Making a point

When the good news about unemployment falling and wages outstripping the cost of living broke yesterday I wondered how BBC One's News at Ten would report it and whether they'd use it to make an anti-Brexit point. Well, even I was surprised at how quickly that anti-Brexit point came last night:

Huw Edwards: Wages grew faster than expected in the three months to July, as they continue to outstrip the cost of living for the fourth month in succession. Official data shows that pay, excluding bonuses, rose by 2.9% during the period, while unemployment has continued to fall, remaining at its lowest level for over 40 years, Our economics correspondent, Andy Verity, reports. 

Andy Verity: The firm that runs this construction site in Salford has no shortage of work. But a shortage of skilled workers is a growing problem. Until this year, its subcontractors could find the staff they needed easily, mostly from the rest of the European Union. 

Ged Rooney, Bardsley Construction: We've got Albanians working on here now but the dry liners, joiners, tilers tend to be Eastern European. So, in some instances, when they leave, it gets very, very difficult to entice the British workforce back on to the sites. 

Is that a record?

Duly credited

Credit where credit's due to BBC business reporter/presenter Andy Verity for this (which I transcribed from Wednesday's BBC One News at One (no longer on the iPlayer), following the release of the latest employment/unemployment figures:

You might think this rise in unemployment is significant, especially as it's the first time the figures have covered a period which is mostly after the referendum. But it's a rise of 10,000. That's not huge. It's within the margin of error. It could be wrong. 

And it's nothing like the official predictions of a rise in unemployment that were made before the referendum. 

Predictions made my HM Treasury - endorsed by distinguished economists as reasonable - said that after a vote to leave there'd be an immediate shock to the economy, pushing unemployment up by 500,000 over two years or, worse, a severe shock that would put it up by 800,000, and the economy would fall into a recession with four quarters of negative growth. 

Those predictions now look way out.

And though he followed that by saying that some companies are struggling in this post-Brexit vote period, the business he actually included in his report was doing well, buoyed by the cheap pound.

And though he then included an economist (of the Remain persuasion I guessed) saying that it's early days and things could still go wrong, that still struck me as being a decent, fair report from the BBC.

It can be done.

Retweets

I think it was Breitbart London's Raheem Kassam who first highlighted the following retweet from BBC economics correspondent Andy Verity:

The BBC man's brief response...

...hasn't met with much approval:

Read more here.

Spinning

Still sticking to Thursday night's Newsnight like a limpet covered in super glue,  there was another 'cost of living crisis' report from the BBC's Andy Verity, based on a report by the IFS (Institute for Fiscal Studies). 

Labour seized on Thursday's IFS report, saying that it showed that the coalition government was responsible for a dramatic fall in living standards, and Andy Verity's report gave an interpretation of the IFS's findings that began by offering a little bit of comfort for the government and then, step by step, took away that comfort, resulting in a take on the IFS's findings that was barely different to Labour's. (Former TUC chief economist) Ian Brinkley of the Work Foundation was on hand (as a 'talking head') to say that things are going to feel any better for those at the bottom end of the incomes scale. 

The following day the ONS (Office for National Statistics) published its own findings on the same subject (specifically wages), also noting the dramatic fall in living standards but saying that the 'key driver' in that decline was the fallout from the financial crisis of 2008-09, when Labour were in power, and that wage growth has been slowing for decades. Labour were less keen to trumpet that, for understandable reasons, and Newsnight failed to return to the issue on Friday night's edition, which is a shame.

Thankfully, Radio 4's More or Less gave a less loaded overview than Newsnight, and would even have dealt with the 2008-09 period if the ONS's website hadn't been down while they were doing their research into those figures. 

I also enjoyed More or Less's handy guide to the way the wages issue has been spun by the main parties. Here's the exchange between Tim Harford and Charlotte McDonald:

Tim: The Labour Party says real wages are falling while the government says they're rising, and I have a sneaking suspicion that both of them are, in their own narrow way, right. Now, Charlotte McDonald's here and, Charlotte, let me give you a task. Let's say you're a spokeswoman for the Labour Party and you would like to make falling living standards look as serious as possible. How would you do that?

