Duncan Smith weighs in with support for Tory bid to impose right-wing bias on BBC

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The Secretary-in-a-State about Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith, has joined Grant Shapps in attacking the BBC with entirely fictitious claims that it has a left-wing bias.

Smith, affectionately known as ‘RTU’ or ‘Returned to Unit’ by this blog because of doubts about his achievements in the Army, is a serial spreader of falsehood, as has been documented here many times.

It seems he missed his true vocation and should have been a farmer; he spreads muck so vigorously.

And this is the case today. The Daily Mail has reported in its usual bombastic style that RTU is angry because the BBC keeps describing his charge on social housing tenants who the government deems to be “under-occupying” their homes as a “bedroom tax”.

His “furious” letter states that the corporation has been misleading viewers because the phrase is “innately politically and indeed factually wrong”.

Oh, is it, Iain?

Let’s have a look at his reason for saying this: “A tax, as the Oxford English Dictionary makes clear, is a ‘compulsory contribution to state revenue, levied by the  government on workers’ income and business profits, or added to the cost of some goods, services and transactions’.”

That’s right – and the state under-occupation charge (to give it it’s correct title) is a compulsory contribution to state revenue, added to the cost of a service. In this case, the service is rental of a dwelling. There can be no doubt that the contribution is compulsory, and it is clearly the state that receives (or rather, keeps) the money.

It is a tax. And we can say that, since the number of spare bedrooms in a dwelling is used to apply the charge, it is a bedroom tax. It’s the same principle as was used to describe the ‘Window Tax’ of the 19th century or thereabouts.

Some pundits have stated that it cannot be a tax because it is not paid by everybody, but this is also nonsense. Does everybody pay Inheritance Tax, or Capital Gains Tax? No. Even the corporations don’t pay Corporation Tax any more, according to all the reports we hear about tax avoidance!

And it may also be stated that the BBC is simply reflecting public parlance in its use of the phrase. People do not talk about the “underoccupation charge” or the “removal of the spare room subsidy” – they talk about the Bedroom Tax.

So RTU can whine all he likes; the BBC is factually correct in using the phrase, and it also reflects public custom in doing so.

His letter continues by claiming the BBC has adopted the language of the Opposition, stating, “We do not believe it is the job of the BBC to use misleading terms and promote the views of the Labour Party.”

Again, he is wrong to claim that the BBC has a left-wing bias. You may get tired of reading this, Dear Reader, but research by Cardiff University has shown that “The BBC tends to reproduce a Conservative, Eurosceptic, pro-business version of the world, not a left-wing, anti-business agenda”. Read the report for yourself.

The Daily Mail goes on to report that former Immigration Minister Damian Green has been unhappy with the Beeb’s reporting of immigration data, saying it was “mystifying” that a 36,000 drop in migration was described as “slight”.

But it is Mail readers who should be mystified at this claim. Didn’t they read, only last month, that more than two million immigrants have been given British passports since 2000 – one every two and a half minutes? Was this not accurate? In comparison to that figure, 36,000 is indeed “slight”.

And Mr Green might have had a little more sympathy for the BBC report if he had bothered to read the latest information on immigration by the Office for National Statistics, which stated that a drop of 39,000 long-term migrants between December 2011 and December 2012 was “not a statistically significant fall”. This is the information used by his government.

Of course we all know the reason for this latest round of BBC-bashing – the Tories are putting out a ‘marker’ for the general election.

They are telling the BBC, in no uncertain terms: “Behave. We don’t want any trouble from you in the run-up to May 2015 – just nice stories saying how great we are. Otherwise it will go badly for you after the election.”

Considering the evidence that the BBC already has a right-wing, Conservative-supporting viewpoint, it would be perfectly understandable if any high-ranking member of the corporation, receiving that message, did the exact opposite.

These Tories are ungrateful. They should know it is impossible for the BBC to hide the vast amount of cock-ups, miscalculations and intentional harm they have inflicted on the nation in the last three years. Attempted intimidation can’t alter the facts.

But then, threats are a part of the Tory way of life – especially for Iain Duncan Smith.

That is clear to anyone who has spent a few months signing unemployed at a Job Centre.

This is how democracy ends: Not with violence but with a shrug

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Someone has suggested that more people might have voted for participants in today’s ‘bushtucker trial’, on I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here, than for candidates in the police and crime commissioner elections.

The suggestion was made on the BBC’s ‘live blog’ as results were awaited for the least effective exercise of democracy in British history. Both votes took place yesterday

Voter turnout was expected to be around 15 per cent – the worst ever result in a peacetime election, totalling only two-thirds of the previous worst-ever result, 1999’s European Parliament vote. This statistic raises the obvious observation:

This is not democratic.

How can it be? The vast majority – around 85 per cent of those entitled to vote – never bothered to turn up.

Already the speculation machine is churning out possible reasons for that: Not enough was spent on the election; the government should have funded a mail-out to all voters, explaining what was going on and who their local candidates were; many people did not even receive a leaflet from their candidates; people were being asked to traipse down to a polling station in the middle of winter (actually it’s still technically autumn); it was a dark and wet day.

No. Here’s the reason:

It is a bad idea and the vast majority of the population aren’t stupid enough ever to accept that it is a good one.

As I write this, only one result is in – Wiltshire will have a Conservative police commissioner. One may safely assume that Angus McPherson, elected by a fraction of a 15.3 per cent turnout – and those who did vote had no less than five other candidates to choose from – will be a cheerleader for Tory policies of privatisation and staff cutbacks.

He will receive £70,000 a year to be a figurehead. The people of Wiltshire might just as well have elected the Cerne Abbas Giant.

Bear in mind that the – what is it? – £100 million spent on this election could have funded an extra 3,000 police officers. Instead, the Tory-led Coalition is axing 15,000.

Responding to criticism over the election turnout, the live blog told us policing minister and serial Question Time liar Damian Green said the PCCs were a new idea that would need time for people to get used to.

Mark Easton, the BBC’s Home editor immediately responded: “Real flaw was the public were never persuaded they needed elected police commissioners.”

This is the truth of it – and the idea of commissioners affiliated to political parties was anathema to voters. That’s why they stayed away in droves. Look at these responses, all taken from the live blog (I’m keeping it there to show the strength of feeling on just one news outlet).

John Amos in Plymouth emailed: “I am unhappy that political candidates came first and second in Wiltshire. Police Commissioners should not be political. We do not want a politicised police force.”

“Had the choice only been between the three main parties’ stooges I would have spoiled the paper. This will be a disaster for policing,” wrote ‘Richard’ on the BBC news website (and quoted in the live blog).

Araura Berkeley in Glastonbury emailed: “I did vote but am very disappointed in the lack of proper information on candidates – I had early on requested the full info on all my candidates but had to wait until the official leaflets were put through all doors. This was very late on and there was no telephone number whereby I could quiz any of the candidates about their manifesto.”

Nigel Coldwell tweets: Don’t assume low turnout is apathy. I actively didn’t vote. Would’ve spoiled paper but I thought they’d count it in turnout.

Peter Wilson commented on the BBC News website: “Voted last night and learned on arrival that there was a second choice system if there were more than two candidates. Asked how that would work and no-one knew. Presiding officer looked in their information book and still no answer.”

So: A bad idea, handled in a shambolic way.

The Conservatives will say the low turnout is not undemocratic, and people will warm to the idea of having commissioners once they see it in practice.

The response from their opponents will be just as predictable: The next time a union calls a strike, and gets a mandate for it on a low turnout, that will not be undemocratic either.

And you never know, once people see a really big strike happening, they might warm to that as well!