Most on here, not of the Conservative persuasion, have been reluctant to anticipate cross over for anytime much before the turn of the year.
If cross over doesn't occur by mid-2021, there was no financial and economic impact from Covid. Brexit went remarkably well, or we have declared war on China.
Lady G, I wouldn't be inclined to believe that given how volatile politics has been in the last decade. Labour could easily sweep away the Conservatives next election.
I find this incredible. The government's handling of coronavirus has been one of the worst in the world. Clearly. We can see it in the data.
And they are still cocking it up, eg the stupid belated confusion over masks.
Meanwhile Starmer is popular, and presentable, and Labour policies are not much different to the Tories: welfare socialism.
Yet Boris is 10 points ahead.
?!?
As I've mentioned before, it's impossible for it to last. The Brexit decison will annoy either business or emotional Brexiters, and then that will be compounded by the post-Covid effects on the economy becoming more evident at the same time, around the autumn of this year.
Ideally a property tax would encourage people to downsize, since the trend over recent decades is towards less efficient use of our housing stock.
CGT on principle residences does the opposite. Why would you want to make an existing problem worse?
Effectiveness seems the biggest problem with the proposed policy, not fairness or practical measures like dealing with losses, it seems very unlikely to be effective at solving the main problems. Given it would be hugely unpopular and there are alternative approaches such as LVT it just wont happen.
Lady G, I wouldn't be inclined to believe that given how volatile politics has been in the last decade. Labour could easily sweep away the Conservatives next election.
The Tories would be advised to treat it as a possibility regardless of liklihood.
It is surprising how many of these left- wing-firebrands from BBC News try their hand at politics, becoming candidates and MPs for...the Conservative Party!
Care to name some please?>>
Guto Harry, Evan Davis, Andrew Neil, James Harding, Robin Oakley - these are all part of one of the revolving doors, between the BBC and Tory media jobs.
That's BBC News' turn to the right on economic and related issues, and another tranche of staff represent its turn more to the left on identity and cultural issues.
You missed out Craig Oliver, and there are a few regional news reporters from the South east and East Anglia, who have tried their hand too. Can't remember names.
Left and right are crude and obfuscating terms. A good way to think about the Beeb is "supposing the Guardian ran the BBC in what ways would it be different?". My opinion is that it would be more or less identical. Plenty of people identifying as "left wing" think the Guardian is centrist and is to the right of them but the key thing is that the BBC pushes a very narrow ideological viewpoint whilst making some attempts to be objective and balanced. The bias is actually at its greatest outside of news and current affairs in comedy and drama.
In the modern media landscape the old mechanisms won't work so I suggest that genuinely polemical items from a wide set of viewpoints are commissioned and forget about pseudo objectivity within a programme. I sort of love the BBC but it also drives me mad. Perhaps a greatly reduced licence fee with subscription services is the way to go for finance?
It is surprising how many of these left- wing-firebrands from BBC News try their hand at politics, becoming candidates and MPs for...the Conservative Party!
Care to name some please?>>
Guto Harry, Evan Davis, Andrew Neil, James Harding, Robin Oakley - these are all part of one of the revolving doors, between the BBC and Tory media jobs.
That's BBC News' turn to the right on economic and related issues, and another tranche of staff represent its turn more to the left on identity and cultural issues.
Yep. The BBC is NOT "left wing". Not by any objective standard. Nor is it woke. It only looks left wing and woke to a right wing reactionary. Neither is it biased against either main party. It might look pro Tory to me and Owen Jones, look pro Labour to BluestBlue and Andrew Bridgen, but it actually complies well with its charter of impartiality. What is has is not really political bias but an implicit acceptance of liberal social and economic values. It's centrist dad. This does mean that revolutionary socialists and politicians of the likes of Nigel Farage can struggle to get a fair hearing.
Lady G, I wouldn't be inclined to believe that given how volatile politics has been in the last decade. Labour could easily sweep away the Conservatives next election.
Who knows. We are in uncharted territory. Terra Nullius.
Normally, I'd say the political ecology points to Starmer winning a 2024 plurality, with shaky support from the LDs and SNP (presuming no indyref 2).
But now? Anything could 'appen. Boris could increase his majority. Sunak becomes Lord Protector. The Chinese could launch billions of fruit-drones dropping mangos on us all til we are unconscious
Not convinced by the idea but the issue with losses is already sensibly covered by the current system, you dont get a rebate, but you can use it to offset against other gains.
But if you're downsizing to retire, you'll have no future gains to offset it against - and it's your only asset in most cases. How is that fair or sensible?
It isn't.
If we are going to have a property tax, why not one based on planning? The planners arbitrarily increase the value of land without the government taking any of the profits.
It should be payable after a reasonable period to allow for development to take place.
I know this has been mooted before. I don't suppose it would bring in as much money though.
We already have quite a lot of that.
Planning Obligation taxes run at something like 30-40k per new house as an average, raising something like 7-8 bn a year.
As an illustration, I scraped this off the dashboard. What it shows, is the typical distribution in reporting. In this case the update for today.
Thanks. A cumulative version (working backwards) of this graph would perhaps be even more useful for seeing how complete the data are as a function of time in the past.
There's not much point - the curve there is actually quite stable....
You could do it - semi-meaningfully - with confidence bars. But the simple truth is that, with the case data, 3 days back is pretty solid.
Off topic and somewhat behind the times but Chris Froome is leaving Ineos to join the new team of Israel Start-up Nation ( a merger of Israel Cycling Academy and Katusha). He will be joined by Dan Martin and Alex Dowsett. Could make betting interesting.
I find this incredible. The government's handling of coronavirus has been one of the worst in the world. Clearly. We can see it in the data.
And they are still cocking it up, eg the stupid belated confusion over masks.
Meanwhile Starmer is popular, and presentable, and Labour policies are not much different to the Tories: welfare socialism.
Yet Boris is 10 points ahead.
?!?
Starmer is completely failing to offer any kind of leadership on coronavirus. All he does is wait for columnists to reach some sort of consensus on an issue, then start parroting it himself- usually between half a week and a fortnight too late for it to possibly be construed as an original thought.
Starmer is to Johnson what a film critic is to an actor, or a football commentator is to a player. No matter how transparently flawed the latter is- and how perceptively the former points that out after that fact- that doesn't mean you want to swap the two.
It is surprising how many of these left- wing-firebrands from BBC News try their hand at politics, becoming candidates and MPs for...the Conservative Party!
