Here you go, amongst the wailing and gnashing of teeth at the BBC concerning St Mandela, a new thread to complete.

Interesting listening to the aftermath of Osborne’s budget speech on the BBC…you’d hardly know that Ball’s got a pasting or that Labour had been soundly trounced.

You’d have no inkling that Osborne’s budget was based on a solid recovery and gave help to all levels of society….no inkling that under Labour 7.2% of the economy was destroyed.

Some key phrases from the OBR report upon which the budget is based:

In 2018-19, we expect the underlying balance to move into surplus for the first time in 18 years.

There is a roughly 5 per cent chance that the economy will shrink in 2014 and a similar chance it will grow by more than 5 per cent.

We  expect quarterly GDP growth to slow into 2014, gradually strengthening thereafter as productivity picks up and real earnings growth provides the foundation for a stronger and more sustained upswing. This recovery in productivity growth is perhaps the most important judgement in our economy forecast.

Note that ‘This recovery in productivity growth is perhaps the most important judgement in our economy forecast.‘…because the BBC doesn’t look at that….it just tells us that the recovery is a ‘false recovery based on consumer spending and borrowing’...but the OBR says that whilst there will be a slow down in 2014 after that the economy will grow based on productivity gains.

That is not something the BBC seems to want to advertise.

Here Nick Robinson and Robert Peston are carping, negative and critical of Osborne’s measures…for example the decision not to raise the car fuel duty…Imagine what they could do with £22bn – that, the chancellor revealed, is the cumulative cost of the ever-popular cancellation of planned rises at petrol pumps.

Ironic coming from Robinson…the same person who, when at ITV, took Labour to task for suggesting that the Tories would ‘cut‘ the NHS by £35 bn when the truth was they just wouldn’t match Labour’s proposed spending rise but would keep the budget at the then same level….but now Robinson plays the same game….categorising a future non-rise in income as a spending cut.

Here are some of the BBC’s key pointers for critiques of the Coalition that seem to be the editorial backbone to most BBC analyses:

First...Use the Labour narrative (contrast with how they talk of terrorism or the security wall in Israel)…Plan B is credible….and when proven not…go with the new one…the ‘Cost of living crisis‘ is real…and caused by the government’s policies….no one has ever been ‘poor’ before May 2010.

Second….Actually let’s not look back to Labour times...let’s talk about now…in other words let’s not blame Labour for the mess we’re in now.

Third…’Austerity’ is the real cause of our problems….and it isn’t necessary….‘Austerity’ is a purely ideological imposition….the Coalition is on a ‘mission to shrink the government beyond responsible economic stewardship’  That was the BBC’s Dominic Laurie…who seems to have stepped into Paul Mason’s loafers and taken on the mantle of advocate for big government, nationalisation and State intervention.

Fourth….Every government policy that is seen to benefit anybody is ‘electioneering‘ or ‘crowd pleasing populism’…whilst Miliband’s ‘price freeze’ was socially responsible policy making.

Fifth…..the recovery is a ‘false recovery’…based on consumer debt, the spending of savings and borrowing….‘BBC Political Editor Nick Robinson said the government was worried economic growth might not continue as it was mainly based on consumer spending’, (but don’t suggest going back to look at Labour’s record……after all wasn’t that the exact recipe for the leveraging up of the financial crash? Rule 1 applies…let’s not talk about Labour.)  It is remarkable how the BBC manages to ignore all those businesses who say they are doing a roaring trade and go on to paint a picture of doom and gloom.

The OBR does say consumer spending has boosted the growth, but here it explains a major factor in that spending….’Some forms of credit growth have picked up, in particular car finance, which has supported strong growth in car purchases and contributed to the unexpected strength of private consumption.’

Now it was only a few weeks ago that the BBC themselves looked at car buying and concluded that the rise in buying was due to more innovative and cheaper finance packages that gave customers more flexibility at a cheaper price…..I have to assume most people will have looked at their budgets and decided they can manage such deals….unlike the BBC who has decided that they are being reckless and spendthrift…based on what evidence they don’t say.

