propaganda | ukwatch.net

Jobs are used to justify anything, but the numbers don't add up

JamieSW — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 10:22:06 +0000

There is no nonsense so gross that it cannot be justified by the creation of jobs. The Ministry of Defence has just announced that it’s spending £13bn of our money – via a fantastically complicated private finance scheme – on a fleet of refuelling planes. Do we need them? Only if we intend to attack another defenceless country. But it’s worthwhile, because the new contract will “create up to 600 jobs at AirTanker Ltd, and will safeguard up to 3,000 jobs directly at British sites, with thousands more sustained indirectly.”(1)

John Hutton claims that new nuclear power stations will generate not only the energy we need, but also 100,000 new jobs(2). When and how? Here or in France? Northumberland County Council has revealed that it is spending £3.6 million on one new roundabout, at Haltwhistle. A staggering waste of public money? No, “it will both attract new jobs to the town and secure existing employment.”(3)

It is true that investment creates employment. But jobs are used to justify anything and everything. If recession strikes, the political value of any scheme which boosts them will rise. Projects which in more prosperous times might have been rejected by planners or ministers will suddenly find favour. Anyone who stands in their way – however daft the schemes may be – will be walloped as an anti-social Luddite.

But the big question is asked very rarely in the press: how reliable are these promises? Whenever a new defence contract or superstore or road or airport is announced, the papers and broadcasters repeat the employment figures without questioning them. They rarely return to the story to discover whether the claims were true.

The Guardian’s research service was able to find only two stories which challenged individual claims about job creation. One, from 2003, covered a National Audit Office investigation into the government’s grants to companies in deprived areas(4). The grants cost the taxpayer £1.4bn and were meant to have created or protected 300,000 jobs. But the auditors found that only 45% of these jobs were additional: the rest would have been saved or created if the grants hadn’t existed. Of these, 11% displaced other jobs in the same region, even when the multiplier effect (jobs creating further jobs) was taken into account(5). The schemes had worked, but not as well as the government had claimed.

The other story, in February this year, reported an odd but quite common phenomenom: a private equity boss attacking his own industry. Jon Moulton, the founder of Alchemy Partners, berated his own trade body for using “very dodgy statistics”(6). The British Venture Capital Association had claimed that jobs at private equity firms have risen by 8% a year over the past five years, while in publicly-listed companies jobs have grown by only 0.4% a year(7).

Speaking at the industry’s SuperReturn 2008 conference, Moulton pointed out that the association’s figures excluded the private equity firms that had gone out of business. “If you use an adjusted figure, the number should be more like zero. We’re putting these things out as fact and we shouldn’t.”

Many of the published figures have to be wrong. At the beginning of his nuclear speech, John Hutton praised the efforts of Dougie Rooney, the energy officer for the trade union Unite, for his “unique contribution to nuclear’s renaissance in the UK”. But they can’t get their story straight. Rooney has claimed that the nuclear programme will generate 10,000 new jobs: one tenth of Hutton’s figure(8).

Ten years ago, a research organisation called the National Retail Planning Forum – financed by Sainsbury, Tesco, Marks and Spencer, Boots and John Lewis – published a report on the superstores’ impact on employment. It found that there is “strong evidence that new out-of-centre superstores have a negative net impact on retail employment up to 15 km away.”(9) The 93 stores the forum studied were responsible for the net loss of 25,685 employees: every time a large supermarket opened, 276 people lost their jobs. This is hardly surprising. The New Economics Foundation has calculated that every £50,000 spent in small local shops creates one job. You must spend £250,000 in superstores for the same result(10).

But the press – especially the local papers – reports Eldorado every time a new store opens. In the past few days the Telegraph and Argus claimed that Marks and Spencer will create 2,500 new jobs in Bradford(11); the Halifax Evening Courier announced that the local B&Q will hatch an extra 60 jobs by moving to bigger premises(12); the BBC published a story headlined “Morrisons site creates 1,000 jobs”(13). Seldom is there a word about the employment these schemes will destroy.