Care to name some please?>>
Guto Harry, Evan Davis, Andrew Neil, James Harding, Robin Oakley - these are all part of one of the revolving doors, between the BBC and Tory media jobs.
That's BBC News' turn to the right on economic and related issues, and another tranche of staff represent its turn more to the left on identity and cultural issues.
You missed out Craig Oliver, and there are a few regional news reporters from the South east and East Anglia, who have tried their hand too. Can't remember names.
Famously on here, many of those who clutched their pearls at the phrase Little Englander were perfectly happy to call French people Frogs.
Funny old world.
Not sure what your point is there. 'Frog' is a harmless informal word for any French person. 'Little Englander' is not a word denoting a person's nationality but a word describing specifically a narrow-minded English person, with the emphasis on the narrow-minded. There is no equivalence between them.
Yes, "Frog" was harmless in the 1970s in episodes of "Mind Your Language", but we have moved on.
Where are the re-runs of "Love Thy Neighbour" when one craves some xenophobic and racist comedy?
Where are these French people who are offended by the word Frog? I don't know any, and I have lived in France and spent a lot of time there. For that matter I don't know a single English person offended by the word Rosbif, which is exactly equivalent.
The indignation about totally harmless informal words is pure Guardianista offence-mining.
There's no indignation, Richard. It's more a style & taste matter. If you're reading a post by somebody active and well-respected on here about the economy - a serious post - do you expect to suddenly come across "the Frogs" or "the Krauts" in reference to France and Germany respectively? You don't. You just don't. So all I did was mention it in a benign "quality control" spirit.
Not a big deal.
Isn't this really about the people who use the word 'frog', rather than the word itself? Those who use it nowadays tend to be the same people who use the word 'kraut' - i.e. they use it in a derogatory, belittling, superior fashion, rather than as a humorous, kind Kiwi or Pommie-type nomenclature. I'll bet Mr Farage calls the French 'frogs', for example.
I don't think so, in my experience its normally used as friendly banter, no different to Pommie or being called a Scouser or other things.
But you weren't using it as friendly banter, were you? I think it's only fair of me to point this out.
If Trump somehow wins it would, in the darkest way possible, be quite funny. Catastrophic but funny
It would also be a suitably surreal end to 2020, the Year of Terrible Wonders
He is significantly more likely to win than Arsenal are to beat Liverpool tonight, it wont be some complete upset. The odds suggest he wins more than 1 in 3 from here.
They can't keep giving it away for free. It may be too late to go behind a paywall. Quite a dilemma
They made an operating profit last year. Cutting advertising staff and their events business makes sense given the pandemic. They are less dependent on physical sales than other papers I think.
What will be key I suspect is how well their voluntary contributions hold up vs other companies compulsory charges.
Well that's it, I think. The voluntary stuff is surely collapsing. Everyone is hoarding money. Their model is shot unless we bounce back quickly.
If you go online you can find lots of people saying they are refusing to contribute - despite being Guardian readers - because the Guardian is "transphobic", or because it "hates Corbyn". Others are saying the opposite, it's too Woke or they abhor Owen Jones.
It's a mistake to think Twitter is representative. People who make voluntary contributions are saying they have an affinity with the objectives of the organization. They might be more likely to stick around than those who buy the Times for commercial reasons alone.
Not convinced by the idea but the issue with losses is already sensibly covered by the current system, you dont get a rebate, but you can use it to offset against other gains.
But if you're downsizing to retire, you'll have no future gains to offset it against - and it's your only asset in most cases. How is that fair or sensible?
It isn't.
If we are going to have a property tax, why not one based on planning? The planners arbitrarily increase the value of land without the government taking any of the profits.
It should be payable after a reasonable period to allow for development to take place.
I know this has been mooted before. I don't suppose it would bring in as much money though.
We already have quite a lot of that.
Planning Obligation taxes run at something like 30-40k per new house as an average.
It is surprising how many of these left- wing-firebrands from BBC News try their hand at politics, becoming candidates and MPs for...the Conservative Party!
Care to name some please?>>
Guto Harry, Evan Davis, Andrew Neil, James Harding, Robin Oakley - these are all part of one of the revolving doors, between the BBC and Tory media jobs.
That's BBC News' turn to the right on economic and related issues, and another tranche of staff represent its turn more to the left on identity and cultural issues.
Yep. The BBC is NOT "left wing". Not by any objective standard. Nor is it woke. It only looks left wing and woke to a right wing reactionary. Neither is it biased against either main party. It might look pro Tory to me and Owen Jones, look pro Labour to BluestBlue and Andrew Bridgen, but it actually complies well with its charter of impartiality. What is has is not really political bias but an implicit acceptance of liberal social and economic values. It's centrist dad. This does mean that revolutionary socialists and politicians of the likes of Nigel Farage can struggle to get a fair hearing.
lol
You don't even believe this yourself. You are defending the BBC precisely BECAUSE it agrees with you, and it is left-liberal and mildly Woke.
I find this incredible. The government's handling of coronavirus has been one of the worst in the world. Clearly. We can see it in the data.
And they are still cocking it up, eg the stupid belated confusion over masks.
Meanwhile Starmer is popular, and presentable, and Labour policies are not much different to the Tories: welfare socialism.
Yet Boris is 10 points ahead.
?!?
For most poeple Covid has not affected them or their families. many have had a paid holiday on the Government. They look around the world on the news and see Covid hammering through Countries eg the graves in Brazil, the chaos in America. They look out the window and nothing like that is happening here and it never has. People on here talk about the castrotophic handling of Covid by the Government but millions don't see that. They see that Covid arrived , the Government locked down, we washed our hands, Covid has all but gone. They understand this is a once in a 100 year event and that people will die.
It is surprising how many of these left- wing-firebrands from BBC News try their hand at politics, becoming candidates and MPs for...the Conservative Party!
Care to name some please?>>
Guto Harry, Evan Davis, Andrew Neil, James Harding, Robin Oakley - these are all part of one of the revolving doors, between the BBC and Tory media jobs.
That's BBC News' turn to the right on economic and related issues, and another tranche of staff represent its turn more to the left on identity and cultural issues.
Candidates and MP's? All of those?
No, but I did mention revolving doors rather than candidates, though.
The original was specific in candidates and MPs - just not seeing them sorry.
If Trump somehow wins it would, in the darkest way possible, be quite funny. Catastrophic but funny
It would also be a suitably surreal end to 2020, the Year of Terrible Wonders
Come on, you're stuck in 2016. In the 2020 version of reality, Biden goes into a coma on voting day due to an injury sustained during a press-up competition with a Trump supporter.
