The Kraft bid for Cadbury revealed how few powers UK regulators have to act to ensure that mergers and takeovers in the UK act operate in the public interest. However, one of the few areas where the Government does have the right to intervene is to protect media plurality.

If News Corporation’s bid for BSkyB were to go ahead, the resulting concentration of media ownership that the new company would represent would lead to a serious reduction in media plurality, which is a cornerstone of a flourishing democracy. It is would also lead to a substantial reduction in competition in the media sector. The implications for consumers of news and content generally and for other broadcasters  - notably the BBC, which the Murdoch empire continually rails against – look bleak. Read more »

   Filed under: Corporate governance, Media | 1 Comment »

There’s a piece in today’s Sunday Times that plays exactly the same trick as the Mail article I wrote about on Left Foot Forward on Friday.

The true cost of Labour tax grab: small print reveals the extent of pain for workers

Yet read the story more closely and you find that these workers all earn over £150,000 a year. Read more »

   Filed under: Economics, Financial crisis, Media, Recession | 1 Comment »

I have a guest post on Left Foot Forward wondering why the Daily Mail is more interested in the pensions of those earning more than £150,000 a year than they are in those of their own readers.

   Filed under: Media, Pensions | 1 Comment »

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 | Comments Off

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.

Read more »

   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 »

   Filed under: Media, Recession | Comments Off

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.

Read more »

   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 »