Stephanie Flanders of the BBC wins the 'crass tweet of the day' award for this:
For the record, the article she links to is here and claims that in an Ipsos Mori poll that asked people whether they had personally noticed a change in the quality of their local services 65% said they had not. From this Flanders jumps to the above, absurd, conclusion.
Now in Flanders own cosy, rather secure, little world maybe she isn't aware of social services and what they do. Or of child protection services. Or social care for the elderly. But all these services are provided by councils and for a great many people cuts in these services are crippling. As Polly Toynbee noted this morning:
Care homes are going to the wall, unable to survive on the low sums that local authorities pay. Delivered by the underpaid and under-trained, home "care" is often no more than a 15-minute visit. One care worker told me it can only be done in the time if you feed someone while they sit on the commode. In the two years between 2010 and 2012 as social care was cut, the number of over-90s rushed by ambulance to A&E rose by 66%, with 100,000 extra elderly people admitted to hospital.
I can only presume Flanders has never come across anything like that.
If she had she would not have made so stupid a comment. But she did. Which says a lot about her perception of reality and the way she presents on the BBC.
Perhaps she should go to her library and do a little research. Except she may find it's shut. But I guess she doesn't realise that's a council service either.
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Here in Somerset a quarter of the County council workforce is be fired-no doubt told ‘we’ll have to let you go’! The remainder face pay cuts. Roads will not be resurfaced, just potholes filled. The Chief executive says “I’m realistic and pragmatic and realise this is for the long term benefit of the Ukplc — we have to work our way through it.” The unchallenged economic model.
Further cuts are to come.
Does Stephanie realise that schools have become academies and so are funded directly? This cuts the spending levels.
I know staff who work for other councils who are being pressured by given more than they can do in the time. Often, it appears, their managers do not lead by saying ‘You stop doing Y and just do X.’ They demand results without direction. Even Field Marshall Haig didn’t do that.
The Guardian ran a story yesterday (i didn’t read it) about the police being cut without consequences. Of course, this is an individual columnist who tend to be instant experts on all sorts of things and should not be taken seriously.
There was a brilliant LOW cartoon in the 1930s. three men on a ladder and water rising. The Upper class man’s feet are in the water. The Middle class man’s up to his waist. The working class man has the water up to his shoulders. The man at the top says ‘We all need to go down one step.’
Sums it up!
For a while BBC Radio 4 flooded the airwaves with her name, as if we should of course know who she was (I didn’t). It’s a particular BBC tactic for bringing their own right into the public consciousness. She even presented her own programme about called Stephanomics (geddit)
Analysis about economics is subjective and I remain undecided about Ms Flanders. Maybe the BBC should have a balanced output and have a rather more left thinking economics programme, presented by yourself Richard. They could call it Murphomics, or something…
Referencing her father’s song, Richard Littlejohn said in the Daily Mail: If Stephanie Flanders speaks for Britain, then I’m a gnu. I rather agree.
Am amused by your last comment
Dear Richard many apologies just realised that i was reading the initial cuts news in 2010. Please eliminate the first paragraph. i think the rest holds good.
I don’t know why you keep doing it Richard. Here you are saying:
“Now in Flanders own cosy, rather secure, little world maybe she isn’t aware of social services and what they do.”
And yet in her article Flanders states:
Another – [argument] which politicians on the left might go for – is that councils, and the government generally, have been good at concentrating cuts on a relatively small share of the population. On this view, the pain is there, it’s just being not being felt by the people most likely to vote or write to their MPs.”
“…Poll after poll shows that one part of the population HAS very much noticed the effects of austerity: disabled people. Maybe George Osborne should not have been surprised by the reception he got at last year’s Paralympics.
Likewise, many of the planned cuts to the welfare bill – like the benefit ‘cap’ for families- will be felt keenly by only a small number of households”
Showing that she quite clearly is aware of social services.
I found Flanders article to be balanced, giving both left and right interpretations of the findings of the poll.
You do your cause no good by blatantly miss-representing those with different views to your own.
Respectfully – there is no way that justifies the message of her article or tweet
You are using the same rose tinted glasses as Flanders
Richard,
This really doesn’t sound like a well thought out blog post – more of a diatribe against Stephanie Flanders, and this is a pity as it casts doubt on your judgement.
She is merely pointing out the results of a poll, not offering a personal opinion. She actually makes precisely the point that you also do, namely that the 35% are probably the ones who are being hit hardest, whilst others are not, due to the nature of the cuts.
Or do you disagree that 65% is not ‘most people’ – do we have to use arbitrary weighting so that people affected by cuts count as 2 people? That way 52% of people have been affected by the cuts, which is far more satisfactory.