If Trump somehow wins it would, in the darkest way possible, be quite funny. Catastrophic but funny
It would also be a suitably surreal end to 2020, the Year of Terrible Wonders
Come on, you're stuck in 2016. In the 2020 version of reality, Biden goes into a coma on voting day due to an injury sustained during a press-up competition with a Trump supporter.
Not convinced by the idea but the issue with losses is already sensibly covered by the current system, you dont get a rebate, but you can use it to offset against other gains.
But if you're downsizing to retire, you'll have no future gains to offset it against - and it's your only asset in most cases. How is that fair or sensible?
It isn't.
If we are going to have a property tax, why not one based on planning? The planners arbitrarily increase the value of land without the government taking any of the profits.
It should be payable after a reasonable period to allow for development to take place.
I know this has been mooted before. I don't suppose it would bring in as much money though.
We already have quite a lot of that.
Planning Obligation taxes run at something like 30-40k per new house as an average.
They can't keep giving it away for free. It may be too late to go behind a paywall. Quite a dilemma
They made an operating profit last year. Cutting advertising staff and their events business makes sense given the pandemic. They are less dependent on physical sales than other papers I think.
What will be key I suspect is how well their voluntary contributions hold up vs other companies compulsory charges.
Well that's it, I think. The voluntary stuff is surely collapsing. Everyone is hoarding money. Their model is shot unless we bounce back quickly.
If you go online you can find lots of people saying they are refusing to contribute - despite being Guardian readers - because the Guardian is "transphobic", or because it "hates Corbyn". Others are saying the opposite, it's too Woke or they abhor Owen Jones.
It's a mistake to think Twitter is representative. People who make voluntary contributions are saying they have an affinity with the objectives of the organization. They might be more likely to stick around than those who buy the Times for commercial reasons alone.
Twitter is absolutely NOT representative, but it is VERY influential in media-land
The Guardian will find these views disheartening. They are in deep trouble.
For all that I find the paper insufferable at times, I do hope they survive: they do some great journalism and have some really fine writers and editors, and all media job losses are sad and depressing. The world shrinks.
I find this incredible. The government's handling of coronavirus has been one of the worst in the world. Clearly. We can see it in the data.
And they are still cocking it up, eg the stupid belated confusion over masks.
Meanwhile Starmer is popular, and presentable, and Labour policies are not much different to the Tories: welfare socialism.
Yet Boris is 10 points ahead.
?!?
People are still shell shocked for one. We're also still in the moment, so while some conclusions may well be able to be drawn, I assume most people are not thinking for certain we will end up among the very worst (though it looks likely). And of course most people have not suffered direct effects of the inevitable aftermath yet.
Yes, quite possibly
However I wonder if the Labour brand has been damaged so badly, by Corbyn, it is hitting a ceiling of support. And I likewise wonder if the Woke Frenzy is making people, quietly, a little bit more conservative
I also suspect that the public is able to realise that while the Gov have made mistakes, this was a horrible situation to find your country in. I suspect many in France, Spain and Italy aren't feeling better about their own government handling, as they are not exactly orders of magnitude better off than the UK. People are able to distinguish honest mistakes, from malign intent.
It is surprising how many of these left- wing-firebrands from BBC News try their hand at politics, becoming candidates and MPs for...the Conservative Party!
Care to name some please?>>
Guto Harry, Evan Davis, Andrew Neil, James Harding, Robin Oakley - these are all part of one of the revolving doors, between the BBC and Tory media jobs.
That's BBC News' turn to the right on economic and related issues, and another tranche of staff represent its turn more to the left on identity and cultural issues.
Yep. The BBC is NOT "left wing". Not by any objective standard. Nor is it woke. It only looks left wing and woke to a right wing reactionary. Neither is it biased against either main party. It might look pro Tory to me and Owen Jones, look pro Labour to BluestBlue and Andrew Bridgen, but it actually complies well with its charter of impartiality. What is has is not really political bias but an implicit acceptance of liberal social and economic values. It's centrist dad. This does mean that revolutionary socialists and politicians of the likes of Nigel Farage can struggle to get a fair hearing.
lol
You don't even believe this yourself. You are defending the BBC precisely BECAUSE it agrees with you, and it is left-liberal and mildly Woke.
QED
Yes, I agree with that. It is soft to medium left, like most of its young, urban, professional public sector employees. I had a friend who was a producer there abou ten years ago and he counted the newspapers he saw lying around the office. About 3/4 were the Guardian.
Most of its employees dislike right-wingers and Momentum equally, but there is a difference in their dislike. They look on Momentumers as people with laudable aims but misguided over means, while right-wingers are simply evil.
Left and right are crude and obfuscating terms. A good way to think about the Beeb is "supposing the Guardian ran the BBC in what ways would it be different?". My opinion is that it would be more or less identical. Plenty of people identifying as "left wing" think the Guardian is centrist and is to the right of them but the key thing is that the BBC pushes a very narrow ideological viewpoint whilst making some attempts to be objective and balanced. The bias is actually at its greatest outside of news and current affairs in comedy and drama.
In the modern media landscape the old mechanisms won't work so I suggest that genuinely polemical items from a wide set of viewpoints are commissioned and forget about pseudo objectivity within a programme. I sort of love the BBC but it also drives me mad. Perhaps a greatly reduced licence fee with subscription services is the way to go for finance?
The BBC is very woke, super culturally liberal, economically Blairite, internationalist, mildy pro-monarchist and very metropolitan - usually London.
It's bedrock audience base is anything but. In that sense it's quite similar to the Church of England.
I find this incredible. The government's handling of coronavirus has been one of the worst in the world. Clearly. We can see it in the data.
And they are still cocking it up, eg the stupid belated confusion over masks.
Meanwhile Starmer is popular, and presentable, and Labour policies are not much different to the Tories: welfare socialism.
Yet Boris is 10 points ahead.
?!?
People are still shell shocked for one. We're also still in the moment, so while some conclusions may well be able to be drawn, I assume most people are not thinking for certain we will end up among the very worst (though it looks likely). And of course most people have not suffered direct effects of the inevitable aftermath yet.
Yes, quite possibly
However I wonder if the Labour brand has been damaged so badly, by Corbyn, it is hitting a ceiling of support. And I likewise wonder if the Woke Frenzy is making people, quietly, a little bit more conservative
I also suspect that the public is able to realise that while the Gov have made mistakes, this was a horrible situation to find your country in. I suspect many in France, Spain and Italy aren't feeling better about their own government handling, as they are not exactly orders of magnitude better off than the UK. People are able to distinguish honest mistakes, from malign intent.
