BBC out spinning for the government again

First we have this:

Darling '£15bn spending cuts due'

Alistair Darling is set to announce £15bn of Whitehall spending cuts over the next few years in his Budget.

It turns out that this is £5 billion of savings over the next 2 years and £10 billion in the 2 after that. That really doesn't add up to much when the annual budget deficit is £160 billion, or more than £3 billion per week. At that rate it would take 64 years of savings to cover 1 years deficit.

Conveniently for the government, the BBC omitted to mention that Alistair Darling has decided to announce that the bill for bailing out the banks could be as high as £60billion, and he will create a provision in the Budget which will be added to last year’s public borrowing totals and public sector debt.

So that's £60 billion of bad news we don't hear about and £15 billion of goodish news that we do.

Then we have this:

Recession an opportunity, says PM

The recession presents the UK with an "enormous opportunity" to reform its economy and become more competitive, Gordon Brown has insisted. The prime minister said the country had to harness its "scientific, intellectual and cultural genius".

Which of course is a load of baloney. Every day has always been an "enormous opportunity", but this government has failed to understand how the world works. If the country there was all this "scientific, intellectual and cultural genius" it wouldn't be in this position. Does anybody really think that there are millions of geniuses out there, who would be doing great things but for having not been "harnessed" by the government?

We heard similar noises from Harold Wilson, but it didn't do him any good. The trouble is that these days politicians know they can make vacuous statements without being taken to task by the press.