To produce a definitive account of the gap between the claims made by companies promoting new schemes and the jobs they really deliver would take years. Instead, I asked a researcher, Nicola Cutcher, to conduct a rough sampling exercise. She took the latest year for which job figures are broken down by the size of employer are available – 2006 – and selected the middle week of each quarter. She then went through all the stories that mentioned the word “jobs” in a press database(14), selecting those which reported new openings or closures by large enterprises (over 250 staff) that were definitely taking place. She ensured that each claim was counted only once. To produce a rough average for the year, she multiplied the four weeks by 13.

The government reports that the number of jobs among large enterprises rose by 189,000 between 2005 and 2006(15). Our rough sample suggests a net gain of 1.4 million, or 7.4 times the official rate. If the same exaggeration applied to the whole economy, there would be 218 million workers in the United Kingdom(16).

This exercise has severe limitations. Job figures tend to be quite lumpy. Some of the posts take several years to create, so they won’t show up in the 2006 figures; though 2006, of course, harvested the jobs announced in previous years. But the gains among large employers this decade have fluctuated between 160,000 and 330,000(17): in no year has anything like 1.4 million net jobs been created.

Should we be surprised by such exaggerations? Of course not. Though the papers are generally good at reporting job cuts, they rely for the good news on companies and government departments that have an interest in talking up the benefits of their schemes. There is also plenty of confusion, often cunningly sown in corporate press releases, about whether the new jobs are being created directly or indirectly. When claiming wider benefits for their schemes, employers use the most generous possible multiplier effects. The indirect employment claimed by one company is the direct employment created by another. As they all declare responsibility for work created elsewhere, new jobs in this wacky world are generated several times over.

We need some reliable research into the reporting of employment claims. We need journalists to start asking questions about the figures they are fed; perhaps to refuse to print them unless they have been independently audited. And we all need to make a simple demand whenever a shiny new scheme promises to solve the community’s problems: prove it.

References:

1. MoD, 27th March 2008. £13 billion deal for new Tanker Aircraft signed. Press release. http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/DefenceNews/EquipmentAndLogistics/13Bi…

2. John Hutton, 26 March 2008. New Nuclear Build: How do we make progress?
http://www.berr.gov.uk/pressroom/Speeches/page45417.html

3. No author, 28th March 2008. £3m road scheme to aid jobs. The Cumberland News.
http://www.cumberland-news.co.uk/news/viewarticle.aspx?id=820414

4. David Hencke, 17th June 2003. £100m jobs subsidy scheme is poor value, say auditors. The Guardian.

5. National Audit Office, 17th June 2003. The Department for Trade and Industry: Regional Grants in England. http://www.nao.org.uk/publications/nao_reports/02-03/0203702.pdf

6. Siobhan Kennedy, 27th February 2008. High-profile buyout chief turns on his peer group. The Times.

7. The British Venture Capital Association, 13th February 2008. The Economic Impact of Private Equity in the UK 2007. http://www.bvca.co.uk/pdf.php?id=842&filename=the_economic_impact_of_pri…

8. No author, 26th March 2008. ‘Thousands of jobs’ in nuclear design licences
The Herald. http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/other/display.var.2145944.0.Thousands_of…

9. Sam Porter, Paul Raistrick, January 1998. The Impact of Out-of-Centre Food Superstores on Local Retail Employment. The National Retail Planning Forum, c/o Corporate Analysis, Boots Company PLC, Nottingham.

10. Emma Hallett, New Economics Foundation, April 1998, pers comm.

11. Jo Winrow, 27th March 2008. D-day looms for massive jobs project. The Telegraph and Argus.
http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/newsindex/display.var.2149091…

12. Carmel Harrison, 28th March 2008. DIY superstore prepares to open. Evening Courier.
http://www.halifaxcourier.co.uk/local-business/DIY-superstore-prepares-t…

13. No author, 19th March 2008. Morrisons site creates 1,000 jobs.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/kent/7305548.stm

14. UK News.

15. http://stats.berr.gov.uk/ed/sme/smestats2005.xls

and

http://stats.berr.gov.uk/ed/sme/smestats2006.xls

16. The latest total figure is here: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/lmsuk0307.pdf

17. All the tables are here: http://stats.berr.gov.uk/ed/sme/index.htm

Iraq: teachers told to rewrite history

JamieSW — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 13:36:33 +0000

Britain’s biggest teachers’ union has accused the Ministry of Defence of breaking the law over a lesson plan drawn up to teach pupils about the Iraq war. The National Union of Teachers claims it breaches the 1996 Education Act, which aims to ensure all political issues are treated in a balanced way.

