´óÏó´«Ã½

Whether he said or not - Darling's still finished. I can't believe the media aren't calling for him to resign!

So you'd disagree with Hansard, then?

Maybe that's wise. So many politicians seem to.

I struggle to see the fundamental difference in meaning between the two posts. In fact, this blog posting rather confuses the matter by splitting Darling's response in two without so much as punctuation, thus prejudicing the interpretation. It smacks of attempting to lay the blame at Hansard's feet, when it reads to me as if Robinson has quoted wildly out of context to the point of misdirection.

The qualification that it makes no sense to shut off all other options makes it fairly clear that Darling does not agree that nationalism will have such consequences as described by his colleague, but only that he agrees the Lib Dems are to be criticised for their lack of support.

A half-hearted apology is often not an apology at all.

Nick, more political spin.

Concerning the culture of awarding bonuses to City executives in the face of an economic downturn. Mr Darling quite rightly expressed the following:

“ People get fed up if they see others getting great big bonuses and they can't actually see what they did. It can be extremely frustrating,"
"Boards need to ask themselves, 'Are we behaving reasonably?'
Fine words indeed.
I read in a national newspaper Adam Appleyard of Northern Rock departed with six months salary, this amounting to I believe in the region of £645,000 at the end of January. That amounts to over 20 times the current national average wage. I read in one newspaper he lives in a house worth £2 million. Northern Rock offered discounted mortgages. Perhaps they offered a staff discount which Mr Appleyard currently enjoys?

Without Government support Northern Rock could not meet its obligations and would have gone into administration last year. Mr Appleyard was not immediately dismissed but his services retained for another four months until the end of January this year. Northern Rock has now officially been brought onto the books of public finances. Again I read this was correct considering the considerable influence Government support gave over the direction of Northern Rock.

Does this mean Mr Darling and Mr Brown acted as ‘Shadow Directors during this period?’

If so, perhaps I may be so bold as to ask Mr Darling and Mr Brown the question;

"Boards need to ask themselves, 'Are we behaving reasonably? Has public money been used to pay failed fat cats? “

I completely agree with Jonathan. Hansard does not splice its reports with phrases like 'before continuing'. Without that phrase it is quite obvious that it was not Hansard that got it wrong. The more so as your original view would have us believe that having gone on and on about wanting a private sector solution but ruling no option out, the Chancellor had a momentary lapse at the dispatch box and blurted his "real" opinion.

Whatever way you look at, all this nonsense is a distraction from actually looking at the costs and implication of the decision.

"The qualification that it makes no sense to shut off all other options makes it fairly clear that Darling does not agree that nationalism will have such consequences as described by his colleague, but only that he agrees the Lib Dems are to be criticised for their lack of support."

It doesn't make it "fairly clear" at all. What it does do is make Darling's response unintelligible, by combining a blanket agreement - "I agree with my hon Friend." - with a disagreement.

Because the contradiction was self-evident, I assumed that the Hansard editing process had picked it up - basic proofreading should, after all - and that it had been checked and left in because it accurately reflected what had been said. Given the importance of Hansard, it's worrying to learn that wasn't actually the case.

I thought Darling had merely expressed himself badly - which is quite normal in spoken, off the cuff English, and something politicians shouldn't be afraid to admit having done. And I suppose the verbatim record shows he did express himself badly - but the Hansard reporters, unusually, made his expression worse rather than better.

The calls for Darling's head are ridiculous. He seems to have made the only reasonable decision given the circumstances - and the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s approach has been nothing short of shambolic. Instead of quizzing Darling on the merits/demerits of nationalisation, John Humphries (followed by the venerable Nick Robinson) chose to agonize over whether he had agreed with a quote (or should that be a misquote) from a backbencher. Great tabloid stuff.

Sloppy journalism. I posted two comments to the earlier piece you decided not to publish. Both seem even more apt in light of this follow up.

If this culture continues no politician will ever give the ´óÏó´«Ã½ a straight answer. Anyone who has watched a debate in the commons will have observed that members on all sides partially agree with statements and the ´óÏó´«Ã½ and the Conservatives look a little foolish now for not double checking a point before seeking summary execution.