Fair point. Also the lockdowns were much more brutal in Spain and France, and their economic pain might be even greater.
We shall see.
And now I must WORK. Newts do not paint themselves, despite the plague.
Famously on here, many of those who clutched their pearls at the phrase Little Englander were perfectly happy to call French people Frogs.
Funny old world.
Not sure what your point is there. 'Frog' is a harmless informal word for any French person. 'Little Englander' is not a word denoting a person's nationality but a word describing specifically a narrow-minded English person, with the emphasis on the narrow-minded. There is no equivalence between them.
Yes, "Frog" was harmless in the 1970s in episodes of "Mind Your Language", but we have moved on.
Where are the re-runs of "Love Thy Neighbour" when one craves some xenophobic and racist comedy?
Where are these French people who are offended by the word Frog? I don't know any, and I have lived in France and spent a lot of time there. For that matter I don't know a single English person offended by the word Rosbif, which is exactly equivalent.
The indignation about totally harmless informal words is pure Guardianista offence-mining.
There's no indignation, Richard. It's more a style & taste matter. If you're reading a post by somebody active and well-respected on here about the economy - a serious post - do you expect to suddenly come across "the Frogs" or "the Krauts" in reference to France and Germany respectively? You don't. You just don't. So all I did was mention it in a benign "quality control" spirit.
Not a big deal.
Isn't this really about the people who use the word 'frog', rather than the word itself? Those who use it nowadays tend to be the same people who use the word 'kraut' - i.e. they use it in a derogatory, belittling, superior fashion, rather than as a humorous, kind Kiwi or Pommie-type nomenclature. I'll bet Mr Farage calls the French 'frogs', for example.
I don't think so, in my experience its normally used as friendly banter, no different to Pommie or being called a Scouser or other things.
But you weren't using it as friendly banter, were you? I think it's only fair of me to point this out.
Of course I was. What came about as unfriendly about it?
It is surprising how many of these left- wing-firebrands from BBC News try their hand at politics, becoming candidates and MPs for...the Conservative Party!
Care to name some please?>>
Guto Harry, Evan Davis, Andrew Neil, James Harding, Robin Oakley - these are all part of one of the revolving doors, between the BBC and Tory media jobs.
That's BBC News' turn to the right on economic and related issues, and another tranche of staff represent its turn more to the left on identity and cultural issues.
Yep. The BBC is NOT "left wing". Not by any objective standard. Nor is it woke. It only looks left wing and woke to a right wing reactionary. Neither is it biased against either main party. It might look pro Tory to me and Owen Jones, look pro Labour to BluestBlue and Andrew Bridgen, but it actually complies well with its charter of impartiality. What is has is not really political bias but an implicit acceptance of liberal social and economic values. It's centrist dad. This does mean that revolutionary socialists and politicians of the likes of Nigel Farage can struggle to get a fair hearing.
lol
You don't even believe this yourself. You are defending the BBC precisely BECAUSE it agrees with you, and it is left-liberal and mildly Woke.
QED
It's what most BBC employees and executives believe though - even today.
They can't keep giving it away for free. It may be too late to go behind a paywall. Quite a dilemma
They made an operating profit last year. Cutting advertising staff and their events business makes sense given the pandemic. They are less dependent on physical sales than other papers I think.
What will be key I suspect is how well their voluntary contributions hold up vs other companies compulsory charges.
Well that's it, I think. The voluntary stuff is surely collapsing. Everyone is hoarding money. Their model is shot unless we bounce back quickly.
If you go online you can find lots of people saying they are refusing to contribute - despite being Guardian readers - because the Guardian is "transphobic", or because it "hates Corbyn". Others are saying the opposite, it's too Woke or they abhor Owen Jones.
It's a mistake to think Twitter is representative. People who make voluntary contributions are saying they have an affinity with the objectives of the organization. They might be more likely to stick around than those who buy the Times for commercial reasons alone.
Twitter is absolutely NOT representative, but it is VERY influential in media-land
The Guardian will find these views disheartening. They are in deep trouble.
For all that I find the paper insufferable at times, I do hope they survive: they do some great journalism and have some really fine writers and editors, and all media job losses are sad and depressing. The world shrinks.
Yes, I agree with that. It is soft to medium left, like most of its young, urban, professional public sector employees. I had a friend who was a producer there abou ten years ago and he counted the newspapers he saw lying around the office. About 3/4 were the Guardian.
Most of its employees dislike right-wingers and Momentum equally, but there is a difference in their dislike. They look on Momentumers as people with laudable aims but misguided over means, while right-wingers are simply evil.
Perhaps that's true for a lot of the employees, but the higher up and better paid they are, the more Momentum looks like a threat to their way of life while the right wing represents a safe maintainance of the status quo.
These are the people who shed crocodile tears about that dreadful Mr Corbyn forcing them to vote to keep their own taxes low and maintain their wealth.
It is surprising how many of these left- wing-firebrands from BBC News try their hand at politics, becoming candidates and MPs for...the Conservative Party!
Care to name some please?>>
Guto Harry, Evan Davis, Andrew Neil, James Harding, Robin Oakley - these are all part of one of the revolving doors, between the BBC and Tory media jobs.
That's BBC News' turn to the right on economic and related issues, and another tranche of staff represent its turn more to the left on identity and cultural issues.
Yep. The BBC is NOT "left wing". Not by any objective standard. Nor is it woke. It only looks left wing and woke to a right wing reactionary. Neither is it biased against either main party. It might look pro Tory to me and Owen Jones, look pro Labour to BluestBlue and Andrew Bridgen, but it actually complies well with its charter of impartiality. What is has is not really political bias but an implicit acceptance of liberal social and economic values. It's centrist dad. This does mean that revolutionary socialists and politicians of the likes of Nigel Farage can struggle to get a fair hearing.
lol
You don't even believe this yourself. You are defending the BBC precisely BECAUSE it agrees with you, and it is left-liberal and mildly Woke.
QED
Yes, I agree with that. It is soft to medium left, like most of its young, urban, professional public sector employees. I had a friend who was a producer there abou ten years ago and he counted the newspapers he saw lying around the office. About 3/4 were the Guardian.
Most of its employees dislike right-wingers and Momentum equally, but there is a difference in their dislike. They look on Momentumers as people with laudable aims but misguided over means, while right-wingers are simply evil.
