Britannia Radio

Yesterday I epitomised the degrading of the media by listing  in full 
all the items in the Telegraph relating to the economic crisis.  It 
was a big news day with the handing over of government money in 
astronomical quantities  so that the public could become owners, in 
effect,  of the banks' toxic assets and so that the same banks could 
have funds of our money to continue trading.  There was also news of 
the mounting tensions in the eurozone and the possible collapse of 
the euro as it exists today.

Now, during the week,  the Telegraph - for those who don't know it - 
has a main section as well as Business and Sports sections.  The 
business section is, in my opinion, by far the best in the media, 
with a superb 'stable' of economic and financial journalists.  But, 
it is, nevertheless,  a ghetto and is not necessarily read by all.

So what happened yesterday?  The main section contained nothing 
whatsoever about the crisis which could ruin all of us but devoted 
acres of newsprint to one man's pension .  Now the pension IS obscene 
- correct!   But it is monstrously irrelevant to our future.

I have long suspected that Robert Peston and the BBC are complicit 
with the government's spinners to bury bad news by dumbing down the 
"agenda". This pension scandal was strangely yet another 'leak' by 
Peston and was carried to the exclusion of the real news by the BBC.  
This is exactly as the government would have wished it.

Yesterday's papers were dominated with almost all carrying the Labour 
'spin' on the pension scandal on the front page.  (The tabloids 
merely used larger type size!) . As the paper points out today the 
pension is  a footling 0.00017 per cent  of the bank bail-outs

But here's the nonsense !  The paper has all the news but hides it 
while falling into the BBC / government trap.

But move to today and the leading article below makes all the right 
points and spots the elephant trap for the media.  Fine!  But then 
why is its front page lead story "Brown is powerless to strip Goodwin 
of pension"  ???

Does the paper not have an editorial policy?  How can its leader' 
denounce government 'spin' while its news editor falls for that very 
'spin' designed (its own words!) to use "a small piece of bad news to 
distract attention from an enormous one - burying bad news "

But sadly the Telegraph is probably the least guilty of this 
incoherence and dumbing down!  Ye Gods!

XXXXXXXXXXXXXX  CS
===============================
TELEGRAPH  (Leader) 28.2.09
Sir Fred is distracting us from the real problem
Voters need transparency over the credit crunch, but they are being 
treated like children

Telegraph View

The Government should be deeply embarrassed by the pension 
arrangements of Sir Fred Goodwin. Last autumn, Lord Myners, the City 
Minister, sanctioned payments of £693,000 a year to the former Royal 
Bank of Scotland chief executive, adding up to a pension pot of £17 
million. Moreover, he apparently did so without the knowledge of the 
Prime Minister or the Chancellor of the Exchequer. One might imagine 
that the Government would recoil from the whole subject. On the 
contrary: yesterday, the Prime Minister and prominent Labour figures 
were vigorously stoking up public anger at Sir Fred.

We've seen before what can go wrong when this Government directs the 
might of the state at one individual.

It was no coincidence that details of the pension agreements emerged 
during the latest stage of the Government's bail-out of Britain's 
stricken banks. It suits Labour that public attention should be 
preoccupied by a row involving £17 million rather than the 
astonishing figure of £100 billion, which is the ultimate bill the 
taxpayer could face for the RBS rescue.

To put the sums in context, Sir Fred's pension is equal to 0.00017 
per cent of the money the bank has already received and is likely to 
offload in the form of toxic debt. By focusing on one banker's 
pension, the Government is using a small piece of bad news to 
distract attention from an enormous one - burying bad news and "doing 
a Jo Moore" in reverse, as it were. We need absolute transparency 
from the Government about the extent of the problems, and an 
assurance that ministers will set aside petty party politics. Yet, 
day after day, there are more attempts at news management that reek 
of expediency. In the process, voters are being treated like children.

Ministers hope the electorate will ignore the true consequences of 
what is unfolding. Take public debt: in the words of Steve Bundred, 
chief executive of the Audit Commission, it could soon hit 
"Armageddon levels". [ see "Our public debt is hitting Armageddon 
levels" timed at 1442 yesterday -cs]   He reckons that, by 2010-11, 
the ratio of public sector debt to GDP in the UK could exceed 65 per 
cent, and the government of the day could run out of lenders. In that 
context, it was interesting to learn that the Government was cracking 
down on 100 per cent mortgages - but, in the wider scheme of things, 
this belated measure is of no more significance than Sir Fred 
Goodwin's pension.

We truly are moving into previously unimaginable territory here, yet 
the Government seems to think that, so long as it produces the right 
snippets of rhetoric, the public will suffer in silence. Elected 
politicians are not solely to blame for this alarming state of 
affairs: responsibility rests, of course, with bankers on both sides 
of the Atlantic, and also officials of the Bank of England and 
Financial Services Authority who appear to have dozed off or been 
looking the other way when madcap mergers were approved.  [ALL of 
this in Britain was with the active encouragement of the prime 
minister who urged ever 'lighter regulation' and who, in his own 
accounting practices broke every rule,  He was a close partner of all 
the failed bankers.  I must disagree withg the Telegraph's assessment 
here! -cs]

However, it is the responsibility of the Government to set out the 
scale of the problem now, rather than embracing a culture of 
evasiveness that deters banks from lending to each other. The full 
implications of the banking crisis have yet to sink in fully; but, 
when they do, British citizens will work out for themselves that 
there will be great pain involved in returning the country to 
prosperity. [It would help if the Tory party spelt it out for them 
NOW! -cs]

Mr Brown is under a moral obligation to explain how and when this 
expenditure will be paid for. Barack Obama has produced figures 
(admittedly, not wholly convincing ones) for the repayment of debt. 
At least that is a start. Why has the Prime Minister not done 
something similar?

The British people have demonstrated frequently down the centuries 
that they can dig themselves out of recession and crisis through the 
application of enterprise and discipline. But, in order to do so 
again, they need first to know the scale of the challenge.

Give us the bad news, Mr Brown. We can take it, even if you can't.