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Crucial part on VAT and jobs by the British Retail Consortium blocked by the BBC
As if Nick Clegg’s pledge on tuition fees wasn’t bad enough, do you remember this old chestnut?
Staggeringly, the crucial part on the effect of VAT on jobs in today’s BBC news story on the VAT (“VAT rise from 17.5% to 20%“) is missing. This account on the British Retail Consortium website is as follows. This is a crucial part of the story, as otherwise the Conservative spin on NI being the only jobs tax is simply lie and spin; the BBC, as an independent and partial broadcaster, should not be in collusion with lies and spin.
This is what Ed himself said on the matter, covered on ITN News, but non-existent on the BBC which prides itself on its balance and (lack of) bias.
Link to the site: http://www.brc.org.uk/details04.asp?id=1744
Here is the text of the British Retail Consortium’s original press release on the matter:
| VAT RISE WOULD COST 163,000 JOBS |
| May 27, 2010 |
| Increasing the VAT rate to 20 per cent would cost 163,000 jobs over four years and reduce consumer spending by £3.6 billion over the same period.
The biggest challenge facing the new Government is to reduce the budget deficit without damaging the recovery. Now, for the first time, independent analysis carried out for the British Retail Consortium (BRC) quantifies the economic impact of a range of possible VAT increases and of the National Insurance increases already announced by this Government. The research concludes there is no silver bullet that will allow the Government to raise large amounts of revenue without having a substantial effect on the economy. Employment, consumption and GDP would all be hit significantly by tax rises. The BRC is calling on the Government to follow through on its recent statements that public spending cuts will be prioritised over tax rises as a route to tackling the deficit. The BRC is also cautioning that halving the deficit over four years not three would better support the recovery. In its first year, a VAT rate of 20 per cent would reduce the deficit by £11.3 billion but by the end of that first year there would be 30,000 fewer jobs in the UK – across all employment sectors – than if there had been no increase. After four years that figure would be 163,000 fewer jobs. A year on from raising VAT to 20 per cent, consumer spending would be £1.6 billion less than it would have been and after four years, £3.6 billion less. Higher VAT means lower demand for goods and services as prices go up and companies’ margins are hit, meaning they have to cut costs to keep trading so employ fewer people or hold-back on job creation. The analysis commissioned by the BRC also examines the impact of a range of other possible VAT increases. A 19 per cent VAT rate would cost 99,000 jobs over four years while a 22.5 per cent rate would mean 317,000 fewer jobs over the same period. The new Government has said it will increase employees’ National Insurance Contributions by one per cent and employers’ by 0.5 per cent. That will reduce UK job numbers by 25,000 in the first year. The UK jobs total will be 109,000 down after four years. Consumer spending would contract by £948 million in the first year and £2.2 billion after four years. The Director of the BRC explained, “The budget deficit is serious. It has to be tackled but proposals must be judged against the implications for jobs and growth revealed by this new information. “The main tool has to be cutting non-vital public spending. Removing some of the previously-planned National Insurance increase and signals that the Chancellor will look for an 80:20 split between public spending cuts and tax rises are a welcome start. “Business growth will get the country out of the hole it’s in, led by retail. The Government must now deliver a route to stability that supports companies and customers by avoiding damaging tax rises.” The study has been carried out for the BRC by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) using its model of the UK economy. The model assesses the initial revenue raising impact of the taxes then the follow-on consequences as they cascade through the economy. First round effects can include immediate reductions in spending by those most affected by a tax rise. Second round effects can include firms reducing employment and investment as costs or margins are hit. This feeds through to lower demand and lower productive capacity. Notes to Editors: The full BRC/CEBR report Reducing Public Borrowing: Balancing Spending Cuts and Tax Rises is available at : Media contacts: |
And what did David Cameron originally say to Jeremy Paxman?
The BBC represents a sickening waste of public money
If the BBC represents ‘good value for money’ in this age of austerity, then frankly I am a gorilla. The way the BBC wastes its money, and its general corporate arrogance and demeanour, makes me physically sick. They have also caused me and my family no end of mental torture.