The OBR says that growth is coming from  increasing productivity, though still too low, but a productivity that will take over as the real driver of growth towards the end of next year….its most important judgement….and one the BBC ignores.

Remarkably you can hear all those points in one little interview on 5Live  (13:20) with the government’s Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Sajid Javid.…who held his own against three hostile BBC inquisitors.

Here is the Telegraph’s initial reaction…entirely different tone to that of the negative BBC:

The boot is on the other foot. Labour MPs now know what it was like for the Tories to have to sit through year after year of Gordon Brown economic triumphalism. For most of Labour’s time in power Budgets and Autumn Statements – or Pre-Budget Reports as Mr Brown rebranded the latter – were an ordeal for the Conservatives. He would rattle off great economic good news and a succession of giveaways, while they just sat there powerless to object. To this day watching Labour fritter away the golden economic recovery they inherited from John Major still rankles. Today, for the first time, George Osborne had a script he wanted to deliver, about economic success and measures that help voters and businesses. Perhaps the most telling moment, the one that caused a collective gasp, was when he revealed the updated figures for what he called the ‘Great Recession’ and a ‘calamity’: at the height of the crisis and on Labour’s watch GDP contracted by a jaw-dropping 7.2pc.

Here was a catalogue of smart, well-judged measures that MPs can deploy on the doorstep as evidence of what the Government is doing to – as Mr Osborne said – get the country moving again. These delighted his own side and left Labour looking as if they now realise how wrong the Ed Balls economic strategy is turning out to be.

His statement also completes a remarkable political recovery for the Chancellor. The economy is the only thing that matters. But it should be noted that a year ago he was in deep trouble. The economy was going against him, his reputation was damaged by the omnishambles budget and he was in danger of becoming more unpopular with the public than is normally bearable for even the most thick-skinned politician. The moment when the crowd booed him as he presented medals at the paralympics was a personal low-point. To his credit, he never faltered, or tried to win easy popularity by trying to doctor his image. Now, he can bask in the plaudits he deserves for placing a bet and seeing it pay of. As he pointed out, there is still much work to be done. But for the moment at least he has an inkling of being a Chancellor who is master of all he surveys.

95 year old man dies after long illness. BBC goes into full on Saint Mandela mode with Mark Mardell calling him “a secular saint”. It’s been amazing watching the sanitisation of Mandela’s life with the very notion that he supported terrorism verboten. As I watch Newsnight he is being compared to Lincoln.

This is going to make Diana’s death look like The Man Who Never Was. There’ll be at least a month of enforced national mourning, including the public stoning of anybody wearing a tie that isn’t black. A one-off tax to pay for the erection of gilded statues of the great man in every London Borough.

The BBC will disappear up their own backside. Mandela is lucky he’s going to miss it.

Here you go, middle of the week and time for a new Open thread! Share the bias as you see it!

A new week of bias from the State broadcaster to monitor! Off you go…tell us about the BIAS.

Is the BBC just doing PR for Labour politicians with sagging reputations?

Alistair Campbell was resurrected by the BBC in the public sphere…as noted before, an investment well made as he now defends the BBC.

Brown and his disastrous reign has been conveniently written out of history by the BBC.

Miliband has Desert Island Discs put at his service to pimp his geeky Marxist image as he lags so far behind in the personal polls.

And now the BBC gives space on its front page for this tosh:

Ed Balls not a nightmare at home, says wife Yvette Cooper

Shadow chancellor Ed Balls is “lovely” at home and does “all the cooking”, his wife and fellow Labour politician Yvette Cooper has told the BBC.

In a leaked email published by the Mail on Sunday last month, one of party leader Ed Miliband’s aides described Mr Balls as a “nightmare”.

Prime Minister David Cameron recently joked in the Commons he could have told Mr Miliband that “three years ago”.

