Post by Teddy Bear on Nov 6, 2013 19:14:21 GMT
Daniel Hannan identifies one of the ploys used by the BBC to generate their agenda. Use an outside organisation that shares the same agenda, but refer to it as independent or expert, without making their true aim clear.
Memo to the BBC: Please stop referring to the CBI as 'British business'
By Daniel Hannan
I once attended a regional CBI conference in my constituency. I'm pretty certain that the businesses – in the sense of organisations that had to make profits – were outnumbered by the charities, local government agencies and NGOs. There was even, I remember, a local Scout group. Yet this is the organisation which is represented by the BBC as the voice of British industry.
It does represent some industries, of course, especially the large multi-nationals that are most adept at reaching accommodations with governments. Mega-corporations generally love Brussels, intuiting that the system was made for them. They have invested a great deal of time and money in getting regulations that suit them at the expense of their smaller rivals. The last thing they want is to have to start all over again.
Most firms, of course, are not in a position to lobby the EU for favours. Indeed, most firms, even in Britain, do the majority of their business locally. They face the costs of compliance without any offsetting benefits.
Don't take my word for it. A comprehensive poll showed that, by 46 to 37 per cent, British businesses believe that the costs of regulation outweigh the benefits of the single market; and, by 56 to 21 per cent, they want trade policy to be focused on developing countries rather than the EU. Yet this survey, professionally carried out by a reputable pollster, received nothing like the coverage given to a CBI survey of just 415 of its own members.
I've mentioned before that the CBI, in its various incarnations, has got every big call of the past century wrong - most recently when it prophesied that staying out of the euro would destroy jobs and investment.
On this occasion, its arguments are so transparent that a nine-year-old could see through them. What it wants, it says, is to stay in a new, improved EU: a looser, more flexible, more competitive and altogether more spirited beast than the current spavined old nag:
What does the CBI suppose successive governments have been doing for the past 40 years? That sentence precisely describes the approach of every British administration since Heath's: get stuck in, win allies, try to turn the EU into a deregulated, flexible, open network.
So let's ask the question: are we nearer to or further from such a dispensation? Are policies being transferred from Brussels to the national capitals, or the reverse? Are the European Court, Commission and Parliament getting weaker or stronger? How, in short, is our "influence" working out?
It's not the fact that the CBI is wrong that bothers me; it's the low opinion it plainly has of our intelligence.
By Daniel Hannan
I once attended a regional CBI conference in my constituency. I'm pretty certain that the businesses – in the sense of organisations that had to make profits – were outnumbered by the charities, local government agencies and NGOs. There was even, I remember, a local Scout group. Yet this is the organisation which is represented by the BBC as the voice of British industry.
It does represent some industries, of course, especially the large multi-nationals that are most adept at reaching accommodations with governments. Mega-corporations generally love Brussels, intuiting that the system was made for them. They have invested a great deal of time and money in getting regulations that suit them at the expense of their smaller rivals. The last thing they want is to have to start all over again.
Most firms, of course, are not in a position to lobby the EU for favours. Indeed, most firms, even in Britain, do the majority of their business locally. They face the costs of compliance without any offsetting benefits.
Don't take my word for it. A comprehensive poll showed that, by 46 to 37 per cent, British businesses believe that the costs of regulation outweigh the benefits of the single market; and, by 56 to 21 per cent, they want trade policy to be focused on developing countries rather than the EU. Yet this survey, professionally carried out by a reputable pollster, received nothing like the coverage given to a CBI survey of just 415 of its own members.
I've mentioned before that the CBI, in its various incarnations, has got every big call of the past century wrong - most recently when it prophesied that staying out of the euro would destroy jobs and investment.
On this occasion, its arguments are so transparent that a nine-year-old could see through them. What it wants, it says, is to stay in a new, improved EU: a looser, more flexible, more competitive and altogether more spirited beast than the current spavined old nag:
To achieve this, the British government must reform how it engages with the EU by strengthening links with other member states and getting more Brits into key European institutions to increase our influence in Europe further.
What does the CBI suppose successive governments have been doing for the past 40 years? That sentence precisely describes the approach of every British administration since Heath's: get stuck in, win allies, try to turn the EU into a deregulated, flexible, open network.
So let's ask the question: are we nearer to or further from such a dispensation? Are policies being transferred from Brussels to the national capitals, or the reverse? Are the European Court, Commission and Parliament getting weaker or stronger? How, in short, is our "influence" working out?
It's not the fact that the CBI is wrong that bothers me; it's the low opinion it plainly has of our intelligence.