Charlotte: Oh, that's not that hard. First, I'd avoid talking about what happened before 2010 because there was a massive banking crisis and recession and it's probably best not mentioned. But within that constraint, I'd pick a nice long time period and add up all the trouble over many years.

Tim: And what about inflation? Because these claims are all about whether earnings have kept pace with inflation, or not.

Charlotte: Well, obviously, I'd pick the RPI measure, which is higher than the CPI measure that is now more commonly used and I'd use wages before tax is deducted because that would make the problem look bigger. 

Tim: Right, so all of that would make things look as bad as they possibly could, and what conclusion would you reach? 

Charlotte: Well, that people are £1,600 worse off than at the time of the general election. Which by an astonishing coincidence is indeed the Labour Party's position!

Tim: OK. Now imagine you're speaking on behalf of the government. How would you make things look as rosy as possible?

Charlotte: Well, I'd compare April 2012 with April 2013. That's because wages in April 2013 were unusually high...

Tim: Why's that?

Charlotte: Well, you were discussing it earlier in the programme. The top rate of tax fell in April 2013 and so people delayed receiving bonuses. So there was an artificial tax-related blip.

Tim: OK, so that would increase apparent wage growth. What else would you do to make things look cheery?

Charlotte: I'd compare wages with the CPI measure of inflation, which was half a percentage point lower than the RPI over the year in question and I'd look at wages after tax because personal allowances have risen and that's increased some people's take-home pay. 

Tim: Genius! And what conclusion would you reach?

Charlotte: That for 90% of earners - all but the richest 10% - wages rose by more than inflation, and of course I wouldn't mention cuts to benefits or the self-employed. Which is pretty much the way the government has presented things!

Tim: Excellent work. A career as a spin doctor awaits!

I think that career would be more suited to Andy Verity perhaps. 

More or Less also included a detailed, entertaining, fair and exemplary analysis of the stats behind Labour's 50p top tax rate proposal - far better than anything Newsnight has done on the subject. If you haven't heard it, please give it a go (and if you don't like Ed Balls you'll be delighted to hear him described as being "wrong" about a key claim he made).

It's a shame More or Less is an irregular feature of the Radio 4 landscape, with only 15 editions last year. Newnight is usually on five nights a week nearly every week and yet isn't half as informative. (By my calculations, Newsnight is only 23.2% as informative as More or Less!) 

The solution is simple then: Scrap Newsnight and permanently replace it with More or Less.

Turn again, Andy Verity

My goodness, isn't it surprising how much mileage a blogger about BBC bias can get from one single edition of a BBC programme if he (or, with due acknowledgement to Sue, she) really tries?

My third post on last night's Newsnight focuses on the third item on the programme's agenda - an item I was kind-of- prepared-for by a post by Alan at Biased BBC  - though Alan was a wee bit premature in thinking that the BBC had, in Orwellian fashion, 'vanished' it. 

Newsnight's report was by Andy Verity, who seems (semi-officially) to have been promoted to Paul Mason's old position. It was based on a report by the think tank Centre for Cities, an offshoot of the centre-left (Labour-aligned) IPPR set up (as Louise Stewart might put it, on a good day) by Labour's Lord Sainsbury - none of which background information was mentioned by either Newsnight or the BBC News website. Newsnight merely described Centre for Cities as a "research group".

London is, the report says (according to Newsnight), doing much better than other cities - and Andy was quick off the mark in drawing the present government into the blame for presiding over this disparity (we're talking mere seconds into his report.) 

We heard from Alexandra Jones of Centre for Cities (formerly of the IPPR), who pushed that same line, and Andy then stated (quite emphatically) that Vince Cable had it right in advancing the same argument. 

Now, I was starting to fume about bias by this stage (understandably?) but the next 'talking head' was Boris's friend Kit Malthouse (Deputy Mayor of London for Business), who dismissed the line of argument that London is a huge problem (as you'd expect from a Deputy Mayor of London). That's obviously a measure of balance.