The truth is the news was damaging enough without sexing it up. The Goverment had always portrayed nationalisation as the last and least preferable option. Instead of dealing with the facts you have spent all day trying to pin a negative soundbite on Darling.

Shape up or I'll be asking for my share of your wages back!!!

This is quite amazing. The ´óÏó´«Ã½ has been going on about this quote all day from humphreys this morning, through press conference and on the andrew neil show at lunchtime.

And it turns out you didnt get it right?

I hope this brings home a few truths for the ´óÏó´«Ã½.

It was a mistake to make such a big deal of the quote anyway, since as Darling points out, it wasnt something he said and people often start an answer with 'i agree' when they actually want to say they agree with something totally different.

But now the quote's turned out not to be right I think the ´óÏó´«Ã½ needs to get back on the real story and not one of its own making.

Nick,

Why was this quote the focus of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ coverage all day today?

Given that this misquoting has transpired, are you, in the interests of openness, able to tell us any more about who made the editorial decision that coverage would focus on this?

H

Now is John Humphrys going to apologise for misleading us this morning?

This was a ridiculous thing for the news media to focus on anyway. Rather than ask about whether this was the best policy or not, the focus was on whether darling had agreed with (not said himself) some words about it being a mistake.

The turn of phrase darling used clearly indicated he wasnt really agreeing with everything that the questionner had said, and he clearly qualifies (even in the hansard transcript) what he is agreeing with.

Im annoyed that the media focused on this and I want you to explain why. I suppose its because you all think he didnt want to do it, but this is the closest he got to saying it publically?

I think the fact its turned out to be a misquote is really just an indication that you were stretching the insinuation in the first place. Any quote that depends on agreeing with something someone else said, and then the punctuation to determine if he really agreed, is clearly not the cut-and-dried indication of what someone thinks you were all making it out to be.

Imagine if AD had had to resign?

Good grief.

Is Nick R trying for a peerage? I can see no other reason for his trying to find a loophole big enough for Darling to wriggle through.

We all know that dithering has been the order of the day since the NR crisis loomed during the supposed election planning period.

Whatever Darling said was Parliamentary waffle, and never intended as an answer that could be subjected to the sort of analysis and spin Nick R is giving - [I have just realised, we have NR defending NR - is that merely coincidence?]

Jonathan - what are you on about? Robinson did not quote wildly out of context, as you allege - he simply copied and pasted what had been reported in Hansard.

Let me remind you what Hansard had reported:

Jim Cousins (Newcastle upon Tyne, Central) (Lab):
Does my right hon. Friend accept that the policy of nationalisation would lead to a slow lingering death for the jobs of the Northern Rock workers, its assets and Britain’s reputation as a major financial services centre, with my right hon. Friend the Chancellor cast in the role of undertaker—and that only by finding a successor business to grow on those jobs, assets and reputations can we offer any real prospect of the taxpayers getting their money back?

Mr. Darling: I agree with my hon. Friend. It is regrettable and surprising that the Liberal Democrats never seemed to support our earlier proposals to keep Northern Rock open. It would also, however, be a mistake to shut off all other options and simply go for one at this stage; that does not seem to me to make any sense at all.

Interesting that the Treasury didn't complain, but not surprising. As I think Campbell once said, if you tried to correct every error in journalists' reporting you would have no time to do any actual work. I'm afraid that it is all too typical of today's media circus that this sort of non-story gets so much attention.

Having watched the statement this afternoon, my main impression is of the idiotic antics of George Osborne; if Cameron wants to be taken seriously surely he has to get rid of this embarassment of a shadow Chancellor? I wouldn't trust him to be able to run a Bingo club.

Absolutely right, this was misleading reporting. I doubt John Humphreys will apologize, but thank you for yours.

This is a catastrophe that we will be paying for for years to come. Why oh why did they not step in sooner to make sure people did not take their funds out - firstly? And then why they did not let Lloyds TSB have the Bank of England guarantees they requested to support their purchase of the bank for a defined period of time? Now that would have been in the interest of the tax payer. The government have allowed this to linger for months and now we are lumbered.
If this was any other sector then the company would have been allowed to go to the wall. I agree the savers needed to have some protection - £30k was automatically covered - plus cleverer people than Alistair Darling should have been making sure that liquidity was maintained at the bank, via interbank borrowing for the mid term. Now we have long term shareholding.