But shadow home secretary Ms Cooper said attacks on her husband were wrong.

Any doubt that these ‘ex-managers’ from the BBC…

22 October, 2013 | By Jake Kanter

Yesterday the BBC published a story from unnamed sources that the government had asked energy firms to freeze their prices.

This was untrue…and yet the BBC kept reporting it as fact whilst at the same time admitting the Government had denied the story.

And they are still reporting it as fact.

If you have been listening to the radio you may have heard the frequent advert trumpeting 5Live’s ‘excellence’  (09:50:30) based on that report:

‘The Government has asked the Big Six energy firms not to put up electricity and gas bills until the middle of 2015 unless there is a major jump in wholesale prices.  Shadow energy secretary Caroline Flint is with us in the studio….’

“Energy companies you know, don’t buy energy today for tomorrow, they buy it years in advance, actually, whereas wholesale prices have gone down in recent years and in some recent years flat lined,  we as customers haven’t benefited.

We think it’s important to freeze prices because people have been overcharged but importantly we need to reform the way the market works.”

Call me old fashioned but when a story is concocted by the BBC, and only the BBC, from unnamed (and still unnamed) sources on the day that the Labour Party is launching its price freeze pledge, a story that makes it look like the government is adopting Labour’s policy, and the story is vigorously denied by the Government, and common sense would say the story was untrue, then you have to ask why the BBC has decided to select a clip reporting something that is untrue as being true and has then also added to that a soundbite from a Labour spokesperson outlining Labour’s policies.

It sounds remarkably more like a Labour Party political broadcast than a trail for the BBC…though possibly always hard to tell the difference, the News Quiz today having a relentless barrage of anti-Right jokes and not a single anti-Left one, oddly enough.

The fact that the story has basically vanished from the news after a day when the BBC blitzed us with reports, news bulletins and ‘analysis’ about this says a lot about how solid any evidence for it was…and the intentions behind the strategy.

Is this the future of ‘news’ on the BBC until the election?  A storm of false, anti-government reports whipped up using baseless ‘evidence’ and speculation from unnamed sources, and all maligning the government whilst timed conveniently to damage the government precisely when it also does the most good for Labour?

Has the BBC been caught red-handed pumping out black propaganda against the government whilst promoting Labour policy?

Today was the day when Ed Miliband was to relaunch his energy price freeze policy….just a coincidence that a story broke today, exclusively on the leftwing BBC, that Cameron was supposedly also going to adopt that policy…the only thing was the story was a load of bollocks….in fact “complete b******s”  according to the Government.

The BBC this morning reported that:

The government is asking the Big Six energy companies to hold energy prices until the middle of 2015.

This was reported as fact.

The sources for this report were ‘energy companies and one of the Big Six’, all unnamed….and still unnamed….the story, the BBC says, ‘broke over night’.

So let’s get this right….several energy companies apparently got in touch with the BBC, and only the BBC, this is a BBC ‘exclusive’, a Scoop, in the middle of the night, and told the BBC that Cameron, who has spent the last few weeks castigating the Marxist Miliband for state interventionist plans, his ‘con’,  has suddenly decided to do exactly the same thing and freeze prices.

I’m buying that…sure I am.

Not only that but there appeared to be no government spokesman available at all to come onto the BBC for a very long time….on 5Live the only one we had was Peter Lilley…after 13:00….and Lilley said that in fact it was the energy companies that had come to the government and said they would hold down prices if the government axed some green levies….a completely different picture of events.

But at 07:10, death O’clock in the morning, The BBC had managed to get hold of Labour’s Caroline Flint and put her on the Today programme to talk about this:

0710

The government is asking the ‘big six’ energy companies not to put up prices until the middle of 2015 – after the next general election. The shadow secretary of state for energy and climate change, Caroline Flint, speaks to the Today programme’s Sarah Montague.