Teachers will threaten to boycott military involvement in schools at the union’s annual conference next weekend, claiming the lesson plan is a “propaganda” exercise and makes no mention of any civilian casualties as a result of the war.

They believe the instructions, designed for use during classroom discussions in general studies or personal, social and health education (PSE) lessons, are arguably an attempt to rewrite the history of the Iraq invasion just as the world prepares to mark its fifth anniversary.

Steve Sinnott, the general secretary of the NUT, said: “This isn’t an attack on the military – nothing of the sort. I know they’ve done valuable work in establishing peace in some countries. It is an attack on practices that we cannot condone in schools. It is a question of whether you present fair and balanced views or put forward prejudice and propaganda to youngsters.”

At the heart of the union’s concern is a lesson plan commissioned by an organisation called Kids Connections for the Ministry of Defence aimed at stimulating classroom debate about the Iraq war.

In a “Students’ Worksheet” which accompanies the lesson plan, it stresses the “reconstruction” of Iraq, noting that 5,000 schools and 20 hospitals have been rebuilt. But there is no mention of civilian casualties.

In the “Teacher Notes” section, it talks about how the “invasion was necessary to allow the opportunity to remove Saddam Hussein” but it fails to mention the lack of United Nations backing for the war. The notes also use the American spelling of “program”.

Addressing whether the MoD should be providing materials for schools, Mr Sinnott said that he did not object, as long as the material was accurate, presented responsibly and contained a balanced view of opinions.

The union has protested to the Schools Secretary, Ed Balls, who has referred the complaint to the MoD. In a letter to Mr Balls, Mr Sinnott said: “I have to say that were the MoD pack to be distributed and followed without the legally required ‘balanced presentation of opposing views’ there would, in my view, be very serious risk of a finding of non-compliance with section 406 (of the 1996 Education Act) at least.

“I do not doubt that there would be many members of this union who would not accept as ‘fact’ the assertions made particularly in the Teacher Notes, nor, I think, could some of the assertions made in the Student Worksheet be regarded as non-controversial.”

Mr Sinnott reminded Mr Balls that a High Court judge had ruled that the film An Inconvenient Truth, by the Oscar-winning former American vice-president Al Gore, could not be used in schools without teachers counteracting some of the assertions made in it.

Mr Balls sought to distance himself from supporting the material.

He said: “I am sure you are aware my department does not promote or endorse specific resources or methods of teaching for use in schools but I appreciate you drawing this to my attention.” Mr Balls added that he had instructed his officials “to take this matter up” with the MoD.

A spokesman for the MoD said the ministry had consulted with interested parties over the proposed lesson plan in order to ensure it had the support of the education community. “We did ask the Stop The War coalition to take part although it refused.”

The spokesman added that the programme was “a set of web-based resources” whose use was “completely voluntary”.

“We have consulted widely with teachers and students during the development of these products and feedback from schools has been extremely encouraging,” he added.

“Teachers and students found them to be valuable and fun resources for applied learning.

“They are designed to support teachers in delivering a whole range of subjects across the national curriculum and its equivalents in Scotland and Wales.

“We are happy to engage with the NUT and we will be writing to them.”

Union members say they are also worried that armed forces recruitment fairs in schools glamorise the job by citing exotic countries that recruits will visit but fail to mention that they may be required to kill people.

According to an independent assessment of the MoD’s recruitment material by the Joseph Rowntree Trust, however, the material concerned was “very dubious”. The trust said it had used misleading marketing with advertising campaigns that “glamorise warfare, omit vital information and fail to point out the risks and responsibilities associated with a forces career”.

Mr Sinnott said: “On their recruitment material, it tells what an exotic lifestyle this can be, but it doesn’t mention that being in the military involves killing people. These things don’t feature as they should in a proper, balanced view of what it is like being in the armed forces.”

