[cartoon Poldraw]
This morning I woke up, and, as usual, switched in the Radio to catch the "Today" programme.
By 8 a.m., the news was almost entirely saturated with the interview Chancellor Alistair Darling had given to the Guardian's Decca Aitkenhead. The media, both print and electronic, were awash with headlines such as " Economy at sixty year low says Darling. And it will get worse."
Here, "Darling warns of economic crisis followed by "The UK is facing its worst economic crisis in 60 years, Chancellor Alistair Darling has admitted." And The BBC's Economics editor Hugh Pym- bring back Stephanie Flanders- emphasised the mood of gloom.
The Mail weighed in with " Chancellor admits 'Britain faces the worst crisis in 60 years'. And it's only going to get worse.
The Times was a little more circumspect inserting a "could" in their headline "Chancellor Alistair Darling warns slump could be the worst for sixty years".
So I decided to look at Aitkenhead's article. This is the bit that caused the headlines.
Note the words in quote marks and the word "arguably". The word that's almost entirely missing from the reporting.You can argue most things. You can argue that there is a china teapot revolving about the sun. Or the existence of the spaghetti monster or an invisible pink unicorn. The question is whether the evidence supports the assertion. Economist Stephen Bell added a dose of realism here, his contribution starts 10 minutes 25 seconds into the piece. The evidence is clear. The recessions in both the seventies and the nineties were far, far worse than we are experiencing today!
Darling then continues with this:
The last three words are important here. " Than people thought"- who are these people the Chancellor refers to? The Government, the Treasury, a group of economists on board a celestial teapot in an orbit between Earth and Mars or even the Opposition treasury spokesmen?
So let's not expect, when the markets open for business on Monday, city bankers diving off window ledges.