Which the BBC followed up with a big splash:

Flint: Cameron ‘following Miliband’s lead’ on energy

“David Cameron is desperately now running around the energy companies asking them to impose a price freeze when he’s spent two months saying that the price freeze that Ed Miliband announced is a con.

“He has been too weak, too indecisive,” she continued.

Stitch up?  I think so.

So the question must be….Just when did the BBC first ask the government to confirm these stories?

It looks like the BBC  haven’t bothered to ask the government and went right ahead and reported this as fact without any confirmation…because the government vigorously denies they ever made any such request…and looking at the facts it seems hardly likely that they would.

The BBC are still reporting (at 16:00 today) it as ‘fact’ on their front page…despite having  a separate story of the government denial….and one story of Miliband claiming Cameron is following his policy, and another reporting Miliband’s policy.  Here is the main headline with the denial…..but still followed by the ‘complete bollocks‘ reported as fact:

Ministers deny energy bill bid

The government denies BBC reports it is seeking a commitment from energy companies to hold their prices down until 2015.

• Cameron wants energy rise limit Watch
• Labour: PM ‘pleading’ with firms Watch
• Government wants energy prices held
• Labour to pledge major energy reform

Ed Miliband: David Cameron pleading with energy companies

3 hours ago

Labour leader Ed Miliband says the prime minister has been “pleading with energy companies to get him off the hook”.

Government asks energy firms to hold prices

Energy bills: Ministers not seeking ‘price pledge’

All a bit of a shambles from the BBC.

But there’s more to this….not only had the BBC managed to get Flint onto the radio at 07:10 but they had rounded up Dale Vince, the boss of Ecotricity…..who not very long ago at all was quite open about his leanings:

Ecotricity boss Dale Vince backs Ed Miliband in energy company power struggle

And:

Ecotricity founder Dale Vince today called for Ed Miliband to go further than thoughts of a price freeze and consider either renationalising the energy industry

He appeared on Wake Up To Money(05:49ish)….so a very fast move by the BBC to get him on early doors.

When asked about the alleged government’s proposal he said:

‘It does sound awfully similar to what Ed Miliband is proposing’.

Well, fancy that.  Of course it does….and that is why it was so unlikely to be true…and yet the BBC report it, unconfirmed by anyone, as fact.

Here is a further taste of Vince’s politics…..

‘The Big Six threatened blackouts if Ed Miliband tried to freeze prices (note ‘threatened‘…I thought ‘warned of’ more appropriate’)…I remember the 70’s when the blackouts were caused by the miners…and now we’ve privatised the energy industry it’s the bosses threatening blackouts.’

The presenter asks:  ‘Do we get stitched up by the Big Six?’  ( a leading question or what?  Vince isn’t exactly neutral here)

Vince replies :  ‘Oh yeah…for years…..since privatisation they’ve been running rings around the regulator and they get away with murder.’

OK…so the privatised energy firms are ripping us off….whilst the jolly little green midget is a ‘friend of the people’ providing energy at affordable prices?  Vince boasts he has fixed his prices until the end of winter as well.

Let’s compare Saint Vince and one of the evil Big Six:

Here is npower’s offer:

Fix your energy prices now until December 2017

You can switch tariff or supplier at any time, with no early exit fee.

So….just what benefit is Miliband’s price freeze when it is already happening?…and from 2013 not some time after the election….I don’t think I’ve ever heard the BBC mention these price fixes by the big companies…why not?

And what about that ‘rip off’…that ‘stitching up’ by the Big Six?

Well UK energy is one of the cheapest in Europe.

Here are Ecotricity’s prices compared to SSE’s:

Electricity……15.67 p/kwh        But SSE costs 13.08 p/kwh

Gas………………04.66 p/kwh        But SSE costs 04.36 p/kwh

Not only that but SSE’s standing charge is much cheaper if you pay by direct debit.

Don’t know about Vince’s arithmetic but I’d say SSE’s prices are cheaper.

