http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17654781

And how much does borderline depression cost the economy, do the bankers' lickspittles have those figures?

Depression is just made up by layabouts who don't want to work and GPs who like to hand out sick notes on a whim.

Just shut up and get back to work.

No, you've depressed me now - my GP is very reluctant to hand out sick notes!

As he should be. I tend to encourage people to continue working for depression as it's very beneficial.

As for Bank Holidays, they're best enjoyed during the "warmer" times. There's bugger all point in having a Bank Holiday in the middle of October/November, when it's dark, cold and miserable - people will just stay indoors. Having them during the spring/summer means people get to go out, socialise, and spend money.

Work was partly responsible for triggering my last bout of depression. More of it was precisely the last thing I needed.
In fact I'd go even more positive than that - work WAS responsible for my last bout of depression.

This story wound me up this morning.

I am disgusted that the BBC is just regurgitating a right wing think tank press release. No clue as to who or what is behind this report, or whether they have any agenda at all. I heard the founder of CEBR is a chum of George Osborne...

On a touchscreen here, wink smilie didn't work

Depends on the cause.

Isn't disgust a bit strong? I heard a rumour that we lived in a pluralist society where free expression for multiple contrasting viewpoints is considered something to be encouraged. It's a slow news day, they timed their report to be reasonably topical, they based it on research. What's the real problem here?

If you hate the CEBR report, read it and find what's wrong with it. Try to object on rational grounds (the data is wrong, or the methodology excludes aspects of public holidays that are demonstrably valuable). It's facile to get all grumpy just because you don't approve of a conclusion against which you are incapable of presenting argument, or because you don't like the people making it.

Do you refuse to read anything espoused by the Fabian Society on the grounds that Ed Balls used to work for them? Do Demos' links with Tony Blair make their research worthless. The BBC reports the output of these left(ish) wing think tank reports too after all.

Waffle, As my reading goes, she was less disgusted by the report itself, more by the fact the BBC have simply reposted it with little or no analysis, either of the issues you describe (i.e. the veracity of the data behind the report) or any of the surrounding political issues (i.e. who is paying to have the report published, do the CEBR have a particular political agenda etc.).

The CEBR can do or say whatever the heck they like, that's fair enough. However the BBC has a stated policy of being politically neutral and has a remit to provide it's readers/viewers with the full picture. Heather seem to be objecting to it not bothering to do the latter at all and thus by inference failing to be the former.

Jon

Sure, but it just isn't that bad. The CEBR is a respectable enough source, it's a long weekend with nobody at work (except me). They have half a dozen journalists on the desk trying to give us some easily digestible news reporting, so they ran the story. They dug up a counterpoint from some guy at the BRC and googled for some mildly relevant alternative data to present.

It's about what you get for using the BBC web site as a news source, on a bank holiday, and about a non-story that is only being used to raise the public profile of the CEBR. "Disgusted of Gillingham" has no reason to get riled about this little stuff. If you take it seriously, then do research of your own and craft a valid criticism; if not, then why claim to have spat out one's Shreddies in rage?

There's other obvious think-tank publicity shots also being covered by the Beeb this weekend...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17649817 (IPPR - lefties)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/ne ... 711943.stm (Fabians - lefties)

Isn't that kind of the point? Nobody reading that story is given any sort of clue if the CEBR is a 'reasonable enough source'. They could be a respected politically neutral body with a long record of insightful analysis which many learned men pay attention to, or they could be a startup publishing a salacious issue with the primary intention of garnering publicity in the hope of getting more funding. Or they could be a very far right political organisation masquerading as 'think tank' with a very overt agenda.

There's nothing in the story to give us any knowledge of whether we should place any value on the finding of a report by the CEBR. It's poor journalism not to place the core of the story in it's proper context, which the BBC report entirely fails to do.

Jon

Got it in one. There is a general malaise in the broadcast media, I think, which doesn't seem to want to bother with the meat and bones of a story. They seem much happier to skim over the surface, then bounce into some pointless trifling saga about someone vaguely famous or similar. A sensible person will try to get more angles on a story from a wider range of sources, but your average viewer will simply take what they're given and believe it.

I'm all for the BBC to try and show fairness and balance in its reporting of the news, but I didn't see an awful lot around this story. How many other stories do we get fed that aren't all they appear to be, I wonder?

Apparently this average viewer person is a spud, I don't see how the BBC is the institution to be blamed for that. The BBC is not responsible for them being stupid and/or shallow. It has about 500 words in which to present the story, and that has as much to do with attention spans as house-styles. The BBC has neither space, nor interested enough readers, to usefully analyse the relevant merits of every think tank whose PR puff pieces it unthinkingly regurgitates for the bafflement of blissfully witless proles.

They cover all varieties of news, for an audience that doesn't want great depth. Why are we criticising the Beeb for not being the Economist? Just buy the Economist if you don't want to live in Auntie's dank news-lite cave. The bad news is that they also refer on occasion to CEBR research (it being a well respected source of such).

The economy serves the people, not the other way around. Can someone please remind the CEBR that's there's more to both the economy and human life, health and happiness than how much stuff the country produced this year.


The BBC quite frequently post a link to further analysis which is on a separate page, they could easily do that in this case.


Knowing the Economist and its leanings its editorial line would probably urge instant implementation of the report's recommendations any way. The Economists's solution to almost any social or economic problem is outsourcing, privatisation or deregulation. I don't think I've ever read an article in the Economist advocating state intervention - except, perhaps, to save fat cat bankers from their own perilous mistakes in 2008.