BREAD AND CIRCUSUS

Sorry to interrupt the Obama-fest the BBC is indulging in today but I thought that after the Great Leader announced his latest financial wheeze to save the world yesterday, it would be interesting to see how are things are now looking? Well, RBS share price has collapsed by more than 70% so ensuring that the prospect of the socialisation of this institution grows more likely by the day. The Pound has plunged further the Dollar and the Euro. None of this is evident on the main BBC news portal however which cheerily informs us that inflation is due to fall later today. Hurray – Gordon’s plan is working – if you look very hard! Never mind the economic tsunami, get back to watching the coronation in DC….

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24 Responses to BREAD AND CIRCUSUS

  1. mikewineliberal says:

    See your pin up boy Peston here reporting just what you say the BBC are not reporting David. And the business coverage on Today was awash with the news this morning.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2009/01/collapse_of_confidence_in_bank.html

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  2. madness says:

    obama is going to solve all the worlds problems within an hour of him taking office

    with effect of tomorrow morning, there’s going to be fluffy puppy dogs and kittens everywhere, jews and arabs will kiss and make up and the wars in iraq and afganistan will be won, with no loss of life

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  3. max says:

    On the main page there’s nothing related to the economy to be seen.
    The three most important headlines in the business section as of now are:
    Founder’s grandson to run Toyota
    Russia opens gas taps to Europe
    Asian shares fall on bank fears

    While the main story in the economy section is:
    Big fall in UK inflation to 3.1%

    But that’s OK; Preston’s all over it on his so called ‘blog’. The Public is indeed adequately infirmed.

    Anyhow, why worry? After today’s coronation, all the world’s problems are going to be instantly solved.

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  4. RR says:

    Can’t see any mention of the fact that the RBS shares that Brown and Darling spent £15 billion buying at 53p a share are now worth 13p. Due diligence, any one?

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  5. MWL says:

    Max – are you making that up? Headlines on business page are:

    Bank woes push pound below $1.40

    UK banking plan faces criticism

    Founder’s grandson to run Toyota

    Russia opens gas taps to Europe

    RBS shares plunge on record loss

    Bank shares fall despite new plan

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  6. MWL says:

    Oh, right; so “On the main page there’s nothing related to the economy to be seen” doesn’t refer to all the main page.

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  7. Frankos says:

    The main point is that if we have deflation every business in this country (inc mine) will be seriously affected–it will make our present woes look pleasant by comparison.

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  8. Cassandra says:

    MWL,

    I dont know if you have actually read the well buried stories you refer to BUT they offer the fullest support to Brown and they try to minimise any critisisms, this is a huge story but the BBC bury it and try to offer every justification they can for Browns ‘strategy’.
    Come on MWL, trying to justify the BBCs mealymouthed offerings and portray them as critisism is not on is it?
    Its blindingly obvious that the BBC is acting as NuLabours news filter, obvious to those who wish to see it, spin driven cover ups are not journalism!

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  9. George R says:

    ‘Express’

    “BBC move north is just a pointless waste of money”

    http://www.express.co.uk/ourcomments/view/80703/BBC-move-North-is-just-a-pointless-waste-of-money

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  10. d says:

    I listened to Robert Peston yesterday evening on Radio 5. He sounded worried and was working painfully hard to stay on the fence.

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  11. Cheeta says:

    In one sense, the BBC is helping the fall of Obamania – by making sure the verticle drop is higher than it need be.

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  12. will says:

    From The Times sketch on yesterday’s No10 press conference.

    he questions became brutal. “Some people are saying that we are nothing more than a big hedge fund, not entirely unlike Iceland, and that national bankruptcy is a real possibility,” noted the man from ITN. “Whatever else this represents, surely it is total failure of bank regulation?”

    Gordon, so angry that his eye-bags were packing up and leaving without a backwards glance, noted sharply that American sub-prime was to blame. “I utterly dispute what you are saying. I would urge you to be cautious in the remarks that you make.”

    http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5549447.ece

    The BBC would not seek to upset Brown (& get this “sleeping with the fishes” veiled threat), instead, per Humphrys (Today, 18 jan interviewing Osborne), the regulatory failure is by Thatcher, who somehow has prevented Mc Stalin from making changes in the light of changing practices in the past 20 years.

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  13. Ghandi says:

    I see Obama is to bring in healthcare in the US as a model based on the Canada/Europe system —good luck with that -I’m sure it won’t be too expensive and that people won’t abuse the system

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  14. Robert says:

    Will: that pure-stalinist quote from the “fat one-eyed jock” (as he’s accurately termed here) speaks volumes. Note the steely threat of censorship… and note that the BBC has carefully taken the threat on board, which is why they’ve remained silent on the subject!

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  15. George R says:

    A good day for BBC to ‘bury’ bad news about Gordon Brown’s Labour Government?:

    ‘Spectator’:

    “Britain to go the route of RBS?”