A recent report in the Telegraph makes very grim reading for those of us who believe that the BBC has extremely poor standards in editorial competence, in accuracy, impartiality and balance.
To add insult to injury, the BBC last year spent £31,500 on taxis, £21,000 on hospitality and £45,500 on flights.
Helen Boaden, Director of BBC News, claimed £240 for a “leaving party” which 12 people attended, but the name of the departing staff member was blacked out.
Bob Shennan, the Controller of Radio 2 and 6 Music, spent £217 on “wine purchased for the team” on February 16th, the night of the Brit Awards.
Ken MacQuarrie, Director of BBC Scotland, claimed £165 for a new aeroplane ticket having “missed previous flight”.
Mark Thompson, the corporation’s Director-General, claimed £4,449 for flights to the Sun Valley conference in Idaho, and a further £4,429 for a trip to Boston but a note claims that “this flight was not used and a refund should appear”. He also claimed £177 for a second passport.
Erik Huggers, Director of Future Media & Technology, claimed £1,242 to travel from Tel Aviv to Paris in April, claiming it was the “last seat” on the “only available flight” because of “ash cloud travel disruption”.
Alan Yentob, the BBC’s Creative Director, claimed £123.50 for a train from London Paddington to Castle Cary on the opening day of the nearby Glastonbury festival. He also spent £822 on a flight from Heathrow to Nice in the South of France, when the same journey can be booked currently for £136.
Danny Cohen, the Controller of BBC Three who is to become the Controller of BBC1, spent £1,657 on an eight-night stay in a Los Angeles hotel.
This is your money they’re playing with. And they’re the ones pedalling the cuts are necessary, not letting you know of Labour’s alternative. How sickened do I feel? Very…
Dr Shibley Rahman is a research physician and research lawyer by training.
Queen’s Scholar, BA (1st.), MA, MB, BChir, PhD, MRCP(UK), LLB(Hons.), FRSA
Director of Law and Medicine Limited
Member of the Fabian Society and Associate of the Institute of Directors
Time for the BBC to give up on the pretence of responsible journalism
Today, I loved reading the Times on my iPad. Indeed, parts of the British media are world-class, and worthy of our reputation abroad. The Times and Financial Times are probably my most favourite media publications of all.
Unfortunately, in the run-up to the General Election, the BBC were without shadow of a doubt gunning for Gordon Brown – to lose. Many of my friends were appalled about the highly personal comments made towards him in both style and manner, and this includes so-called respectable people in respectable institutions (for example, Nick Clegg’s conduct in the Lower House in Prime Minister’s Questions). For the BBC and people like Adam Boulton, ‘Bigotgate’ was possibly a gift.
Some have said that senior presenters of the BBC, Laura Kuenssberg and Nick Robinson, put the most unbelievable gloss on the Tory Party, that a large number of my 2400 friends on Facebook were talking about not renewing their TV licence as class action protest. Maybe, taken as a whole, the BBC does not suffer from lack of impartiality, and indeed some of the output of the BBC is first-rate (for example, the Today programme). Some items on BBC online news would be more fitting for a tabloid on a bad day.
Right-wingers tend to claim the BBC has enormous left-wing bias, therefore providing evidence that it produces balanced coverage. My parents, who have lived in this country since 1961, used to have enormous respect for the BBC, and indeed the brand of the BBC used to be superb internationally, but now that they have zero respect for it. Whilst there used to be goodwill for ‘Beeb’, the illusion has nearly become shattered to an irreparable state. Now that its standards have declined so much, it is vital that an external entity should look at the functioning of the BBC as a professional media operation. The BBC investigates complaints internally mainly, leaving little recourse for complaints, because OFCOM’s terms-of-reference are so narrow.
