I always take anything Patrick Wintour and Nick Watts write about Labour in the Guardian with a pinch of salt, but this has some resonance:
On the Today programme on Radio 4 on Thursday morning Balls found it hard to make his point that the whole spending review was the consequence of an austerity policy that had failed.
An astonishing round of cuts has not met with effective opposition from Labour, and that's because it is on the same hymn sheet as the Tories believing that cuts are essential.
They aren't.
What is essential is that we work out how to get the UK to work. If unemployment was reduced to 1 million the UK would not have many of its economic problems. As Keynes put it, look after unemployment and the budget looks after itself.
Isn;'t that obvious? Surely it is apparent that paying vast numbers of people to do nothing cannot ever make sense or be the foundation of anything like a genuinely prosperous country?
But what do we get instead? Bankrupt economics based on the theory of the firm, and not a macro understanding of the state and a consequent wish to seriously increase the number out of work as if that will shed those people from the payroll - which in the case of the government it palpably fails to do.
Until Labour offer a different economic narrative of course they won't hit home on the Tories. Shadows don't hurt. Alternatives do.
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I didn’t hear the interview with Ed Balls but from the way Wintour and Watt report it, it sounds like Balls wasn’t allowed to make the point that Osborne’s austerity is strangling the country because the interviewer insisted on talking about the 7-day wait before signing on instead – just another piece of right-wing bias in BBC reporting. Of course, if Balls had a more effective alternative to austerity then he would have found it easier to make the case against Osborne, but even if Labour did have a credible policy they would still find it hard to articulate their message on the BBC because the BBC has an institutional right-wing bias.
Howard
That’s my point: he’s playing aw`y all the time and that doesn’t hep
Richard
This is a bit off topic, Richard, but as it relates to Ball’s potential nemesis – Gideon Osborne – and it made me smile (a rare occurance these days), I’ll add it anyway. How’s this for a description of Osborne:
‘The antisocial personality: [This type of personality] cannot feel any sense of remorse or shame. They approve only destructive actions. They appear quite rational. They can be very convincing.’
I’m not in any way associated with Scientology, but it comes from L. Ron Hubbard’s ‘Introduction to Scientology Ethics’ (1968). I found it in Jon Ronson’s interesting and amusing book, ‘The Psychopath Test’. I have no doubt it’s an accurate description of several more Tory ministers.
Very good
I fear you may be right – although I’ll hope not
Given that the BBC is funded entirely by quasi-taxation, is pretty much unaccountable, is staffed almost entirely by graduates in arts subjects, and has a history of news presenters leaving and complaining about the institutional left-wing bias in the organisation, it would frankly be astonishing if it had a right-wing bias. I know you can argue endlessly about media bias, but to blithely say twice in 6 lines that the BBC has a right-wing bias is so debatable that it undermines most of your previous comment.
FWIW I find the BBC is in an invidious position in that politicians of all hues accept interviews on the basis that it gives them a platform to get a message across, rather than on the basis that it gives the interviewer a chance to ask questions. And as a result, whoever is being interviewed, the outcome is unsatisfactory, as the message doesn’t come across and the questions don’t get answered.
I have not a shadow of a doubt the BBC has a right wing bias
It has since John Birt arrived to inject market culture
And high paid executives and presenters and questioners oddly don’t tend to have left wing bias. They’re bought out if they do – Paul Mason excepted, it seems
“I have not a shadow of a doubt the BBC has a right wing bias”
Absolutely, subtle at times but more often as not, quite blatant. If Joanna Gosling is doing the political commentary and or interview it’s simply not watchable (I am sure that’s nothing to do with her being married to Craig Oliver, the Director of Communications for 10 Downing Street). There are still a few, although in decline, who will ask the hard questions and probe for answers and avoid injecting their own opinion in as fact when dealing with all political colours .. but only a few, over the last few years the BBC has simply become the Broadcaster Backing Conservatives. That’s not to mention the endless parade of right wing “think tanks” they continually give air time too for commentary, then label them “independent”. When Sky News is more objective on political reporting than the BBC you know something is wrong. I will stick with CH4 News for now.
