I suppose the BBC thought it was being clever by offering up what it probably sees as limited sacrifices in an attempt to appease Rupert Murdoch and then giving the story as an exclusive to the Murdoch owned Times.
It hasn’t worked. The Times was contemptuous in its response calling the BBC “big, bloated and cunning”. Read more »
Filed under: Media, Politics | No Comments »
Alex Brummer spent many years at the Guardian before moving to become city editor of the Daily Mail. He often writes good sense in a paper where I do not always look for it. His latest column for the New Statesman has some insight but is mainly pure essence of Daily Mail - perhaps not surprisingly as it is about pensions, and public sector pensions in particular.
Filed under: Media, Pensions, Public spending | 1 Comment »
Last Sunday I wrote a critique of a Sunday Times article about public versus private pay. Frankly I do not expect very much from the Sunday Times. What really irritated me was the claim that its facts had been validated by Straight Statistics – an organisation whose aims I admire and whose work I have quoted in the past.
I assumed that they had probably been done over by the Sunday Times, so I was scrupulous in drawing my piece to the attention of Nigel Hawkes and inviting him to reply. Read more »
Filed under: Earnings, Media, Public services | 3 Comments »
The BBC had an excellent report on the Today programme this morning (7:20) on youth homelessness at Christmas, but reporter Tamasin Ford said once again that we are currently suffering the highest youth unemployment “since records began” in 1992 “nearly twenty years ago”. Read more »
Filed under: Labour market, Media | 1 Comment »
The Guardian deserves much praise for Polly Curtis’s story today finding that 50% of private school pupils get A grades in their A levels. Polly writes that this is:
“prompting claims that attempts to break the middle-class stranglehold on entry to higher education have failed this year.” (our emphasis).
But going to private school does not put you in the middle of anything. Read more »
Filed under: Inequality, Media, Middle Britain, Social mobility | 7 Comments »
N.B. Written on Saturday – but didn’t appear for some reason
There’s less talk of green shoots in today’s papers after yesterday’s poor GDP figures. In The Times the middle class recession is back. Times are certainly tough in Maidenhead. Their case study picture (in the paper – not online) is captioned:
“Mrs Williams has taken to buying two-for-one offers at Waitrose”
But if the obvious depth of the recession and likely shallowness of the recovery is becoming apparent then it may be easier to resist the clamour for spending cuts. Read more »
Today’s unemployment figures once again underline that they are going to get a lot worse before they get better. Indeed it is likely to be years before we return to the levels of employment that we saw before the recession began to bite. But my impression is that unemployment is dropping down the media and political agenda (of course with honorable exceptions). It will be interesting therefore to see how the media reports today’s figures. I’m sure that they will receive wide coverage today and tomorrow, but they are not being treated as the national emergency that they are.
Filed under: Financial crisis, Labour market, Media, Politics, Recession | Comments Off
David Cameron’s speech on quangos clearly wasn’t any kind of bonfire – as many have noticed. But it did have one clear policy commitment – taking strategic policy away from Ofcom to give it to a minister.
There is a debate to be had about accountability and quangos, but if there is one area of policy that needs maximum daylight because of the dangers of ministers doing things in return for political favours it is anything involving media magnates. Read more »
Filed under: Media, Politics | 2 Comments »
Ensuring the whole country has access to broadband is extremely sensible. I would not go quite as far as Gordon Brown as saying it is as important as fresh water, but it is essential to full participation in modern life. And as there is clear market failure – otherwise everyone would already have it – the state should intervene. Read more »
Filed under: Media, Tax, Technology | 3 Comments »
update: the TUC is now the lead comment on the BBC piece mentioned below. I – of course – withdraw any hint of criticism of the wonderful BEEB who should be allowed to keep all the license fee. But there is still a serious point to be made about city experts.
I’ll leave my expert colleagues to trawl over the unemployment figures in detail, but it’s hard to see the highest youth unemployment figures for 15 years as good news.
Yet the media is now on relentless green shoot hunt. It’s disappointing to see even the BBC treating the jobless figures in this way, with no quotes from anyone who works with or represents the unemployed – and instead quotes from two city economists and the Chambers of Commerce (though there’s nothing much wrong with their take).
Of course it’s right to look at detailed economic statistics, but as Brendan argued earlier this week there are strong vested interests talking up a recovery that is extremely remote for all the people who make up today’s jobless figures. Some people are very keen to get back to the days when they could easily argue that unemployment was the fault of the unemployed, easily fixed with a short sharp dose of workfare.
Filed under: Economics, Labour market, Media, Recession | 1 Comment »
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