The BBC can’t help it, they are still weeping post Brexit tears and continue to seize on everything and anything to do the UK economy down. UK inflation rose by 0.1% yesterday and the BBC were all over it, explaining the ominous portents.
Rising fuel prices helped to push the UK’s inflation rate higher last month, according to official figures. The annual inflation rate as measured by the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) rose to 0.6% in July from 0.5% in June, the Office for National Statistics said.
And they are drooling over the possibility of an increase in unemployment today, for which they will crow that it’s the Brexit effect – nothing to do with a world slow down, commodity glut, collapse of our oil industry, steel industry, slow-down in China – no, it’s just Brexit (which hasn’t even happened!). If Brexit has an effect at all it’s more likely to be the BBC-induced Brexit effect. If we had a sensible, enlightened, patriotic BBC, Brexit could be an economy-enhancing effect. After all it’s entirely a matter of confidence and optimism – or the opposite view as continuously chanted by the BBC – i.e. doom and gloom. When the stock market rallied a couple of days after the referendum slump, the BBC’s financial comment was ‘it’s a dead dog bounce’. Ha Ha! Some bounce – it’s still going up. No positive comment at all about this, though, from the BBC doom machine. On the Today programme business news this morning the presenter was desperate for the interviewee to say the housing market was falling due to Brexit – he did so try to lead her to it. But prices have been dented in London because of stamp duty increases, and everywhere else in the country prices were still rising. Now, I would think the BBC should applaud any fall in house prices, as they are so left-leaning in every other respect, but I suppose they are mostly champagne socialists who would like their property portfolios to swell in value. Whatever their motives, they are more interested in rubbishing Brexit than helping the generation of Britons deprived of affordable housing by a mass-immigration-induced inflated population.
So I wasn’t dreaming then, Benjy, when I thought I saw at 9a.m. a BBC caption on their Homepage stating that the unemployment figures today would show an increase. I, too, thought ‘here comes the Brexit cause & effect again’. It has now disappeared replaced by the good news. Hope the ONS stats are right (I tend to have doubts these days) but it shows how – as some in the Leave campaign explained prior to 23 June – the UK is currently progressing economically, despite world disruption following the China crisis, the Greece crisis and the other BRICS’ downturns or collapses.
Actually the April-June figures, in the days before mass immigration, just like the July – September ones, would regularly show an increase due to the early school leavers looking for work, either temporary or full-time. So, the July Claimant Report was also encouraging.
If the UK does go into recession in Q3, Q4 or Q1 next year, it is my view that it will be nothing to do with Brexit but the World & European economies, prior to July 2016, influencing our own.
Up2snuff – Ha! That’s just brilliant! I hadn’t seen the follow up news. I agree, Brexit makes no difference, unless a positive. If we do face a recession it will be due to external influences, to which we and the rest of the world are always susceptible. The ones with the dodgiest future are the members of the EU, who face the most serious problems – tottering banks in so many countries, especially Italy, and the ongoing, incurable problem of the two-speed Eurozone (one trying to pull forward while the other one is in reverse) – it’s going to end in tears. I hope we are well out before it does!
I am not an economist but I thought that the fact that we were heading for a period of deflation was bad news. A small increase in inflation would therefore not be a bad thing, and isn’t surprising in view of Carney’s desire to wreck the post-brexit economy/exchange rate with interest rate cuts and more Q.E. (I agree that’s a counterargument but I just don’t trust him). If inflation continues to rise this can be countered by a gradual increase in interest rates and an improving exchange rate, which will be good news for savers and might slow down house price inflation.
Today programme presenters seem unduly worried this morning about the clampdown on tax advisers offering avoidance schemes. No doubt they’ll have to get onto their accountants to discuss a change of strategy for their personal service companies.
tj, We are told deflation is bad by the people who do not benefit from it. They benefit from inflation with inflated salaries, bonuses and the chance to acquire assets & pay debts with devalued money. The bulk of the population would benefit from deflation with less unemployment (if migration is controlled), prices falling, reduced tax increases and any small savings nest egg and pension losing less of their value.
if deflation was accompanied by normal interest rates then it would be good for us proles. But the huge amount of fiat money created by central banks and used to save the zombie banking sector has just enabled the very rich to get cheap money and buy up the fixed assets such as land, property etc.
Add to this the companies using this flood of cheap money to buy back shares( increases value and bonuses) instead of investing it and we have problems.