Roger. I’ll give you the benefit of my limited experience, having acted as academic advisor (with two colleagues who had previously done another series with the BBC) for a two part series on UK infrastructure shown last year.
Having been involved from initial script outline through to the final cuts of the programme our view was that the people we worked with while excellent, very bright people, exercised a strong degree of self censorship. In short, they recognised and (appeared) to accept our arguments for the inclusion of material that gave a truer, balanced, picture of the history and nature of the development of the infrastructure of the UK but were unable or unwilling to act on that.
In practice that meant that there was an underlying bias to the programmes that was pro market, private sector, etc, and as a result downplayed significantly the role the state has played in the development of this country’s infrastructure (e.g. through central and local government, nationalised industries). We were left to pick up much of this material through a web site that accompanied the programmes.
If I were to draw a broader parallel I’d say that regardless of their individual beliefs and values, many people at the BBC know – as do many in other public institutions, such as many universities – that it is no longer in your best interests to be seen to take issue with the neo-liberal project (the ex CE of the CQC may have a view on that now she’s been hung out to dry by her political masters). In short, the neo-liberal machine (i.e. hegemony) is now so dominant in so many walks of life that people simply self censor themselves.
Spot on
That is interesting Ivan. In my experience, whenever the media has covered any story which I understood in detail the coverage has invariably been (in my view) at best shallow and at worst misleading. My personal belief is that whoever makes television programmes has been told that the audience only has an attention span of 30 seconds and a memory of 3 minutes and so any complex argument gets rejected in favour of repeating the same comforting truth every 3 minutes as a “reminder” of what the programme is about. It may be that in simplifying arguments there is an inherent bias towards the status quo.
There are a few exceptions – sometimes the BBC runs documentaries where they have access to real heavyweights – but these tend to be “after the event” and analyse what happened in the past when the heavyweights were in power. Out of power they seem much more willing to speak honestly and lucidly.
I admit this is why I now prefer writing and radio
I have made a lot of television – and was asked to be on Dispatches on Monday on Prince Charles – but I am too often disappointed with the results to think it a good use of my time as often now
@ Ivan Horrocks
Your use of the word “hegemony”, given your academic credentials and proven expertise (certainly on this Blog), surely hides behind it Antonio Gramsci’s theory of “hegemony”?
If ONLY that could be taught in schools, as it would “remove the scales” from the eyes of many, demonstrating, as it would, the way the thought processes of the ruling elite permeate the body politic, and indeed the worlds of business, academia, even of organized belief structures – the Catholic Church in the Age of Reason, for example, or the Politburo in Soviet Russia.
Once one understands how dominant power (= hegemony) bends and distorts not only thinking, but even perceptions, it’s easy to understand how the BBC can now have a “Right Wing bias” – it can smell the coffee, and knows where its dosh comes from. So it tugs its forelock to its jejune, neo-liberal masters, applauding every new piece of neo-liberal (and we are atgreed, neo-feudal!) drivel, acclaiming it to be the intellectual equivalent of “the best thing since sliced bread” – which, of course, in ultimate terms most neo-liberal theory is i.e. sliced, homogenised, drained of most nutrition, easily eaten and digested, buyt not ultimately of much formative value, certainly as compared with real bread, plenty of which we get on thie blog.
Gramsci in school?
You know you’re proposing revolution Andrew?
They can’t even do the Emperor’s new clothes properly 🙂
Rodge
It’s probably because you are sufficiently far “to the right” to not understand the right wing bias in the BBC. It’s blatant and embarrassing.
Yes – education is key-but we don’t have any!. I left teaching because there was virtually no scope for doing anything out of the box. Economics teaching, as far as I know, still uses text books which teach people nothing about how money really works in the world they are living in. people like Chomsky have been talking about these issues for years but hardly anyone has heard of him these days. Opposition has been silenced, the BBC has stale debates referred by a world weary and cynical Paxman which must leave people feeling no m otivation to look any further.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/linda-kaucher/bbc-business-unit-and-public-interest