Tag: Jeremy Hunt

Middle class spread

 

The Daily Mail’s usually pitch-perfect sense of what its audience wants to hear hit a bum note a while ago with an article about   middle class workers who used to earn £80k+ and are now wondering where the next set of school fees is going to come from.  The Guardian did the same thing a few weeks earlier with a similar piece looking at couples wondering how they can manage the child care and pay the au pair as they look forward to a future without a decent pension.  In both cases the comment threads were full of people pointing out that reality for most people doesn’t  involve school fees, multiple foreign holidays or domestic help; that no-one has a good pension these days and that our correspondents should just get over themselves.

If you read the papers regularly you could be forgiven for thinking that “middle class” in this county covers people on incomes between about £30,000 and, say £100,000.  It’s no doubt coloured by journalists – who tend to be  well paid – assuming that they represent the hard-working norm.  For the record, the Office for National Statistics reckons that median pay for a man in 2009 was a smidge over £25k; for a woman, a whisker above £22k. Despite what the Daily Mail says, the real middle class is not going to worry about having a cap of £50k put on its pension contributions.

Who the middle classes are – and what they earn – is now a matter of serious debate , as the government changes child benefit, university tuition fees and pensions  (I note that  outrage about cuts to housing benefit has been  more muted, presumably because  lots of journalists get child benefit while  few need help with the rent).   It’s making me wonder, again, about how we define class in this country (why it matters – if it does – is another post entirely).  Is it based on earnings and does it change as disposable income waxes and wanes?

As I sail, seemingly unstoppably, towards the ranks of the new poor (Christmas may be coming, but this goose ain’t getting fat), do I still count as middle class because of my degree, the careers I’ve pursued, the food I eat and the fact that I don’t hold my knife like a pencil to eat it?  Or am I now one of the undeserving poor?  Should I have known  this was going to happen before I so recklessly had my children?  Should I be worried that  Jeremy Hunt might try to re-possess them?

Where’s the audience for local TV?

Thank God I got round to finding out about local politics in Tower Hamlets. It’s  Dallas meets the Borgias with Oyster cards round here.

New readers wanting to catch up with a story of political double-crossing, conspiracy theories about religious fundamentalism,  suspicions of electoral fraud and  backroom deals in smokefree rooms can start here.  Those with a taste for a more analytical take on it all can pick it up here.

With such rich source material a local TV station broadcasting news about the area should be a hit – there’s a  news programme /soap opera combo just begging to be produced already.   But, even in Tower Hamlets, I fail to see  local TV of the type Jeremy Hunt was proposing on the Today programme this morning taking off.

As he explains it, the market has failed to give us a truly plural local media so he proposes to stimulate the market by relaxing ownership restrictions and allowing media companies to start hyper-local TV services to fill the gap.

He gave some examples of where local interest might be strong enough to make programming worthwhile.  It won’t fill a schedule, but, yes, football fans in Bolton may well want coverage of their team’s performance against Man Utd  (as long as ESPN/Sky/MUTV are prepared to share the rights – and Wanderers fans don’t already have access to the BBC, the internet or a newspaper).  People in Middlesborough may  want to see their Mayoral debates televised – a bit more of a stretch this one, but I can see the public interest argument for giving them the chance;  but it’s hardly going to be stripped through a week’s programming at 7pm – and if there isn’t a regular local channel for people to go to, how will they find it when it’s on?

It  may be a massive failure of imagination on my part, but I can’t see where the audience demand is for these services, or what the business model for a local TV service might be.  The  obvious conclusion is that creative use of the internet is the best way to achieve the  kind of services that Jeremy Hunt has in mind – a conclusion he seems to be reaching himself, if this speech is anything to go by.  Odd that he didn’t try to share this with us on Today.