No reporting of this good economic news on the BBC, I wonder why?

A recent OECD study ahs found that quality of life in the UK has been only 'modestly affected' by the global financial crisis with happiness and even trust in the government rising, this is in marked contrast with the UK's neighbours in the Eurozone. According to the OECD whilst the recession sent unemployment rising and did put a squeeze on living standards in Britain, as elsewhere, the drop in national morale seen in other countries is just 'not visible' in the UK.

The OECD study found that the British enjoy the highest levels of income, job security, clean air and water, personal safety and democratic accountability in the OECD and some of the strongest friendship networks.

In the UK the proportion of people who said they were very satisfied with their lives overall edged upwards from 63 per cent to 64 per cent. By way of contrast in Greece, which was worst hit by the Eurocrisis, reported satisfaction with life fell by 20 per cent between 2007 and 2012. It fell by 12 per cent in Spain and 10 per cent in Italy.


Across the Eurozone the proportion of people who said that they trust their national government fell by 10 per cent in the five years to 2012. However in Britain it rose from 36 per cent to 47 per cent.

The OECD study 'How's Life' ranks Britain along with Switzerland, Australia, Scandanavia, Canada and New Zealand in the top tier with regards to the quality of life across 34 leading countries.

In their commentary to the study's findings the OECD said:

'In the OECD as a whole, the poor employment situation had a major impact on life satisfaction...

This trend is not visible in the United Kingdom where, from 2007 to 2012, the percentage of British people declaring being very satisfied with their lives increased from 63 per cent to 64 per cent.'

So there's some good news about life in Britain today, but as it doesn't conform to the Labour Party / BBC narrative you will not be surprised to learn that I can find no reference to this OECD report on the BBC.

How odd, or rather predictable.

The one hundred and fifty-first weekly "No shit, Sherlock" award

This week's prize goes to the OECD for the stagering insight, as reported by the BBC that:

'the eurozone and the UK are likely to enter a recession as the international body cuts its global growth forecasts.'

No shit, Sherlocks

Education, education and education

Tony Blair's "Education, education and education" mantra was an electoral slogan and ever-'improving' exam results under the last Labour government were designed to show that Labour had 'invested' wisely and cared for the nation's children. Anyone who dared to say that standards were falling was accused of not caring about the hard work put in by pupils and teachers and of generally being a


So it was with interest that I read the BBC's report on the OECD's latest educational standards report. The BBC manage to include this comment:

'Shadow education secretary Andy Burnham said: "Schools improved under Labour, and more students now leave with good results. People forget how bad things were: in 1997, half of all schools failed to reach the basic benchmark of 30% of students getting 5 GCSEs graded A*-C, including English and maths - that number is now fewer than one in 12."'

Schools did not improve under Labour, results improved because exams were deliberately made easier.

For a more realistic view of education in the UK in the light of the OECD report, I suggest a read of Toby Young's Telegraph article that includes this:

'British schoolchildren are now ranked 16th in the world for science, 25th for reading and 28th for maths, according to the OECD’s 2009 PISA report. That compares with a 2000 PISA ranking of 4th for science, 7th for reading and 8th for maths. This is conclusive proof that Labour’s claim to have “improved” Britain’s schools during its period in office is utter nonsense. Spending on education increased by £30 billion under the last government, yet between 2000-09 British schoolchildren plummeted in the international league tables and are now ranked behind those of Poland, Estonia and Slovenia.

Labour apologists will respond in two ways to this report. The most simple-minded of them will simply ignore it and continue to point to GCSE results as evidence of school “improvement”. Not surprisingly, this is the response of Andy Burnham, Labour’s virtually invisible shadow education secretary. “Schools improved under Labour, and more students now leave with good results,” he told the BBC’s website. While the second half of that statement is true, if we combine it with the 2009 PISA report it is proof – if proof were needed – that GCSEs have been dumbed down. What Labour did over the past 13 years was to collude with the exam boards to keep lowering the bar in a desperate attempt to demonstrate that Britain’s schools were getting better.'

I wonder if the BBC will question Andy Burnham's assertions? I think we all know the answer to that question.

There is one other point that needs discussing and that is if the large and increasing number of pupils in British schools whose first language is not English might be affecting educational standards? It's a fair and relevant question but not one that I envisage being asked on the BBC in the near future.

Don't put the economic recovery at risk

So Gordon Brown will exclaim tomorrow, but rather than look forward through his red-tinted glasses, let's look at where we are after 13 years of Gordon 'Prudence' Brown at the Treasury and/or Number 10.

According the OECD, Britain has one of the worst deficits as a percentage of GDP in the world. Only Iceland and Greece have higher deficits and experts fear it could overtake Greece before too long.

So do we trust the man who brought us to this situation, the man who stoked a bubble so as to ensure re-election for his party and a boom for taxes to pay for his party's social experiments and massive expansion of the public sector, or do we vote him out for being either incompetent or evil?

Best placed?

Yet again I recall the words of assorted Labour ministers that the UK was best placed to weather the recession. Today we learn that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has said that whilst the US economy is expected to grow at an annualised rate of 1.6% in the third quarter and the Eurozone to expand by 0.3%, the UK economy would shrink by 4.7% this year.

Best placed?

It is also worth noting that the forecast for the UK is down from the OECD's earlier forecast of a 4.3% contraction and the 3.5% decline that the UK Treasury has predicted.

It is also worth noting when considering Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling's predictions for future growth in the UK economy, growth required to keep a vague control on DEBT, that the forecast for UK GDP growth in 2009 dropped steadily between April 2008 and July 2009 from +1.7% to -4.7%. That's a 6.4 percentage point drop in the forecast in the last 17 months.

The fact that the OECD expects both the US and the Eurozone to follow Germany, France and Japan out of recession in the third quarter of 2009, but not the UK seems not to interest the BBC. The news appears on a Business News page but is not linked from the main UK news page. Apparently the BBC deem news that, amongst other items,

"A mother whose daughter was strangled by her partner says she thought he was her "Prince Charming" - but now hates him. "

to be more important than the state of the UK economy. The way the BBC continually protect this Labour government from criticism of its economic record disgusts me. It contrasts so starkly with the way they reported every piece of negative news during the John Major government. The BBC's bias is now getting to the point where I don't see how any fair minded person could deny it.