The journalists are supposed to obey the Editorial guidelines of the BBC which are widely publicized, but within a single day it is ‘dead easy’ to find examples of problems in accuracy, balance and impartiality. However, one has to wonder whether journalists should declare a ‘conflict of interest’ in the same way that directors of companies in England have to declare a financial interest under the Companies Act (2006)? Does it matter that a highly influential person within the BBC News machine, Nick Robinson, was a prominent Tory at University? His argument will be that his professional manner can be divorced from his political views, in that a doctor with severe depression can be a psychiatrist, but might it be worth the while of the BBC to publish once-and-for-all some statistics on the volume of complaints for a definable and measurable period, such as the 2010 General Election? Throughout the election campaign, the coverage towards David Cameron and Nick Clegg was much more lenient than towards Gordon Brown.
The BBC has for some time been producing inaccurate coverage of news stories, some of which are clearly not in the overall public interest but constitute a ‘witch-hunt’ at best. The BBC regularly contravenes rules of responsible journalism as explained in Reynolds v Times Newspaper case from the House of Lords. The recent debacle has been that Question Time has been accused of demonstrating left-wing bias, when David Dimbleby was virtually shouting down answers given by Hillary Benn. Even when it comes to defamation, it is not a problem as they have a well-funded legal team, paid for by millions of tax-payers. Protecting the identity of ‘Stig’ in the public interest did not come particularly cheap, ‘reliable sources claim’.
Apparently, a Conservative source said:
Now, more than ever, is the time for the BBC to be careful and frame the debate responsibly so that the facts are properly heard. The spending review is a serious topic for all of us, it needs to be treated as such.’
Surely 150 days is a bit early for right-wing political paranoia to start setting in?
Today, we have a main news item concerning Wikileaks suggesting that all we see in the media may not be what is happening in real life.
How transparent is the BBC machinery? Sure, they can publish the salaries of Directors who are earning £500,000 a year, or more, but is this what is really ‘getting the goat’ of ordinary licence payers? Was it correct that the BBC refused to play the DEC humanitarian appeal? The Glasgow Media Group repeatedly has shown the BBC is more right wing in coverage; a genuine public interest point is that, with the BBC attacking pensions of BBC workers and now to make 16% cuts, we can expect even more right wing bias.
Take specifically what happened last Wednesday. An individual has written to me the following:
“My part of my union (Revenue & Customs, PCS) had a small demonstration outside our HQ @ 100 Parliament Street (opposite the HOP). I was offered a spot on the Radio 5 Question Time being held on the Green after the cuts were made. There was some confusion and I was advised that the BBC didn’t want any trade union representatives on air!!! However, a few of us hung around whilst the political heavyweights were being interviewed. No one from any UK news outlet paid us (or any other protesters) any notice at all.
However, my colleague was filmed by Al Jazeera – who seemed more interested in what the protesters were saying than the politicians. She also did a longish interview for a Danish TV station and an interview for the Portuguese press. I was intervied by Helsinki Sanomat in some depth. The European press were interested in the lack of action by the TUC. I was asked if I would rather be French. The day before we were followed by Japanese TV for a documentary there and today we were interviewed in London by the French TV.”
On the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is mooted that BBC still broadcasts much more pro-war views, even when 76% think troops should be returned. The most sinister development in their editorial policy is that they appear parrot ‘we have got to cut the deficit’ views without even providing the evidence from the Nobel Laureate, Paul Krugman, and David Blanchflower CBE, that the cuts will be a disaster. The BBC then creates editorial imbalance by not presenting half of the argument, thus making the entire argument grossly inaccurate. It is then easy for the BBC’s Director General Mark Thompson to satisfy the Conservative PR machine to present the coalition’s cuts in a favourable light, and for George Osborne to claim that Labour has no alternative.
The spin that has been propagated on this is truly mortifying. No mention is made by the BBC that the Conservatives supported the Labour borrowing plan between 2001-2007, the UK had the lowest debt of G20 countries on entering the recession, the recession was truly worldwide (as they might be forced to admit when we go into a double-dip), and that the reason Labour does not wish to specific which would it cut first is (a) because Labour with the Fawcett Society think the budget contravenes the Equality Act (b) Labour does not agree with the macroeconomic policy in the first place. Labour has made it perfectly clear in the public record for a long time that it does not support the rate or depth of cuts. It is especially nauseating that the Coalition does not command any authority on narrowing the ‘tax gap’.