One of the more fun bits about the BBC group think is the way that they often believe that their views are completely balanced, neutral and above ideology.
Famously on here, many of those who clutched their pearls at the phrase Little Englander were perfectly happy to call French people Frogs.
Funny old world.
Not sure what your point is there. 'Frog' is a harmless informal word for any French person. 'Little Englander' is not a word denoting a person's nationality but a word describing specifically a narrow-minded English person, with the emphasis on the narrow-minded. There is no equivalence between them.
Yes, "Frog" was harmless in the 1970s in episodes of "Mind Your Language", but we have moved on.
Where are the re-runs of "Love Thy Neighbour" when one craves some xenophobic and racist comedy?
Where are these French people who are offended by the word Frog? I don't know any, and I have lived in France and spent a lot of time there. For that matter I don't know a single English person offended by the word Rosbif, which is exactly equivalent.
The indignation about totally harmless informal words is pure Guardianista offence-mining.
There's no indignation, Richard. It's more a style & taste matter. If you're reading a post by somebody active and well-respected on here about the economy - a serious post - do you expect to suddenly come across "the Frogs" or "the Krauts" in reference to France and Germany respectively? You don't. You just don't. So all I did was mention it in a benign "quality control" spirit.
Not a big deal.
Isn't this really about the people who use the word 'frog', rather than the word itself? Those who use it nowadays tend to be the same people who use the word 'kraut' - i.e. they use it in a derogatory, belittling, superior fashion, rather than as a humorous, kind Kiwi or Pommie-type nomenclature. I'll bet Mr Farage calls the French 'frogs', for example.
I agree. In general, the context is what matters - which means the user is key.
But this specific case - the original post at issue - is a curious one. Because it is clearly not being jocular and humorous and yet neither is it being obviously derogatory and belittling. The word is just there - FROG - as if it's been inserted by an unruly and random spirit.
Left and right are crude and obfuscating terms. A good way to think about the Beeb is "supposing the Guardian ran the BBC in what ways would it be different?". My opinion is that it would be more or less identical. Plenty of people identifying as "left wing" think the Guardian is centrist and is to the right of them but the key thing is that the BBC pushes a very narrow ideological viewpoint whilst making some attempts to be objective and balanced. The bias is actually at its greatest outside of news and current affairs in comedy and drama.
In the modern media landscape the old mechanisms won't work so I suggest that genuinely polemical items from a wide set of viewpoints are commissioned and forget about pseudo objectivity within a programme. I sort of love the BBC but it also drives me mad. Perhaps a greatly reduced licence fee with subscription services is the way to go for finance?
The BBC is very woke, super culturally liberal, economically Blairite, internationalist, mildy pro-monarchist and very metropolitan - usually London.
It's bedrock audience base is anything but. In that sense it's quite similar to the Church of England.
It is surprising how many of these left- wing-firebrands from BBC News try their hand at politics, becoming candidates and MPs for...the Conservative Party!
Care to name some please?>>
Guto Harry, Evan Davis, Andrew Neil, James Harding, Robin Oakley - these are all part of one of the revolving doors, between the BBC and Tory media jobs.
That's BBC News' turn to the right on economic and related issues, and another tranche of staff represent its turn more to the left on identity and cultural issues.
Yep. The BBC is NOT "left wing". Not by any objective standard. Nor is it woke. It only looks left wing and woke to a right wing reactionary. Neither is it biased against either main party. It might look pro Tory to me and Owen Jones, look pro Labour to BluestBlue and Andrew Bridgen, but it actually complies well with its charter of impartiality. What is has is not really political bias but an implicit acceptance of liberal social and economic values. It's centrist dad. This does mean that revolutionary socialists and politicians of the likes of Nigel Farage can struggle to get a fair hearing.
Agree mostly, the BBC is pretty unbiased - as is Sky to be fair - but can't agree about Nigel Farage, he was on way more than meritted even when UKIP or Brexit Party had long since crashed and burned.
If Trump somehow wins it would, in the darkest way possible, be quite funny. Catastrophic but funny
It would also be a suitably surreal end to 2020, the Year of Terrible Wonders
Come on, you're stuck in 2016. In the 2020 version of reality, Biden goes into a coma on voting day due to an injury sustained during a press-up competition with a Trump supporter.
Not convinced by the idea but the issue with losses is already sensibly covered by the current system, you dont get a rebate, but you can use it to offset against other gains.
But if you're downsizing to retire, you'll have no future gains to offset it against - and it's your only asset in most cases. How is that fair or sensible?
It isn't.
If we are going to have a property tax, why not one based on planning? The planners arbitrarily increase the value of land without the government taking any of the profits.
It should be payable after a reasonable period to allow for development to take place.
I know this has been mooted before. I don't suppose it would bring in as much money though.
We already have quite a lot of that.
Planning Obligation taxes run at something like 30-40k per new house as an average.
It is surprising how many of these left- wing-firebrands from BBC News try their hand at politics, becoming candidates and MPs for...the Conservative Party!
Care to name some please?>>
Guto Harry, Evan Davis, Andrew Neil, James Harding, Robin Oakley - these are all part of one of the revolving doors, between the BBC and Tory media jobs.
That's BBC News' turn to the right on economic and related issues, and another tranche of staff represent its turn more to the left on identity and cultural issues.
Yep. The BBC is NOT "left wing". Not by any objective standard. Nor is it woke. It only looks left wing and woke to a right wing reactionary. Neither is it biased against either main party. It might look pro Tory to me and Owen Jones, look pro Labour to BluestBlue and Andrew Bridgen, but it actually complies well with its charter of impartiality. What is has is not really political bias but an implicit acceptance of liberal social and economic values. It's centrist dad. This does mean that revolutionary socialists and politicians of the likes of Nigel Farage can struggle to get a fair hearing.
lol
You don't even believe this yourself. You are defending the BBC precisely BECAUSE it agrees with you, and it is left-liberal and mildly Woke.
QED
It's what most BBC employees and executives believe though - even today.
The BBC always gets stick from the governing party.
It is surprising how many of these left- wing-firebrands from BBC News try their hand at politics, becoming candidates and MPs for...the Conservative Party!
Care to name some please?>>
Guto Harry, Evan Davis, Andrew Neil, James Harding, Robin Oakley - these are all part of one of the revolving doors, between the BBC and Tory media jobs.
That's BBC News' turn to the right on economic and related issues, and another tranche of staff represent its turn more to the left on identity and cultural issues.
