the runt of the news litter, the ugly duckling…when in fact it was the Swan, the mighty mouse that roared…just very quietly on the BBC.

Nice to be able to shape the news to your own agenda.

Peter Hunt on ‘The World at One’ (13 mins 50 secs) gives us the important news first…Brown warned Clegg that Murdoch was only interested in getting the Tories into power…and that Vince Cable had had veiled threats against the LibDems from News International if they didn’t back the BSkyB bid.

Clegg dismissed those ‘veiled threats’ as …..’not a credible threat… just rumours and counter claims’.

So why does the BBC make so much noise about Cable’s assertion?

Peter Hunt then tackles the comment by Clegg about Jeremy Hunt…..he downplays it by claiming that Clegg has only offered ‘qualified support’…..has he?

I thought Clegg came out in full support for Hunt and his impartiality in making a decision….saying Hunt handled the bid in a way that successfully insulated himself from claims of bias…..and the culture secretary had given a “full, good and convincing account” of his handling the BSkyB bid.’

So are the LibDems, as the BBC’s Ben Wright (8 mins ) claims, ‘seriously questioning Hunt’s integrity and Cameron’s judgement’…are there ‘serious front bench rifts’?

And why does he suggest that Sir Alex Allan’s letter was ‘rather helpful to the Prime Minister…perhaps unsurprisingly’?

Does he question the impartiality of a highly respected senior civil servant who also served under the Labour government? No such questions about the ‘evidence’ from John Wilson, the Fife NHS chief exec. who stated that his staff were to blame for the leak about Brown’s son…though he had not a shred of evidence or proof to back that up…the BBC believed that it exonerated Brown and damned Murdoch and the Sun.

The BBC seem all at sea over this saga….continually wrong footed and undermined in their suggestions of Hunt’s guilt by the facts…..and being highly selective as to which ‘evidence’ they present as ‘true’ and which they seek to bury.

Still, they seem to be working hard to ignore or play down those facts and not let them spoil a good story.

Funny how certain “surveys” attract BBC attention which then presents them as hard news.

“Prejudice against people from different backgrounds has increased over the past six years, according to an Equality Commission for Northern Ireland survey. The most negative attitudes were towards members of the Traveller community, but prejudice against gay and disabled people has also risen. The survey also found that 30% of respondents felt some forms of prejudice were acceptable. The commission said it was a “worrying insight into the population’s psyche”.

Gosh, what a stroke of luck that this Commission exists to fight this rising prejudice. What a blow to those cynics who suggest that the “Equality Commission” is just a pathetic self serving bloated quango inventing prejudice through biased polls. And how KIND of the BBC to flag it all up.