Still, Andy then immediately countered him (narrator's prerogative) - and ended his report by saying that it was hard to see how London's stranglehold over the British economy could be overcome.

A studio discussion on the issue then followed, balanced between (mildly) Left, Labour's Graham Stringer MP, and (mildly) Right Sarah Sands of the London Evening Standard. Graham's Londonosceptic while Sarah is clearly a Londonophile. 

This Centre for Cities report - which you can read here - looks interesting. It's the sort of report that needs time to digest, but an initial read-through doesn't present quite so stark (and negative) a picture as Newsnight. Many cities, according to the study, are also on the up. Newsnight only mentioned the downers (for which a 'tut, tut!' is in order).

'Working Street'

Following on from the completely-and-utterly one-sided pro-drug (khat) piece on Wednesday's night's Newsnight, what can we say about the rest of that edition?

Well, it contained three other topics: (a) the latest unemployment figures, (b) Syria and (c) sex pests (in the light of the Lord Rennard story). Let's look at the first of those.

The bias in the khat piece can be excused (at a push) by saying that it was a non-BBC 'personal view'. The 'latest unemployment figures' report, in contrast, was an entirely inhouse report. It came from the BBCs Andy Verity.

It's framing imagery - 'Working Street' - mocked the Left's bogey-programme-of-the-moment, Channel 4's much-talked-about, ratings-grabbing (7 million!) documentary Benefits Street. [People at work really are talking about it. No one is talking about Newsnight.] 

On the day that the Office for National Statistics (see a few posts ago) released its latest stats for employment and unemployment in the UK showing a large rise in total employment (now at a record level), a sharp fall in unemployment, a fall in the number of economically inactive people and a rise in total pay and regular pay, Newsnight chose to report from another street in Birmingham - one where people work rather than being just on benefits. Strikingly, this was presented as being more representative of Britain now - "not too far from the average street," as Andy put it. 

He talked to two such residents - one who complained about being on zero hours contracts and the other who, whilst in work (self-employed), was "classed as being in poverty". Neither, as you can see from the stats in the post slightly lower down the page, are at all 'average' or 'representative'. Both are outliers, statistically-speaking. Why then were they presented as Mr Averages, typifying the present condition of Britain?

Well, this all seemed pretty biased stuff, rather bearing out the complaints of many at, say, Biased BBC that the BBC seems to be accentuating the negative, as usual, about the economy under the coalition. 

Then came what might be seen as the the clincher. 

Andy began talking Labour's talk about the 'cost of living crisis' and, for his expert 'talking head', he featured James Plunkett of the Resolution Foundation, as well as citing statistics from that think tank. Now, the Resolution Foundation is a centre-left think tank with many links to the Labour Party. Labour and the Resolution have worked closely on the 'squeezed middle' agenda. Andy Verity failed to mention any of this. 

"Labour's little helpers"?

Still at least the following interview balanced the Conservatives' David Gauke with Labour's Stephen Timms.


Incidentally, the 'sex pests' feature was a discussion between Kirsty Wark and Labour MP Stella Creasy, Labour peer Baroness Bakewell and well-known Labour supporter Anne 'The Wink' Robinson. Nice.


Update 25/1: That said, Andy Verity was back on last night's Newsnight as the programme plugged previewed a Labour speech intending to reassure voters that Labour will be a safe pair of hands on the economy, and he didn't underplay the problems Labour face with the public over their economic reputation. There were images of cars and dummies depicting the crash that happened on Labour's watch [which they can't have enjoyed watching!] and memories of pledges of economic competence past which smashed into the ground. Victoria Derbyshire's introduction laid out the agenda:

Tonight Labour promise to wipe out the budget deficit by 2020 if they win the next election and to bring in legislation to make sure they actually do it. But can he {Ed Miliband} persuade the voters to forget it's Labour who presided over the financial crisis which created much of the deficit mess. Right and Left are here to point the finger at each other.