Yep. The BBC is NOT "left wing". Not by any objective standard. Nor is it woke. It only looks left wing and woke to a right wing reactionary. Neither is it biased against either main party. It might look pro Tory to me and Owen Jones, look pro Labour to BluestBlue and Andrew Bridgen, but it actually complies well with its charter of impartiality. What is has is not really political bias but an implicit acceptance of liberal social and economic values. It's centrist dad. This does mean that revolutionary socialists and politicians of the likes of Nigel Farage can struggle to get a fair hearing.
lol
You don't even believe this yourself. You are defending the BBC precisely BECAUSE it agrees with you, and it is left-liberal and mildly Woke.
QED
Yes, I agree with that. It is soft to medium left, like most of its young, urban, professional public sector employees. I had a friend who was a producer there abou ten years ago and he counted the newspapers he saw lying around the office. About 3/4 were the Guardian.
Most of its employees dislike right-wingers and Momentum equally, but there is a difference in their dislike. They look on Momentumers as people with laudable aims but misguided over means, while right-wingers are simply evil.
One of the more fun bits about the BBC group think is the way that they often believe that their views are completely balanced, neutral and above ideology.
Does that make its reporting misguided rather than biased? Which is worse? Stupid or prejudiced?
It is surprising how many of these left- wing-firebrands from BBC News try their hand at politics, becoming candidates and MPs for...the Conservative Party!
Care to name some please?>>
Guto Harry, Evan Davis, Andrew Neil, James Harding, Robin Oakley - these are all part of one of the revolving doors, between the BBC and Tory media jobs.
That's BBC News' turn to the right on economic and related issues, and another tranche of staff represent its turn more to the left on identity and cultural issues.
You missed out Craig Oliver, and there are a few regional news reporters from the South east and East Anglia, who have tried their hand too. Can't remember names.
Left and right are crude and obfuscating terms. A good way to think about the Beeb is "supposing the Guardian ran the BBC in what ways would it be different?". My opinion is that it would be more or less identical. Plenty of people identifying as "left wing" think the Guardian is centrist and is to the right of them but the key thing is that the BBC pushes a very narrow ideological viewpoint whilst making some attempts to be objective and balanced. The bias is actually at its greatest outside of news and current affairs in comedy and drama.
In the modern media landscape the old mechanisms won't work so I suggest that genuinely polemical items from a wide set of viewpoints are commissioned and forget about pseudo objectivity within a programme. I sort of love the BBC but it also drives me mad. Perhaps a greatly reduced licence fee with subscription services is the way to go for finance?
The BBC is very woke, super culturally liberal, economically Blairite, internationalist, mildy pro-monarchist and very metropolitan - usually London.
It's bedrock audience base is anything but. In that sense it's quite similar to the Church of England.
I find this incredible. The government's handling of coronavirus has been one of the worst in the world. Clearly. We can see it in the data.
And they are still cocking it up, eg the stupid belated confusion over masks.
Meanwhile Starmer is popular, and presentable, and Labour policies are not much different to the Tories: welfare socialism.
Yet Boris is 10 points ahead.
?!?
Not all that difficult to grasp. The Tories are fairly useless but neither are they a bunch of Woke supporting anti semites who hate their country, like Syria better than Israel, never criticise Russia or China, never praise the USA or NATO and profoundly disbelieve in genuine free speech.
None of this is true of SKS either but it was so true of the recent past that even now Labour is having to put out the fires. See for example:
So the current crop of Tory voters are waiting and seeing. According to You Gov Tory voters are a sensible bunch, with only a minority of younger people and 'Graduates'. So they are very strong in populations who are older, wiser, have proper jobs, run small businesses and do stuff. It is all up for grabs as SKS is plainly electable, and the same people who are giving the Tories a majority right now are fair minded enough to say so. If and when they think the Labour party is safe to run the country they will give it serious thought. But not while the the membership include large numbers of leftist authoritarians with street-fascist credentials.
SARS-CoV-2-specific T cell immunity in cases of COVID-19 and SARS, and uninfected controls https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2550-z_reference.pdf Memory T cells induced by previous pathogens can shape the susceptibility to, and clinical severity of, subsequent infections . Little is known about the presence of pre-existing memory T cells in humans with the potential to recognize SARS-CoV-2. Here, we first studied T cell responses to structural (nucleocapsid protein, NP) and non-structural (NSP-7 and NSP13 of ORF1) regions of SARS-CoV-2 in COVID-19 convalescents (n=36). In all of them we demonstrated the presence of CD4 and CD8 T cells recognizing multiple regions of the NP protein. We then showed that SARS-recovered patients (n=23) still possess long-lasting memory T cells reactive to SARS-NP 17 years after the 2003 outbreak, which displayed robust cross-reactivity to SARS-CoV-2 NP. Surprisingly, we also frequently detected SARS-CoV-2 specific T cells in individuals with no history of SARS, COVID-19 or contact with SARS/COVID-19 patients (n=37). SARS-CoV-2 T cells in uninfected donors exhibited a different pattern of immunodominance, frequently targeting the ORF-1-coded proteins NSP7 and 13 as well as the NP structural protein. Epitope characterization of NSP7-specific T cells showed recognition of protein fragments with low homology to “common cold” human coronaviruses but conserved amongst animal betacoranaviruses. Thus, infection with betacoronaviruses induces multispecific and long-lasting T cell immunity to the structural protein NP. Understanding how pre-existing NP- and ORF- 1-specific T cells present in the general population impact susceptibility and pathogenesis of SARS-CoV-2 infection is of paramount importance for the management of the current COVID-19 pandemic.
Left and right are crude and obfuscating terms. A good way to think about the Beeb is "supposing the Guardian ran the BBC in what ways would it be different?". My opinion is that it would be more or less identical. Plenty of people identifying as "left wing" think the Guardian is centrist and is to the right of them but the key thing is that the BBC pushes a very narrow ideological viewpoint whilst making some attempts to be objective and balanced. The bias is actually at its greatest outside of news and current affairs in comedy and drama.
In the modern media landscape the old mechanisms won't work so I suggest that genuinely polemical items from a wide set of viewpoints are commissioned and forget about pseudo objectivity within a programme. I sort of love the BBC but it also drives me mad. Perhaps a greatly reduced licence fee with subscription services is the way to go for finance?
The BBC is very woke, super culturally liberal, economically Blairite, internationalist, mildy pro-monarchist and very metropolitan - usually London.
It's bedrock audience base is anything but. In that sense it's quite similar to the Church of England.