What the MoD’s guide says… and what it omits

“Iraq was invaded early 2003 by a United States coalition. Twenty-nine other countries, including the UK, also provided troops… Iraq had not abandoned its nuclear and chemical weapons development program”. After the first Gulf War, “Iraq did not honour the cease-fire agreement by surrendering weapons of mass destruction…”

The reality: The WMD allegation, central to the case for war, proved to be bogus. David Kay, appointed by the Bush administration to search for such weapons after the invasion, found no evidence of a serious programme or stockpiling of WMDs. The “coalition of the willing” was the rather grand title of a rag-tag group of countries which included Eritrea, El Salvador and Macedonia.

“The invasion was also necessary to allow the opportunity to remove Saddam, an oppressive dictator, from power, and bring democracy to Iraq”.

The reality: Regime change was not the reason given in the run-up to the invasion – the US and UK governments had been advised it would be against international law. Saddam was regarded as an ally of the West while he was carrying out some of the worst of his atrocities. As for democracy, elections were held in Iraq during the occupation and have led to a sectarian Shia government. Attempts by the US to persuade the government to be more inclusive towards minorities have failed.

“Over 7,000 British troops remain in Iraq… to contribute to reconstruction, training Iraqi security forces… They continue to fight against a strong militant Iraqi insurgency.”

The reality: The number of British troops in Iraq is now under 5,000. They withdrew from their last base inside Basra city in September and are now confined to the airport where they do not take part in direct combat operations.

“The cost of UK military operations in Iraq for 2005/06 was £958m.”

The reality: The cost of military operations in Iraq has risen by 72 per cent in the past 12 months and the estimated cost for this year is £1.648bn. The House of Commons defence committee said it was “surprised” by the amount of money needed considering the slowing down of the tempo of operations.

“Over 312,000 Iraqi security forces have been trained and equipped (Police, Army and Navy).”

The reality: The Iraqi security forces have been accused, among others by the American military, of running death squads targeting Sunnis. In Basra, the police became heavily infiltrated by Shia militias and British troops had to carry out several operations against them. On one occasion British troops had to smash their way into a police station to rescue two UK special forces soldiers who had been seized by the police.

“A total of 132 UK military personnel have been killed in Iraq.”

The reality: The figure is 175 since the invasion of 2003. A British airman died in a rocket attack at the airport two weeks ago despite British troops not going into Basra city on operations. Conservative estimates of the number of Iraqi civilians killed since the beginning of the invasion stand at around 85,000.

“From hospitals to schools to wastewater treatment plants, the presence of coalition troops is aiding the reconstruction of post-Saddam Iraq.”

The reality: Five years after “liberation”, Baghdad still only has a few hours of intermittent power a day. Children are kidnapped from schools for ransom and families of patients undergoing surgery at hospitals are advised to buy and bring in blood from sellers who congregate outside.

Britain’s Media Fashions its “Warrior Prince”

Ellie Keen — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 23:22:55 +0000

Rarely has the servility of the British media been given such free and full expression.

The dispatch of Prince Harry—third in line to the British throne after his father, Charles, and elder brother, William—to Afghanistan’s Helmand province was as naked a piece of political propaganda as could be imagined. Orchestrated by the Ministry of Defence (MOD), it was carried out with the compliance of every single newspaper and TV channel in the UK.

All the major news outlets throughout the world were also part of the conspiracy to deceive the public, with both CNN and Reuters publicly admitting their complicity. When the story finally broke, it did so only as a result of an article published in an Australian magazine, New Idea, whose editors said they were unaware of the worldwide media embargo. It was then the subject of a short article in the German daily tabloid Berliner Kurier and finally made known to a wider audience when it was picked up by the right-wing Internet news-aggregator site, the Drudge Report, on February 28.

The agreement to conceal Harry’s posting was brokered during three meetings of 30 to 40 media representatives and top brass in the army between September and December.

The media accepted a collective blackout until after Prince Harry’s tour of duty was due to end in April, in return for access to a pre-deployment interview and several “embeds” being placed with the Blues and Royals Household Cavalry regiment, who would pool interviews, video footage and photographs. The prince would even be brought home on a Friday for the convenience of daily and Sunday newspapers.

When the story broke, newspapers across the political spectrum published—without seeming embarrassment—a statement by Gen. Richard Dannatt, head of the British Army, praising the British media for their “highly responsible attitude.” Only some news sources felt obliged to justify their actions in lying to their readers and viewers. Jon Williams, world news editor of Britain’s state broadcaster, the BBC, said that as “journalism is about telling people things they don’t know,” not doing so “was something we thought long and hard about.”