Respectfully – no journalist ‘merely points our the results of a poll’ – she has put her interpretation on it
And I find that interpretation profoundly distasteful, uninformed and indifferent to real need
And as an economist she should know that 65% is meaningless if most of them don’t use the service – it’s like asking 50% of the population what they think about the standards of women’s loos. If the entire 50% was male they would say they had noticed no change in their quality over the last five years – because that would be true. And meaningless. Just as Flanders should have realised this sample base was also meaningless if most did not sue the service – and that it also probably had a sampling bias in it as most who would use the service i.e. the old and young, are not often sampled.
Sorry – but this is really poor analysis and I stick by that claim
“Respectfully — no journalist ‘merely points our the results of a poll’ — she has put her interpretation on it”
I don’t think that is true of all journalists .
BBC news is particularly opinionated . Their reports are about as factual as their reports of the Lancaster bombing raids .
I try to explain to people who left the UK 20 years ago that for the last decade BBC news degenerated into tabloid style and standard journalism which always has a slant .
For one thing the news readers seem to think their job is to make the news rather than to report it .
Ex-pats can’t believe it when I tell them that for news they are better off going to Al Jazeera or Russia Today .
The BBC makes no pretense of adhering to it’s charter by giving opposing views air time . It won’t air anything which questions whether anthropogenic climate change is happening or which questions whether the EU is good .
One only has to listen to the music on Radio 3 to realise they can do out of this world programming but their news service and current affairs are garbage .
So basically you are arguing that we should only accept a poll of how many people have noticed a reduction in council services where the only people polled are those who use the services which have been affected.
If it were a poll of, for example, the disabled, setting out to see whether they had noticed a reduction in service, then obviously a poll of everyone would be flawed. The fact is, it is not.
It is a poll of the entire population showing that 65% of people have not noticed a reduction in council services. One inferrence which could be drawn from this (which she does) is that most people do not rely on the services which are being cut most.
You are making a seriously erroneaous logical step. Obviously you write your blog posts fast, but perhaps sometimes admitting you have made a mistake would not be a bad idea. Small admitted mistakes do not undermine your credibility but pugnaciously defending the indefensible does, which is a pity as in other areas you actually have something to say.
Respectfully, a poll of non-users is, well, useless
About as useful as an opinion poll on the outcome of the next UK general election taken in Chile
I’ve just read the article by Flanders, Richard, and to be fair to her she does acknowledge that some people – such as those with a disability – will have noticed the cuts in service, even though a majority don’t seem to have done.
Of course, that raises questions about sample selection and so on by Ipsos/Mori. But leaving all that aside there is one point that’s worth making when comparing Flanders final comment (as an economist) with the figures Polly Toynbee has in her article, and that you quote above.
Flanders concludes: ‘But we economists might come away with a more positive thought: if there was this much hidden capacity lurking in local government – who knows, maybe we’re seriously underestimating the rest of the economy’s potential as well.’
Well clearly if 100,000 more over 90s went to A&E then what’s really happened is demand has been shifted from one public service to another. That has absolutely nothing to do with ‘lurking’ hidden capacity. And there is plenty of evidence to suggest that similar shifts of demand are taking place all over the place (e.g. the rapid and large growth in the number of foodbanks compensating for displaced demand – actually need – from the cutting of a range of services). Meanwhile, of course, the loss of services that libraries offered are more than likely “absorbed” as families simply go without. Again, nothing whatsoever to do with – or evidence of – hidden capacity.
All you do is confirm that her analysis is crass – and that she asked the wrong questions – in my opinion
‘All you do is confirm that her analysis is crass’
Indeed, Richard. If you re-read the quote from Flanders and my final paragraph you should see that’s exactly what I set out to do.
Yes – I appreciated that
Sorry if you doubted it!
I don’t like her comments, they could be construed as a “dog whistle” to the Far Right…
Economists should be careful with their analyses. Now someone please remind why Reinhart and Rogoff strikes a chord?
A YouGov poll on this same issue gives very different results. See http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/je0tthbawb/YG-Archive-Pol-Sun-results-240713.pdf
The question asked was “Local councils in many parts of Britain are cutting some of their services. Thinking about the area where you live, which of these statements comes closest to your view?”
37% said “central govt is mainly responsible because it is cutting sharply the money it gives to the council where I live”
31% said “local govt is mainly responsible because it could achieve most of the savings it needs by cutting costs without affecting services”
21% said “neither – I am not aware of significant cuts to local services in my area”
11% said don’t know.
21% is a MUCH lower number than 65% – I don’t know which is “right” (or if either are the “true” percentage of people not affected by cuts) but this does suggest that the MORI polling is not the last word on this matter.
Thanks Howard