Day 5098: You Can Prove Anything With Statistics Un More Temps

Tuesday:

Ho ho ho Merry Christmas, and here’s Pollyanna Toytown in the Grauniad telling us that the Conservatories want to eat babies.

Polly’s clearly getting worried that Mr Ed won’t be delivering her cushy peerage a victory for social democracy anytime soon, as her language gets less believable by the day.

Today she’s claiming that “Only one in forty new jobs is full time”, citing the Workers Revolutionary Party(!) rather than the press release from TUC who came up with this statistic, presumably because the TUC use the word “Net” rather than “New”, a small difference but a significant one.


The TUC have arrived at their figure by taking the Office for National Statistics numbers for the amount of people in employment in summer 2014 and comparing them with the numbers from the start of 2008, before Mr Frown’s Government ran face first into the biggest crash in history.

The Coalition government like to do this too, because it shows that a million more people have jobs now than before the economy was wiped out under Labour.

And the figures do show that twenty-five thousand more people are in full time employment now than in 2008, which is indeed 25,000/1,000,000 or 1/40 of the total increase.

Think about it for a moment and see if you spot the flaw in the reasoning before I tell you.

Yes, that’s 1/40 is of the extra new jobs, not all new jobs.

This makes the TUC’s headline somewhat hyperbolic, but at least with a figleaf of honesty in that, pardon me, “safety Net”.

To switch the “net” for “new” makes the headline say a whole other thing.

So the question becomes, is Polly stupid or lying? I have to say that citing the Workers Revolutionary Party – when she is neither worker nor particularly revolutionary, and not much of a party animal either; despite her aspirations to influence, the defector to and then from the SDP usually ends up in a party of one – suggests that she was looking for the headline to match her prejudice.

For Pollyanna’s claim to apply to “one in forty new jobs” she would have to be saying that not one single full time job has been lost under the Coalition.

It seems unlikely that Ms Toytown’s message is that the Coalition are paragons of preservation when it comes to employment.

In fact, Polly – and the Labour Party – put it about rather a lot that the Coalition have caused the loss of a great many full time jobs (by implication “proper” jobs) and replaced them with part-time zero-hour (substandard) serfdom. And that is what this “one in forty” claim is trying to back up, to make you think.

But the figures actually show that just as many people (actually slightly more) have full time jobs now than before the Credit Crunch.

And there are a lot more people in part-time and self-employed jobs, who were previously without work at all.

Of course it’s not that simple. Some people who were in full-time jobs have lost them and not got new ones are now in part time work or unemployed. There’s genuine hardship and suffering about. And the real value – after inflation – of the wages from those full-time jobs may not be as much as they used to be in 2008 because we’ve been sharing the pain so that fewer people lose their jobs. We mustn’t forget that.

But Hard Labour cynically seek to capitalize on this politically by calling it their “Cost of Living Crisis”.

The recent cross-party report on hunger in the UK was remarkably fair and non-partisan. But again, almost immediately Hard Labour went for the self-interested spin and started crying crocodile tears over the “shame” of Britain’s Food Banks. (Germany, in fact, has more people using food banks.)

This point-scoring for their own ends undermines efforts to help end hunger. Labour don’t just put their own interests ahead of fixing things; they actually make things worse.

Polly Toynbee no doubt justifies her mendacity with the thought that Labour are “good” and so anything to get them into power, no matter how dishonest or harmful, must be “good”.

No doubt David Milipede justified British complicity in CIA torture with much the same reasoning.


Previously, Statistics Part Un

and Part Deux

Day 4651: A Reminder Of Why Hard Labour Cannot Be Allowed to Change the Argument On the Economy

Wednesday:

This week I thought Ed Balls got something right.

It’s a good idea to get Labour’s budget plans audited by the Office for Budget Responsibility. The Liberal Democrats have long asked the IFS to check our figures; it would be very useful to voters to have an independent eye scrutinise the numbers of all the parties to have choice based on priorities not dogma. And it would make Mr Balls spell out Hard Labour’s policies well in advance of the election.

I just don’t think that makes him the fiscal paragon that Polly Toytown seems to think he is.