The BBC could do a lot for public confidence in its reputation by reporting on tax avoidance by millionaires, or reporting on the alternative funding of the public sector services, rather than what it seems to spend most of its time in: gutter, trashy witch-hunts to grab headlines, so-called “breaking news”.
The real reason that people appear to hate the cuts is actually – shock horror – because real people (not millionaires) hate the cuts. The Coalition will be hard pushed to find a city sympathetic to their cause – maybe Middlesborough was a bad choice, but I look forward to Question Time from the BBC, in my home city of Glasgow next Thursday.
It’s all getting a bit serious isn’t it?
Here’s a video of Adam Boulton ‘losing it’ with Alastair Campbell
and Nick Robinson potentially contravening the Criminal Damage Act (1971)
Your journalism is safe in their hands? I’m saying nothing..
Dr Shibley Rahman is a research physician and research lawyer by training.
Queen’s Scholar, BA (1st.), MA, MB, BChir, PhD, MRCP(UK), LLB(Hons.), FRSA
Director of Law and Medicine Limited
Member of the Fabian Society and Associate of the Institute of Directors
Lilla Bruce, worried about her bus pass, is voting for Ed, whereas Andy Coulson receives a £140,000 salary. Fairness, Mr Clegg?
Soon the reality of the spending cuts will bite, making the Andy Coulson stuff, whilst potentially illegal, pale maybe into insignificance. Lilly has her mind on other things much closer to home, away from Mr Coulson’s £140,000 tax-payer funded salary.
Lilla Bruce, 83, who lives in the North East of England, is worried about pensioners because of the bus pass and the winter fuel payments.
It turns out that areas in the North East are possibly least likely to withstand the economic shock of cuts which are proposed by the Coalition, new research suggests.
Ed Miliband was superb on BBC'S "Any Questions"
Ed Miliband was brilliant on “Any Questions” tonight. I will definitely be voting for him as the ‘change candidate’ leading us to a deserved victory in the 2015 General Election, a time at which the Liberal Democrats will be sadly annihilated (for party members, that is).
William Hague
As it happens I think that Hague’s statement was absolutely correct. He is an extremely learned man from Oxford, and a man of integrity. I am simply disgusted what has happened, and I wasn’t surprised to see both the BBC and Guido Fawkes enjoy themselves so much on this. Yes, I believe in responsible freedom of expression, but not potential legal defamation or moral offense through vile innuendo. Bloggers such as @GuidoFawkes have indeed got out of control, I agree with Alan Milburn. I agree with Quentin Letts, where blogs have become influential. Quentin Legg’s comment that “Reading a blog is like looking at the bedsheets of a boy”, I feel, is very accurate. I am fully behind Ed Miliband who gave his full support to William Hague, emphasising that it doesn’t affect his ability to do the job. Ed Miliband, like me, doesn’t believe in censorship, but does believe in responsibility. He received a resounding round of applause. Martha Kearney demonstrated the typo of innuendo that the contemptible BBC has become known for. For a ‘national institution’, it is really little better than the gutter press. I think Alan Duncan was completely correct to call it a “nasty” blog.
Andy Coulson
The NY Times, a highly respected newspaper, has made allegations against there was “an endemic culture” of phone hacking in the News of the World, and Ed Miliband said that people have come forward claiming that phones were tapped. I agree entirely with Ed Miliband in that David Cameron must issue a statement about it. Mary Riddell said that it has to be investigated properly, as it is a very serious allegation. Protecting Andy Coulson will be at the detriment of protecting the reputation of the journalism profession, and that decisive action has to be taken to restore faith in professionalism of journalists.
Labour leadership
Mary Riddell is absolutely correct, that nobody knows who will win. I was absolutely delighted to hear Ed Miliband to see away from New Labour and to explain briefly the change that is needed in the Labour policy and government, and his wish to demolish the opposition as soon as possible. Quentin Letts is completely wrong to talk Britain down by saying the UK was very nearly bankrupted; this is not true. The UK only paid off its debt from the Second World War from a few years ago. Alan Duncan appears to think that any devestation as a result of debts is justified, and I completely disagree.