So if the Big Six are stitching consumers up, ripping them off…..just what is Ecotricity doing as its prices are higher than SSE’s, one of the Big Six?

Why isn’t the BBC doing these checks on claims by Vince?  They don’t want the facts just as they didn’t check the false claims made by the owner of OVO Energy who was caught out twice making false claims but was given huge publicity by the BBC.

So let’s round this up…..the BBC reported a completely unconfirmed allegation as fact….they made no attempt to confirm it…but they did get in a lot of people who are on Labour’s side to talk about it at suspiciously short notice.

Miliband was relaunching his big ‘price freeze’ policy and it is just coincidental that the BBC was making claims that Cameron was now to adopt that very same policy on the same day?

The BBC are still reporting it as fact on the politics page…3 reports saying the government wants a freeze…and one denying it:

• Ministers deny energy bill bid
• Cameron wants energy rise limit Watch
• Labour: PM ‘pleading’ with firms Watch
• Government wants energy prices held

Note in this ‘breaking story’, ‘Energy bills: Green levy reform plan revealed‘ there is no mention of the denial…but there is a video of Miliband smearing  Cameron…why is it on that page when it is irrelevant to the article?

Note also that the interviewer in the video asks if we should re-nationalise the energy industry?…this is a constant theme from the BBC…..Dominic Laurie is a particular exponent of this policy…he has history ranting about the evils of privatisation…and today continued that theme.

Laurie was talking about this alleged government policy….and brought on some callers….well, one or two…the first two were likely Miliband supporters…and both remarkably demanded nationalisation of the power companies….followed up by texts…also demanding nationalisation…with only one doubter.

Laurie told us this was a policy that was extremely popular with the Public…not sure how he knows.

Laurie also had on Labour MP Alan Whitehead who was allowed to speak practically uninterrupted…only stopping to be fed a question by Laurie that seemed purely designed to allow Whitehead to continue his hatchet job on the Tories…one example….

Laurie asks:  ‘Shouldn’t we wait until the energy companies come out on the record [regarding the alleged government attempt to freeze prices] before we call it a shambles?’

So…Laurie thinks it is all a shambles…and gave Whitehead the chance to ‘confirm’ that, as he would.

But hang on…this was after 12:00pm….so the BBC hadn’t yet had an ‘on the record’ report from the horse’s mouth that the government had asked them to freeze prices?

So why had the BBC been reporting this as an absolute fact?

It looks very much like the BBC has been deliberately putting out false information about the government not bothering to check a story that is highly damaging to the government whilst enormously helpful to Labour…and all on the day Labour were relaunching their own energy policy.

Caught red handed peddling pro-Labour black propaganda?  I think so.

Let’s have a look at some recent BBC history:

Paxman made utterly false and insulting allegations about David Cameron and the BBC has not made any apology.

The BBC gave Miliband a massive platform on Desert Island Discs to sell himself to the Public.

Then John Humphrys wrote an article for the Labour newspaper,  the Mirror, defending Miliband’s appearance on the show.

The BBC has been pretty uncritical of Miliband’s price freeze policy, in fact has been supportive of it whilst being extremely critical and negative towards Cameron’s cutting of the ‘green crap’.

The BBC has been party to the massed attacks on the energy companies…the most recent example being the reporting of the ‘excess winter deaths’ which was vastly exaggerated with the BBC not reporting all the facts allowing it to lay blame at the energy companies’ door…..high fuel prices causing the deaths apparently…along with slogans like ‘heating or eating‘ and then the latest..‘heating or healing’ where cancer victims were also suffering because of the high price of cancer treatment or so we were told by the BBC….but blamed on the energy companies.

And today we have the BBC printing ‘legend as fact’ which conveniently tied in with Labour’s narrative.

Taken together a cynic might suggest there is a thread which runs through all of the BBC’s actions….that of helping out the Labour Party, publicising and promoting its policies whilst burnishing Miliband’s image which every commentator agrees is unappealing to the voters.