Does it have God's support?
Does the Church of England?
If the BBC does anything at all currently which could be properly called 'comedy' (witty, clever, funny, excelling in jokes) could someone tell us what it is?
It is surprising how many of these left- wing-firebrands from BBC News try their hand at politics, becoming candidates and MPs for...the Conservative Party!
Care to name some please?>>
Guto Harry, Evan Davis, Andrew Neil, James Harding, Robin Oakley - these are all part of one of the revolving doors, between the BBC and Tory media jobs.
That's BBC News' turn to the right on economic and related issues, and another tranche of staff represent its turn more to the left on identity and cultural issues.
Yep. The BBC is NOT "left wing". Not by any objective standard. Nor is it woke. It only looks left wing and woke to a right wing reactionary. Neither is it biased against either main party. It might look pro Tory to me and Owen Jones, look pro Labour to BluestBlue and Andrew Bridgen, but it actually complies well with its charter of impartiality. What is has is not really political bias but an implicit acceptance of liberal social and economic values. It's centrist dad. This does mean that revolutionary socialists and politicians of the likes of Nigel Farage can struggle to get a fair hearing.
lol
You don't even believe this yourself. You are defending the BBC precisely BECAUSE it agrees with you, and it is left-liberal and mildly Woke.
QED
It's what most BBC employees and executives believe though - even today.
The BBC always gets stick from the governing party.
It does but this is also a go-to excuse for BBC apologists to change nothing.
The trouble is the BBC has to change now or it is finished.
It is surprising how many of these left- wing-firebrands from BBC News try their hand at politics, becoming candidates and MPs for...the Conservative Party!
Care to name some please?>>
Guto Harry, Evan Davis, Andrew Neil, James Harding, Robin Oakley - these are all part of one of the revolving doors, between the BBC and Tory media jobs.
That's BBC News' turn to the right on economic and related issues, and another tranche of staff represent its turn more to the left on identity and cultural issues.
Yep. The BBC is NOT "left wing". Not by any objective standard. Nor is it woke. It only looks left wing and woke to a right wing reactionary. Neither is it biased against either main party. It might look pro Tory to me and Owen Jones, look pro Labour to BluestBlue and Andrew Bridgen, but it actually complies well with its charter of impartiality. What is has is not really political bias but an implicit acceptance of liberal social and economic values. It's centrist dad. This does mean that revolutionary socialists and politicians of the likes of Nigel Farage can struggle to get a fair hearing.
lol
You don't even believe this yourself. You are defending the BBC precisely BECAUSE it agrees with you, and it is left-liberal and mildly Woke.
QED
It's what most BBC employees and executives believe though - even today.
The BBC always gets stick from the governing party.
Yes I remember back in 1987: Tebbit had recently criticised the BBC for being biassed against the conservatives, and my brother, a Conservative Party Member, said, the BBC news should be critical of the government, it is part of good journalism.
The BBC's reporting on social issues like the use of foodbanks , for instance, has been strikingly timid and fearful, compared to how it would have handled such issues in the 1980's.
I think it was a couple of years ago I saw an interesting analysis, which confirmed my anecdotal impressions as a listener, that the Today programme had only covered the issue of foodbanks twice in a whole six-month period, in its peak slot - and one of those occasions the guest was a foodbank manager who'd written a book on his earlier career called "My experience as a Tory at the BBC", without this being credited. Unsurprisingly, his contribution was about how the reasons for foodbank use were all very exaggerated and distorted.
It's only in the wake of the Covid crisis, with even vaster increases in demand, but in a fairly sudden pattern, as they were after the Cameron government's welfare changes, that the flimisiness and academically unrepresentative nature of this argument became more evident. Needless to say, once again, it's only now that the BBC is now starting to prod the whole foodbank issue with less timidity.
The shift to the left on representational and ID issues is easily balanced by this shift to the right on economic-social questions.
Famously on here, many of those who clutched their pearls at the phrase Little Englander were perfectly happy to call French people Frogs.
Funny old world.
Not sure what your point is there. 'Frog' is a harmless informal word for any French person. 'Little Englander' is not a word denoting a person's nationality but a word describing specifically a narrow-minded English person, with the emphasis on the narrow-minded. There is no equivalence between them.
Yes, "Frog" was harmless in the 1970s in episodes of "Mind Your Language", but we have moved on.
Where are the re-runs of "Love Thy Neighbour" when one craves some xenophobic and racist comedy?
Where are these French people who are offended by the word Frog? I don't know any, and I have lived in France and spent a lot of time there. For that matter I don't know a single English person offended by the word Rosbif, which is exactly equivalent.
The indignation about totally harmless informal words is pure Guardianista offence-mining.
There's no indignation, Richard. It's more a style & taste matter. If you're reading a post by somebody active and well-respected on here about the economy - a serious post - do you expect to suddenly come across "the Frogs" or "the Krauts" in reference to France and Germany respectively? You don't. You just don't. So all I did was mention it in a benign "quality control" spirit.
Not a big deal.
Isn't this really about the people who use the word 'frog', rather than the word itself? Those who use it nowadays tend to be the same people who use the word 'kraut' - i.e. they use it in a derogatory, belittling, superior fashion, rather than as a humorous, kind Kiwi or Pommie-type nomenclature. I'll bet Mr Farage calls the French 'frogs', for example.
I don't think so, in my experience its normally used as friendly banter, no different to Pommie or being called a Scouser or other things.
But you weren't using it as friendly banter, were you? I think it's only fair of me to point this out.
Of course I was. What came about as unfriendly about it?
Not convinced by the idea but the issue with losses is already sensibly covered by the current system, you dont get a rebate, but you can use it to offset against other gains.
But if you're downsizing to retire, you'll have no future gains to offset it against - and it's your only asset in most cases. How is that fair or sensible?
It isn't.
If we are going to have a property tax, why not one based on planning? The planners arbitrarily increase the value of land without the government taking any of the profits.
It should be payable after a reasonable period to allow for development to take place.
I know this has been mooted before. I don't suppose it would bring in as much money though.
We already have quite a lot of that.
Planning Obligation taxes run at something like 30-40k per new house as an average.
I seem to remember a scandal from a few weeks back where a developer tried to hurry a planning appeal to avoid having to pay a larger figure..
Yep.
Was it £41m extra Planning Obligation on 1500 houses - that is 27k over whatever the figure was already going to be per house?
There used to be Development Land Tax in the 1970s but I can't remember anything about it now
Fair enough, I hadn't quite realised what that was about. Sajid Javid was talking about bringing in a planning tax when he was Chancellor so I assumed that there was still a hole here.