Iron Balls, Polly? Really?

Yes, I know I shouldn’t read the Grauniad. Especially not Pollyanna Toytown and her increasingly absurd hagiography of the Hard Labour hierarchy.

(Sunday’s Andrew Marrmite paper review where Polly’s partisan points are repeatedly punctured by Matthew Parris is moderately hilarious. It would have been funnier if she realised he was taking the proverbial.)

Ed Balls, Mr Frown’s representative on Earth and a very central part of the former Chancellor and Prime Monster’s extended campaign of attrition against anyone who looked at him funny, remains a hugely divisive figure and probably the Achilles heel of Mr Milipede’s operation. For all his undoubted political skills – as a prophet, he’s made so many claims about the economy that some of them were bound to come right – he’s played fast and loose at the Treasury (not to mention with his colleagues’ careers) too often for him to be trusted.

But this denialism about Labour’s responsibilities for what they did in government for thirteen years is all part of their plan to pin the blame on the Coalition and snatch back power in 2015. And we cannot let it stand.

The short form is “You can’t blame Labour for the Worldwide recession”, which sounds superficially reasonable, but it’s hiding some of the key facts.

It’s a bit like this:

“I went driving too fast in a snowstorm and crashed the car, but you can’t blame me for the snowstorm.”

Well, no, but you could see that it was snowing and you were driving too fast.

“But you can’t blame me for the snowstorm.”

It’s a strawman argument.

And it keeps being regurgitated like a form of self-hypnosis so that left-wing commentators, left-leaning voters and Hard Labour themselves can all permit themselves to forget that the biggest crash ever happened on their watch and excuse themselves of their culpability.

Here’s some of Polly’s take on it.

“Some primal political myths are now firmly lodged in the public mind.”

But that’s not going to stop them trying to use “big lie” techniques to try to dislodge them. Repeat this Labour-apologism often enough and maybe someone will start to believe it. What’s sinister is the way it starts out appealing to the conspiracy-theory freak tendency in the anti-establishment by accusing the accepted version of events of being “myth”.

“Labour's public spending didn't crash the economy.”

No, it was Labour’s failure to regulate the banks that crashed the economy, coupled with Labour actively encouraging a boom based on borrowing; Labour’s public spending just meant that we were in a far, far poorer position to recover afterwards. Also, who said “we’ve abolished boom and bust”?

“Labour was borrowing less than it inherited from the Tories.”

Well that’s just plain wrong because Polly’s forgotten to include the qualifier “in 2007 before the crash” from her crib card. Borrowing in 2008, ’09 and ’10 was astronomical.

But even if we give her a pass on the borrowing in 2007, what she’s saying is that at the height of the biggest boom in history when every Keynesian on the planet would tell you you should have been running a surplus, Labour were still borrowing. Yes, the Conservatives had badly lost control of the economy by 1997; that’s kind of why they lost, isn’t it. But since when did being a little less rubbish than John Major and Norman Lamont become the acme of economic prudence? It was actually by sticking to Ken Clarke’s plans in their first term – as they promised but no one, especially the Conservatories believed they’d do – that enabled Labour to pay down a reasonable sum off the national debt; but from 2001 onwards Gordon Brown did nothing but add to our borrowings.

“Osborne inherited a growing economy from Alistair Darling”

Darling borrowed 10% of GDP to generate 2% GDP growth. Any idiot could do that! But it’s not remotely sustainable is it, and of course the wheels came off again as soon as his artificial stimulus reversed. It was Darling, remember, who cancelled the capital investment program, Darling who promised “cuts deeper than Thatcher’s” and he was planning a post-election VAT rise to 20% to make the sums add up too. To the shame of both of them, Gideon being Chancellor made very little difference.

Those three points – “it was broken when we found it”, “we cut borrowing (if you squint at the figures)” and “Darling’s legacy of growth” – set on perpetual rinse and repeat are the clearest warning (if Damien McBride’s book was not enough) that Hard Labour have not rid themselves of the habit of spin.

Day 4173: Can You Forgive Her?

Monday:

Oh Pollyanna Toytown, what a poisonous wee troll you are.