That’s true, Dave, which is why they want inflation. They want to be paying back those debts with devalued money as I indicated above. If Hammond is smart, he’ll do all he can to keep inflation ever so slightly negative, despite the contrary advice from the rich & powerful. He may be wise to take back (temporary) control over interest rates but that will take real guts to sacrifice one of the fastest ever growing No.11/Treasury ‘sacred cows’.
As for share values, to an extent we are all shareholders now, directly or indirectly. So, keeping values higher than they might be advantages us all. It may also explain the better than expected employment figures.
Do you think you might get Al Beeb’s idiot business editor Kamal Ahmed, or his even dimmer predecessors Cameron-hating Two-Eds shagging Stephanie Flanders or inarticulate rabid Leftoid Peskon to understand that?
Please!
Peter,
The BBC do not do business, finance, economics, science etc. Beeboids are too stupid to understand anything which requires an attention span of more that 2 minutes. They are self-important morons .
If, according to the BBC’s “explanation” of everything since 24 June post hoc ergo propter hoc, the avalanche of gold medals won in Rio must be a consequence of the Brexit vote. Oddly I haven’t seen/heard this from any BBC commentators (or anybody else for that matter). I wonder what would have been the BBC explanation if team GB had produced a conspicuous failure. I suspect you wouldn’t be able to move for the shower of excreta thrown at Brexit.
I worry a bit about linking the GB medal haul to Brexit as surely it is a result of rigorous coaching & discipline going back long before the referendum, however the reverse must be true, that the success of Team GB (Team UK it should be!) must give Brexiteers such as myself some zip of confidence that we as a nation really can do something off our own bat. If the rigour of the Olympic team trainers could be repeated in our renegotiation team we should come away with everything we want from an EU divorce.
I have huge confidence that potentially England, & perhaps the UK, can really succeed in the world. Pity we are held back with negative thinking by the BBC – why can’t they get behind Britain?
To be fair, the message from the BBC yesterday was that our success at the Olympics is down to Lottery funds. Nothing to do with the EU or EU funding.
Quite right, Edward.
I bought the guardian yesterday to read their take on the Resolution Foundation and effects of Brexit .
Food factories may have to close down because they can’t get immigrant labour etc !
Oh really , why ?
Are they going to lay off the immigrant workers already here , not pay them or something ? Most are non EU people anyway . But let’s take at face value that all the immigrants are sacked and sent home . Now what ?
Well they would have to pay better wages for British workers and go back to times before we had this unlimited immigration . Would food prices go up – possibly , but not by much as it is a very competitive industry based as much on sophistication as cheap labour . But that should more than be offset by our lower benefits bill for keeping Brits on the dole . Lower bill for processing immigrants coming to the country , lower infrastructure costs because of the expanding population , and lower EU costs because we’re not paying in .
And that’s just some of the economic arguments , never mind the social benefits .
Incidentally , when is the BBC going to ask a union rep what happened to his members in food processing , farming , construction , etc who worked there before the swarm of immigration ? Where have they gone ? How well did the unions protect those jobs ? How many of these immigrants are in these jobs and in the union ? Why would you join a union who oversaw the replacement of one nationality with another , or various others ?
Bit sad that we are having to discuss the UK economy here.
Bit sad for the BBC that is.
There used to be a large community hanging around their Economics Editor’s Blog and discussing its contents or the latest news. The BBC is playing a dangerous game and are driving more and more people away just at a time when there is easy and free access to more material, communities and forums on-line.
The BBCs economics reporting and analysis has become as biased and unreliable as everything else that BBC news touches . It’s last two economics editors were blatantly pro labour, one sleeping with the future labour leader and also the future shadow chancellor ( quite a coup) while the other was the son of a former economic adviser to labour governments.
Some years prior to that we had Peter Jay, Jim Callaghan’s son in law.
The only economics editor at the BBC I can recall from recent years who was pro free markets and not a labour stooge was Jeff Randall and he found the place impossible to work at.
The BBCs valiant economics correspondent Andy Verity, he who trashes conservative governments and anti EU campaigners at every opportunity, was given a tough assignment today . He had to report on encouraging unemployed claimant numbers. No chance to blame something on Brexit then?. No matter, the trusty Andy found some obscure statistic to counter the good news. Employment Agencies say that they are converting fewer people from temporary to permanent posts . Relief all round. Brexit was a disaster for the U K economy after all.
Agree, EE. Kamal is pretty dire. Perhaps his excuse is that he needed a holiday. He does, after all, work a lot harder than the Political & Business editors.
