"Had to intervene"? Yikes.

The whole row centres, for me, on this obsession with comms. They clearly wanted to land the whole 'actually our handling of the economy means no major tax rises' schtick. But they have again forgotten the budget is meant to help them get re-elected.

Again, comms over good policy/vision/politics

Young working adults remain the easiest to tax because a) they're working, and b) the political consequences of going after any over pension age is akin to calling for all kittens to be drowned, according to Westminster orthodoxy

Also *yet another* tax burden on younger generations which effectively lowers their own retirement funds while paying for their parents and grandparents' pensions. That'll help the generational wealth issue!

I am shocked, shocked I tell thee!

Yes they did - it's held up by internal issues. Was my first question too.

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"Until proven otherwise I will maintain this was a stupid thing done by stupid people."

The fact a party with *checks notes* 18 years in power, dire NHS performance, collapsing school standards, mired in financial and internal sex sleaze scandals, AND who lost an FM through a year of self-inflicted stab wounds followed by getting humped in the GE is the best placed to win says enough

The money is there to be made by telling a vanishingly small (in general terms) number of people the same story they find anger-inducing enough to pay for, over and over again. The BBC's response to this is to represent a balanced debate, and not seek answers to the actual Qs being debated.

This is particularly clear with subscription based models which have, perversely, encouraged and incentivised pushing repeated narratives that confirm and build on an engaged audience's bias (e.g. trans - both sides - Brexit, Covid scepticism, immigration etc. etc.)

I just feel like this BBC story is a culmination of the impact of decades of pressure on news journalism across all newspapers and TV stations to become representations 'of the debate' - rather than as you write, detail and precision reporting - because that drives scale

To be fair that's hardly that different to oodles of copy being written about a council by-election in Barrhead or the arse-end of Fife

Scottish Labour: "But Barrhead and Hamilton!"