Comments
If cross over doesn't occur by mid-2021, there was no financial and economic impact from Covid. Brexit went remarkably well, or we have declared war on China.
It would also be a suitably surreal end to 2020, the Year of Terrible Wonders
In the modern media landscape the old mechanisms won't work so I suggest that genuinely polemical items from a wide set of viewpoints are commissioned and forget about pseudo objectivity within a programme. I sort of love the BBC but it also drives me mad. Perhaps a greatly reduced licence fee with subscription services is the way to go for finance?
Normally, I'd say the political ecology points to Starmer winning a 2024 plurality, with shaky support from the LDs and SNP (presuming no indyref 2).
But now? Anything could 'appen. Boris could increase his majority. Sunak becomes Lord Protector. The Chinese could launch billions of fruit-drones dropping mangos on us all til we are unconscious
Planning Obligation taxes run at something like 30-40k per new house as an average, raising something like 7-8 bn a year.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/685301/Section_106_and_CIL_research_report.pdf
That compares to approx 12bn raised by Stamp Duty and £26bn lost due to the main dwelling CGT Exemption.
https://twitter.com/HaitianDvorce/status/1283373121219821568
You could do it - semi-meaningfully - with confidence bars. But the simple truth is that, with the case data, 3 days back is pretty solid.
Starmer is to Johnson what a film critic is to an actor, or a football commentator is to a player. No matter how transparently flawed the latter is- and how perceptively the former points that out after that fact- that doesn't mean you want to swap the two.
People who make voluntary contributions are saying they have an affinity with the objectives of the organization. They might be more likely to stick around than those who buy the Times for commercial reasons alone.
You don't even believe this yourself. You are defending the BBC precisely BECAUSE it agrees with you, and it is left-liberal and mildly Woke.
QED
Was it £41m extra Planning Obligation on 1500 houses - that is 27k over whatever the figure was already going to be per house?
The Guardian will find these views disheartening. They are in deep trouble.
For all that I find the paper insufferable at times, I do hope they survive: they do some great journalism and have some really fine writers and editors, and all media job losses are sad and depressing. The world shrinks.
Most of its employees dislike right-wingers and Momentum equally, but there is a difference in their dislike. They look on Momentumers as people with laudable aims but misguided over means, while right-wingers are simply evil.
It's bedrock audience base is anything but. In that sense it's quite similar to the Church of England.
We shall see.
And now I must WORK. Newts do not paint themselves, despite the plague.
Later
Politically quite significant in the US, I think.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/jul/15/coronavirus-live-news-update-covid-19-cases-latest-updates-india-lockdown (at 16:46)
These are the people who shed crocodile tears about that dreadful Mr Corbyn forcing them to vote to keep their own taxes low and maintain their wealth.
But this specific case - the original post at issue - is a curious one. Because it is clearly not being jocular and humorous and yet neither is it being obviously derogatory and belittling. The word is just there - FROG - as if it's been inserted by an unruly and random spirit.
But anyway. There we are.
NEW THREAD
Cry me a river.
None of this is true of SKS either but it was so true of the recent past that even now Labour is having to put out the fires. See for example:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jul/15/labour-to-apologise-to-antisemitism-whistleblowers
So the current crop of Tory voters are waiting and seeing. According to You Gov Tory voters are a sensible bunch, with only a minority of younger people and 'Graduates'. So they are very strong in populations who are older, wiser, have proper jobs, run small businesses and do stuff. It is all up for grabs as SKS is plainly electable, and the same people who are giving the Tories a majority right now are fair minded enough to say so. If and when they think the Labour party is safe to run the country they will give it serious thought. But not while the the membership include large numbers of leftist authoritarians with street-fascist credentials.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2550-z_reference.pdf
Memory T cells induced by previous pathogens can shape the susceptibility to, and clinical severity of, subsequent infections . Little is known about the presence of pre-existing memory T cells in humans with the potential to recognize SARS-CoV-2. Here, we first studied T cell responses to structural (nucleocapsid protein, NP) and non-structural (NSP-7 and NSP13 of ORF1) regions of SARS-CoV-2 in COVID-19 convalescents (n=36). In all of them we demonstrated the presence of CD4 and CD8 T cells recognizing multiple regions of the NP protein. We then showed that SARS-recovered patients (n=23) still possess long-lasting memory T cells reactive to SARS-NP 17 years after the 2003 outbreak, which displayed robust cross-reactivity to SARS-CoV-2 NP. Surprisingly, we also frequently detected SARS-CoV-2 specific T cells in individuals with no history of SARS, COVID-19 or contact with SARS/COVID-19 patients (n=37). SARS-CoV-2 T cells in uninfected donors exhibited a different pattern of immunodominance, frequently targeting the ORF-1-coded proteins NSP7 and 13 as well as the NP structural protein. Epitope characterization of NSP7-specific T cells showed recognition of protein fragments with low homology to “common cold” human coronaviruses but conserved amongst animal betacoranaviruses. Thus, infection with betacoronaviruses induces multispecific and long-lasting T cell immunity to the structural protein NP. Understanding how pre-existing NP- and ORF- 1-specific T cells present in the general population impact susceptibility and pathogenesis of SARS-CoV-2 infection is of paramount importance for the management of the current COVID-19 pandemic.
The trouble is the BBC has to change now or it is finished.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2768532
I think it was a couple of years ago I saw an interesting analysis, which confirmed my anecdotal impressions as a listener, that the Today programme had only covered the issue of foodbanks twice in a whole six-month period, in its peak slot - and one of those occasions the guest was a foodbank manager who'd written a book on his earlier career called "My experience as a Tory at the BBC", without this being credited. Unsurprisingly, his contribution was about how the reasons for foodbank use were all very exaggerated and distorted.
It's only in the wake of the Covid crisis, with even vaster increases in demand, but in a fairly sudden pattern, as they were after the Cameron government's welfare changes, that the flimisiness and academically unrepresentative nature of this argument became more evident. Needless to say, once again, it's only now that the BBC is now starting to prod the whole foodbank issue with less timidity.
The shift to the left on representational and ID issues is easily balanced by this shift to the right on economic-social questions.
Let's see if it recurs.
Or he would have if he could have reached it.
https://nacsba.org.uk/news/sajid-javid-supports-morally-justifiable-land-uplift-tax/
Supermarkets (and others) certainly seemed to be able to sit on land post planning permission without penalty.