Tony Porter Ponders: There is no need to worry, when are percentages misleading, not gritty enough
and on Freeview 262 or Freely 565
Things are going well, there is nothing to worry about, in fact you have never had it so good. That is what, I imagine, Sir Keir Starmer PM and his cabinet, which is more IKEA reject than Habitat in its prime, would love to be able to say. Sadly, things are going badly, there is plenty to worry about and we have never had it so bad. On the day of the Budget, October 30th, One British pound would get you $1.296, today (Sunday) its $1.22, that might not seem a big difference, but its huge and the lowest level in over a year.
We are also lower against the Euro and other currencies. Government borrowing is at a 27 year high, though a Minister said that we need not worry about escalating government borrowing costs. Phew, that’s a relief then, I assume we don’t need to fear more tax rises later this year. In case you were wondering who the PM was 27 years ago; it was a fresh-faced Tony Blair in his first full year as PM. We all remember how his and Gordon Browns tenure ended don’t we. Is history repeating. Let us not forget that the Conservatives, have also had some disasters regarding the economy, but it felt like things were about to go on the up.
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Hide AdHave you noticed advertisements saying that, for example, 78% of people agree to the benefits of what ever thing it is flogging, well look at the small print that pops up for a few seconds and often the number of people surveyed is well under one thousand, but it implies that 78%, or whatever number it is, of all people agree. Same in politics when someone gets 45% of the votes, it is often represented that number is of the whole voting people of that area, when, maybe, less than twenty percent of those entitled to vote did, so 45% of just 20% means that around 89% did not vote for this runaway winner.


Now, lets go down a rabbit hole, other burrowing mammals are available. Imagine saying that 93% of WASPi women knew that their pensions dates changed, it was implied that all WASPi women were questioned about it, but that would mean that they all knew because they were asked, at least that’s the impression we get from Downing Street, but wait, less than 500 women, and some men, were contacted in 2006 for this ‘poll’ out of the millions directly affected, making the governments whole defence an nonsense.
Now imagine a council doing a public consultation on improvements to the town centre, what percentage were asked, during Covid, I am genuinely interested to find anyone who was approached and give the green light for the omnishambles of the town centre today, I read an article last week, in this paper and remain unconvinced it will be finished completely before the end of this decade.
Thankfully the weather has warmed up a bit and the snow has gone, but what a week or two we have had, I am convinced we have had more lying snow in Wigan recently than in the last decade combined, and was shocked to see the state of the roads on Thursday morning making me ask ‘Where have all the Gritters gone?’