The BBC’s explanation for doing so was that “A news black-out is unusual, but not unique” and was carried out to “minimise the danger” to Harry and other troops fighting alongside of him and in return for being allowed to film “up close and personal with him” in Helmand. The same line was repeated by Britain’s two nominally liberal broadsheets. Feigning Olympian detachment, the Independent did not feature the story on its front page. Its deputy editor-in-chief, Ian Birre, told Reuters that “We don’t share our rivals’ incredible fascination with every aspect of the royal family’s lives,” adding that he did not see “a problem at all” with the news blackout.

The Guardian did not publish its own comment on February 29, running instead an opinion by Bob Satchwell, the executive director of the Society of Editors, who played a key role in arranging the deal alongside Neil Wallis of Rupert Murdoch’s “sex and sleaze” scandal sheet, the News of the World, and the right-wing Mail on Sunday editor, Peter Wright. This piece added to the justification for censoring the news, the claim that it merely facilitated the wishes of a prince “desperate to join his army colleagues in the front line,” army chiefs who “wanted him to go to war like any other young officer” and a family that “wanted him to fulfil his ambitions too.”

Only on March 1, amidst much criticism from its readers, did the Guardian explain that the danger to Prince Harry and “the luckless soldiers around him” had determined its actions, especially when there was “no overriding public interest” in reporting his posting. “If exposing his posting would have brought peace in Afghanistan even infinitesimally closer, the judgment would have been different,” it continued.

All such efforts to rationalise the media’s actions are hollow. If the issue was Harry’s safety and that of his fellow soldiers, how was this facilitated by having reporters and cameramen follow him around Helmand, supposedly only hundreds of metres away from the front line? And can anyone seriously believe that a royal heir is simply another young soldier who should be allowed to do his duty, just like “one of us”?

Everyone who participated in the effort to send Harry to Afghanistan was well aware that they were offering their publications up as a direct propaganda tool of the MOD.

In the first instance, there was the agreement to conceal what was happening.

Contrary to the claim by Jon Williams that “there are no other ‘voluntary agreements’ in place at the moment, there’s nothing else we’re not telling you,” cover-ups happen all the time. The elaborate arrangements over Harry were only made necessary because it was considered impossible to issue a Defence Advisory (DA) notice barring reporting, given that no serious claim could be made of a threat to national security.

DA Notices, more popularly known as D Notices, have been repeatedly issued to conceal Britain’s dirty war secrets—most recently against ex-SAS officer Ben Griffin who has alleged direct British collusion with rendition and who was silenced amidst the reporting of Harry’s exploits in Afghanistan. It should be noted that, while DA Notices are not legally enforceable, the media almost universally complies.

It is the exposure of how fully the media is at the beck and call of the armed forces, the government and the Royal Family that prompted one of the few genuine expressions of outrage from a major mainstream journalist, Jon Snow. The presenter of Channel 4 news wrote in his blog praising the Drudge Report for ending the “British media’s conspiracy of silence.”

“One wonders whether viewers, readers and listeners will ever want to trust media bosses again,” he continued, a statement for which he was savaged by sections of the press.

Secondly there is the willing participation in the actual propaganda campaign mounted by the MOD, in support of a war that most people in Britain do not believe should be fought and utilising the newly dubbed “warrior prince” to do so.

The efforts to get Harry to Afghanistan followed the decision in May last year not to send him to Iraq for fear of his being targeted for assassination. This was viewed by the military as a major setback. An insight into the reaction was provided by military historian Peter Caddick-Adams in a contemporary article for the BBC on “the long history of royal service in wars.”

“In some eyes this will be seen as caving-in to insurgent threats to kidnap or target the prince,” he wrote. “In a wider context this may be seen as a break with a long tradition of British royals serving in the military in war zones. Both Harry’s uncle, Prince Andrew, who served in the Falklands as a helicopter pilot, and his grandfather, Prince Philip, who was decorated during World War II for his service with the Royal Navy, faced very real danger in different combat zones.