Seriously, he has been so biased as an obvious Remainer AND propagandising anti-Brexit that I think that if he doesn’t shape up on return, some complaint letters may be hitting the DG’s desk.
I think Stephanie Flanders was pretty balanced, as was Nick Robinson on politics. Their Blogs were open to criticism and they would tend, over time, to get equal complaints from Labour supporters and Conservative supporters. Pesto started quite well but like Peter Jay, the balance would slip, family allegiances tended to show through. I liked Randall’s work although I wasn’t such an economics groupie back then.
Yeah. Verity by name, not so much by nature?
What , Nick If TheReferendum Goes Wrong Robinson ? Not Biased ?
He’s no longer Politics Editor, since then we’ve had a little glimpse of his political sympathies which, I think, may align with those of John Humphrys.
Well, the BBC bosses would say it is all in the cause of achieving balance: Naughtie & Mardell versus Humphrys & Robinson. What a Tag Team bout that will be! Bit of a weight and age advantage for the Labour Party but the Conservative Party brighter and, perhaps, sharper, more nimble on their feet?
LOL Unemployment DOWN!
LOL? Jump for joy!
OK, and laugh & shout as well.
🙂
BBC haeadlines at 6pm tonight tell me that ” Health Campaigners” are “already disappointed” that “tomorrows white paper” won`t “go far enough” in the “implementation of a sugar tax” in the “national fight against obesity”.
This is a new headline-that something leaked to health campaigners before a launch tomorrow is somehow not nasty enough to the fast food outlets, supermarkets and producers of sugar drinks and processed snacks.
How does THAT become a news headline the day before it is published….and why the hell is it a headline anyway seeing as we all know what the BBC will think of it?
It is always the same story when the “Progressives” get up on their hind legs about something and say that they “care deeply” about an issue — obesity, climate, refugees, racism, poverty, whatever.
Examining their policy prescriptions, you always find that they do nothing to solve the problem, in fact, the policies usually exacerbate it, while damaging other parties.
We can therefore conclude that they don’t “deeply care” at all about the supposed issue or its victims.
In fact, there is always a deeper agenda, which they cannot openly admit to because it is too radical. And it almost inevitably consists of “smashing” things, whether it be capitalism, whites, Christianity, patriotism or whatever.
The “deeply caring” issue is just a fig-leaf.
Their agenda on the sugar tax — they “deeply care” about obesity, like hell, they want to smash big Agro, or big Supermarket, or Tate & Lyle’s Silvertown refinery.
The BBC, of course, shares their agenda, and is more than happy to provide a wide platform
BBC Business introduce the new Project Doom rolling page
..they are promoting here on Facebook :
PS they also have news on IT cockup delaying smart meters
and a story about the New Coal Mine and jobs coming to NorthEast. That the company promise will be cleaned up after the 7 year project.
Does it quote Friends of the Earth ? Talking the prospects down…You bet..but not as bad as the Enviro team articles
Jolly Hocky Sticks!
Actual news has been all but banished from the BBC… er…. News Channel. This morning we catch a glimpse of the feminised closed pay-gap future in prospect for us all as the BBC girls natter, emote and sympathise to the backdrop of the Rio Olympics.
What I find particularly annoying is the sudden shallow sports patriotism that has taken hold there at the Beeb. On and on they go banging on about Team GB. Talk about last refuge of the scoundrels! But thank heavens for the posh hobby sports, eh? Without all those public school equestians, yachtsmen and hocky players where on earth would we be in that medal table?
Don’t worry Lefties, this BBC patriotism is only skin deep and it will soon be over. As if to prove this is just a temporary blip…
A golden moment of the games brought to us by the BBC that will stay with me was Annabel Croft’s description of Andy Murray being cheered on “by his Scottish and some Great Britain supporters”
Haven’t heard of Mr Tombs before, but his readiness to bury Britain will surely get him on BBC speed dial.
Samuel Tombs, chief UK economist for Pantheon Macroeconomics said that “consumers’ blissful ignorance won’t last long”.
“July’s retail sales figures show that consumers have been protected from the immediate fallout of the Brexit vote, but with firms intending to stop hiring and inflation set to soar, the High Street is set for a tough year,” he said.
“The real test for consumer spending lies in 2017 when jobs cuts will kick in and inflation will erode spending power,” Mr Tombs added
Rising fuel prices? The price at my local Sainsbury’s has gone down by 2p a litre in the last couple of weeks.