    (by Fraser Nelson)

    “Britain is now as likely to go bust as RBS – this is the official verdict of the markets. At the bottom of this post is Bloomberg’s Graph of the Day, which shows how Britain’s dodgiest bank and Europe’s dodgiest government now have the same “credit default swap” rating – the yardstick the markets use to guage whether something’s about to go bust. No wonder, you may say, given that RBS is state-owned. But my point is that this has major implications for our ability to borrow – and borrowing is what both Cameron and Brown will be relying on to pay the bills. Spain lost its AAA rating yesterday, and the markets think Britain may be next. This would increase the cost of borrowing, our taxes, our mortgages – the works. I wish I could find a way of getting across, in plain, non-hyperbolic English, the sheer scale of what’s going on right now, and what this means to our country’s ability to finance itself. I just can’t: the size of our problems defies my powers of expression. Journalistic language can’t do it justice: we cried doom months ago, and we were right. Crying ‘double doom’ now wont resonate. So I leave you with this recent, chilling analysis from Michael Saunders of Citi:…”

    http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/3272926/britain-to-go-the-route-of-rbs.thtml

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  16. David Preiser (USA) says:

    mikewineliberal | 20.01.09 – 9:35 am |

    This post of Peston’s is pretty meaningless. What’s more relevant is his other post for today:

    Faith in banks

    It’s actually fairly honest, for a change. But way down in the depths he reveals that he was on air last night trying to defend Mr. Brown:

    Also, as I said last night on the Ten O’Clock News, the prime minister’ may have meant well when giving a stern instruction to the banks that they must come clean about the scale of their dodgy assets. But it unnerved shareholders, who wondered on what basis they could value banks, if even the most powerful man in the country didn’t know what horrors lurk inside them.

    Peston does lightly criticize the method of the Treasury’s announcement, and even the decision to lift the ban on short-selling (which really was dumb; I guess No. 10 isn’t consulting him anymore before going to press). But then, after all the rather honest gloom and doom, and explaining the fallacy behind the latest scheme, he says it’s no big deal after all. If everyone already sees RBS as a State liability, then the government should act accordingly. He used to warn against this kind of thing. Now that Brown’s back is up against it, he tries to reassure everyone instead. Not his job, unless he’s a press agent for the Prime Minister.

    As I recall, Peston was fretting last October, when RBS first went south, that Mr. Brown was going to nationalize it, and that this wasn’t a good idea. Now that all of the various Brown schemes have failed, Peston thinks it will work. Except he never says the bit about how things got here from last October.

    Poor Robert Peston. Just like his boy Brown, he’s trapped in a world he never made. Or, is he?

    Does this BBC man have too much power? Reporter Robert Peston blamed for helping trigger shares fall

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  17. Martin says:

    The BBC can see the writing is on the wall for this failed corrupt bunch of Scottish Socialists. Even the BBC knows that no matter what crap they spin people are seeing through it.

    The Tories are up to 14% in the polls. I would expect that to be 25% within a month and possibly higher by the summer.

    McFatty One Eye is ****ed, even the BBC knows it. What frightens the BBC is that the Tories might win with such a huge majority and calls for ‘change’ that ‘change’ might well include a real clean out of Socialist losers, this will include cutting back on Scottish MP’s, changing the bias in the voting system that favours Labour AND scrapping the TV tax and making the BBC fund itself.

    That’s why the beeboids are worried. They want to support their Socialist buddies but even beeboids know that McFatty One Eye is stuffed.

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  18. George R says:

    While we BBC licencepayers subsidise the Beeboids to junket it up in America again for Obamessiah, the BBC deliberately relegates the reporting of the UK financial crisis for its own political reasons.

    The financial situation must be bad when the ‘Financial Times’ runs a column:

    “Shoot the bankers, nationalise the banks”
    (by Philip Stephens)

    [Extract]:

    “Now it has gone this far I cannot understand why the government did not take the next logical step of assuming majority stakes in all those institutions now dependent on public money.

    “It would be a lot simpler. The banking system has already been in effect nationalised and the Treasury controls RBS and holds a large chunk of the newly merged Lloyds Banking Group. Banks, such as Barclays, that remain hostile to any state interference could retain their independence by abjuring public assistance in all its forms.”

    …”Perhaps Mr Brown is holding back because he knows that when the reckoning is made, bankers will not be alone against the wall. They will plead that they merely exploited the rules set by the politicians and policymakers.

    “For the moment, though, I cannot think of a more popular policy than shooting the bankers and nationalising the banks. It might even win Mr Brown an election. Come to think of it, it could also be the way to get us out of this mess.”

    http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a35c925c-e65f-11dd-8e4f-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

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  19. Martin says:

    George R: McFatty One Eye expects payback for bailing out the banks.

    The Labour party is broke. They have no money to fight an election. Just who do you think McFatty One Eye expects to er ‘fund’ the Labour party at the next general election?

    If Labour were serious about sorting this mess out they’d have sent the Fraud Squad into the city months ago and seized all the financial records of these ***king banks who are clearly telling lies about their financial status.

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  20. George R says:

    BBC ‘Newsnight’ blog and preview for tonight’s programme:

    BBC’c Paul Mason makes an unconvincing excuse for the BBC indulging itself in Obamamania.

    The title to his article (including misspelling):

    “While the world is disracted (sic) by the Obamathon…” – doesn’t mention the BBC’s active role in all the hyperbole and distraction.

    Then Mason gets on with discussing the very harsh economic reality for the British economy:

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/paulmason/2009/01/while_the_world_is_disracted_b.html

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  21. mikewineliberal says:

    That’s doom-laden stuff from Mason. He does a very bad job of covering up for the Government.

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  22. Grant says:

    Martin generally,

    As usual , I agree with your sentiments, but , please get it right.

    Our beloved Prime Minister’s proper title is ” Gordon “Dirty” Brown , fatty one-eyed, Jock Twat “.

    Our next strategy is to send you Alex ” wee nyaff” Salmond. Then , you will be dreaming of the Golden Days of Gordon the Moron !!!

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  23. frankos says:

    they could have a bullfrog impersonator of the year contest

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