If you wrote this as a business fiction then it would not sell for being so unbelievable. We have all been robbed of many many thousands of pounds, with no guarantee of repayment and no guarantee of getting this miserable government out at the next election.

The ´óÏó´«Ã½ has totally mis-represented the public feeling on this descision.

Its sad to see.

The public at large see it as a defeat for the "old" Chancellor whoes own spending rules and notions of prudence are cruelly exposed.

A return to Old Labour and Nationalisation.

Most people understand clearly that the Company, Northern Rock, should have fallen on its own sword. In Administration, assets sold on to highest bidder, savings covered as normal by existing (insufficient) protections.

One fears those debts may be loans to other mighty institutions. Disclosure may have been too painfull ?

Its the end of Labour as we now it......

I was very disappointed with Today's treatment of the interview with the Chancellor. John Humphreys spent a very long time (wasted time I feel when there were so many important questions to ask) attributing to the Chancellor a series of words which he NEVER uttered.

When I did an internship at the Economist I spent hours and hours just scrutinizing and double checking the facts which we were printing. I would expect Today to be equally vigilant which in this case they were obviously not. There was plenty of time between the announcement at lunch time on Sunday to do such research.

I hope that the next time Mr Darling comes onto the show an admission of error will be made on Mr Humphreys part and that the next grilling of a politician will be done on the basis of facts rather than lazily researched half-truths.

Listening back to the interview makes Mr Humphreys look very, very silly indeed. I admire him a lot but this should be a warning about complacency.

I dont see how you can say that hansard is wrong. Hansard is the official log of parliament.

What i want to know is why is every man woman and child paying from 2000 to 5000 pounds to shore up northern rock. thats of far more interest.

Nick,

Forget the answer. Did Hansard get the question from Jim Cousins right?

The key issue here is the Government's credibility, is it not?

Nick. Wonder if you caught Dispatches on channel 4 tonight?. To my mind the programme asked some very fundemental questions about the NR fiasco, and current global banking implosion. The programme addressed the competence of the Bank of England, the FSA and the Treasury; and their cronic lack of understanding of the whole toxic CDO, Subprime, and CDS (credit default swap)calamities. As a primer on what's really going on, (it's very very bad) and what else is looming (you think it's bad now, just wait for CDS to bite) it was first rate!! As one of the few who has the ability to get these questions addressed, I suggest you team up with Jon Snow, and see if you can't get us some answers.
ian

I can assure you that, living 15 minutes walk from Northern Rock's HQ, we are both well and truly within Newcastle North, the constituency of Doug Henderson MP (Lab)

This move by the Labour party to nationalise a Bank that it is their policies of telling everything about everything, except when it relates to their governemnt, that brought on the problem.
The rock asked the Bank of england for an overdraft facility to tide tham over while the world finances, due to the Americans, are in chaos. The Bank then released this to the press and the result is just what would be expected an mass run on the bank.
No the Labour governemnt, who are looking for ways to increase stealth tax are putting up a nationalisation project which will see the bank bought for peanuts and enable the Chancellor and Gordon Brown to milk this for all it is worth.
Ba humbug this is just another cynical move by the discreadited government.

If politicians weren't so mealy mouthed in their answers to questions then maybe they wouldn't be so 'misunderstood'!

'Got it wrong sort of" what kind of appology is that for the unreasonable questioning from John Humphries
Humphries agressive opinionated manner stands in the way of reasoned questioning interviewing

Re the Darling interview on Monday morning

I just listened to the Likely Lads trying to laugh off yesterday's savaging of Alistair Darling. Was that a planned attempt to spin the attack via general hilarity or do they really not realise the enormity of the mistake they have made? I've stood up for the ´óÏó´«Ã½ all my life, but you can count me out on this one. If you want to act like hyenas it is at the very least your responsibilty to get your facts right. If Mr Humphreys has the integrity him reputation accords him he has no option but to resign.