“Prince Harry’s great uncle, King George VI’s brother, the Duke of Kent, joined the RAF and was killed while flying in 1942. A more distant ancestor, Prince Maurice of Battenberg, a grandson of Queen Victoria, was killed near Mons in 1914 as an officer in the King’s Royal Rifle Corps.

“Some scholars argue that it is the very proximity of the royal family to danger—sharing the suffering of their subjects and soldiers—that has won great respect for the institution of monarchy…. It is indeed a shame that politics has got in the way of this young man’s aspirations to serve his country and follow the tradition of military service that almost every generation of British royals has followed.”

The Army, the Brown government and House of Windsor were determined that, this time, politics would not “get in the way” of efforts to popularise and legitimise the Afghan war—using Prince Harry as a royal “Action Man.”

One can only give a sense of the torrent of bloodthirsty jingoism and patriotic drivel that has been heaped upon the British people by the media in the days since the Harry story broke: page after page of photos of Harry on patrol, in a tank, firing a machine gun, washing his socks in a camp sink and eating curry with the Ghurkhas.

The Daily Mirror’s coverage was fairly typical. “Prince Harry has been battling the Taliban on the front line by calling in air strikes using a surveillance system known as Kill TV…. [O]n New Year’s Eve Harry used it to oversee his first bomb strike.”

Under the headline, “Prince Harry in Afghanistan: Fearless Harry’s frontline battlecry,” another Mirror article read: “His hands expertly grip the machine gun, his face a mask of steely determination as he homes in on his target.”

“Prince Harry, 23, looks like a battle-hardened veteran as he sits surrounded by sandbags and with a box of ammo at his feet to fire on Taliban fighters 650 yards away. And with nerves of steel he declared: ‘It’s just no-man’s-land. They poke their heads up and that’s it.’ ”

Finally,” the Mirror opines, “we have a prince with a purpose. His mother would have been hugely proud of him—and so should we…. Not many members of the royal family can claim to be ‘one of us.’ Harry can.”

Taped interviews reveal a very limited man, someone previously known for a propensity for alcohol and cannabis and dressing in Nazi regalia, who is being used by others far savvier. “All my wishes have come true,” he says. “I haven’t really had a shower for four days. I haven’t washed my clothes for a week. It’s very nice to be sort of a normal person for once, I think it’s about as normal as I’m going to get.”

Speaking of the Queen, who made clear how anxious she was for Harry to see active service, he adds, “I have told my grandmother—she actually told me. She told me I’m off to Afghanistan so that was the way it was supposed to be.”

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, the paper’s former editor and biographer of Margaret Thatcher, Charles Moore, had no compunction about admitting what was really at stake in sending Harry to Helmand. In his unabashed support for the operation, he provides a damning indictment of the role played by the British media in the sordid affair.

Noting that George Galloway MP “has accused the BBC of being part of the ‘war effort,’ ” he stated, “Would that this were more often so!... Leave it to the Taliban Broadcasting Corporation (if their fundamentalism permits such a thing to exist) to put their case.”

“Something important was at stake here. It was not the fulfilment of Prince Harry’s personal desire to fight…. [O]ne young man’s longing to be a good soldier is not a big enough reason for so much upheaval. What matters much more is the symbolism.”

That “symbolism” is regarding the Royal Family as the embodiment of Britain’s imperial ambitions and a mechanism for suppressing dissent through the whipping up of patriotism.

“The Royal Family should try to be with the nation for the difficult bits,” Moore continued. “The Queen understood this so strongly 25 years ago that she made sure her own son risked his life. By Prince Harry’s account this week, she did the same with her grandson…. Some may argue that this is a very controversial war, and therefore it is dangerous for the Royal Family to be associated with it…. But it is all the more important to stand by the Army when the politics are rough.”

The Guardian has tried to minimise the impact of its complicity in the media blackout, blandly stating, “The army may try to use Harry’s tour of duty to win popularity for the Afghan mission,” while “the royals may hope the war will lend legitimacy to the prince.” It then asserts, “While the prince was serving in Afghanistan, his role could not be safely debated. Now he is returning, it must be.”

By their actions, the Guardian’s editors and those of their counterparts stand hopelessly compromised. They have forfeited any right to posture as leaders of such a debate.