Mr Matthew is much kinder to her, persevering to find praise for Mr Dr Vince in among all the bile she spouts. But I'm not that kind of elephant!

Replaying the Coalition negotiations with the benefit of two years' hindsight, Polly still can't get them right. The Lib Dems, she says, should have forced a Conservatory minority government. AND we should have struck a harder bargain with them from our position of outnumbered-six-to-one-by-the-gerry-rigged-electoral-system strength.

Well make your mind up. Either we agree to a Coalition and make them do some stuff, or we let them rule as a minority. We don't get to do BOTH.

We should, insists La Poll, have forced Mr Balloon to campaign for AV, and we should have prevented the austerity programme. In spite of it being HARD LABOUR'S programme too – Mr Alistair Dalek promised "cuts deeper than Thatcher's", and of course Mr Liam "Father Dick" Byrne's note "there's no money left".

Oh, it's so OBVIOUS now!

Of course, Pollyanna's HINDSIGHT is as QUESTIONABLE as her PROGNOSTICATION.

She describes Lord Adonis as "adept" in offering us an olive branch. This would be the same Lord Adonis whom she described a day earlier as being FURIOUS with us back when we were unable to negotiate a deal with Labour for the entirely inadequate reason that even if there had been enough MPs between our Parties to form a government – and there weren't – Ed Balls and Ed Milipede were too busy sizing each other up for a willy waving contest to even PRETEND to negotiate properly. I mean CLEARLY, it was the Lib Dems' fault that Labour in 2010 could neither win enough seats nor behave like adults.

She also says how Mr Milipede said from the start he would embrace us. This would be the same Mr Milipede who vowed to destroy the Lib Dems, would it? Or the one who promised he would demand Captain Clegg's head in any future coalition negotiations – an utterly RIDICULOUS position to take for a man contemplating having not managed to win an election and going cap in hand to a smaller party to ask for our support. First on the table: "F*** You" – interesting strategy, Mr Not-Going-To-Be-Prime-Monster-then. How are you going to look when you go back to your supporters and say, " Sorry guys, we're back in Opposition because I stupidly put petty vengeance on the leader of another party ahead of the good of the country".

When Cap'n Clegg said Mr Frown had to go he was only pointing out that the COUNTRY had made its JUDGEMENT. That's not UNREASONABLE after an election when someone's been decisively rejected by the voters; if the Liberal Democrats lose seats and votes as badly in 2015, I suspect the Cap'n may be telling people to negotiate with his successor because he'll do the HONOURABLE thing and step aside, just like Mr Frown should have done. By announcing his position nearly five years in advance, though, Mr Milipede reveals that he only wants Dork Lord of the Sith-esque revenge for the slaying of his Master.

Of course, Pollyanna wants to avoid this awkward moment, by having US knife Captain Clegg on their behalf.

Let me rephrase that: the Hard Labour Party would like us to get rid of the MOST SUCCESSFUL LIBERAL SINCE LLOYD GEORGE.

Hmm, is it POSSIBLE that there is an ULTERIOR motive in their suggestion there?

"If Cameron is voted out, building a moral alliance with the people who kept the Tories in power risks looking shoddy to a disillusioned electorate."

No, Pollyanna, it is YOUR POLITICS that is SHODDY, you and your vile Hard Labour toadies. YOU are the ones who scream and wail about "betrayal" when coalitions go against you, and suddenly have a change of mind when it looks like you might need our support yourselves.

On Mr Andy Marrrmight's sofa, Pollyanna makes big tearful eyes and remarks on Lords reform "we need it but it looks like we're not going to get it". Well, who's going to block it, Polly? YOUR HARD LABOUR PARTY that's who.

You utter, utter hypocrite.

You claim to WANT Lords reform, but you'd rather take cheap pops at the Deputy Prime Monster, who is ACTUALLY DOING LORDS REFORM, than make the mildest criticism of your own side when they prop up the Conservatory establishment and vested interest.

"Can you forgive the Liberal Democrats?" Polly asks.

To paraphrase You should get down on your knees and GROVEL for OUR forgiveness.

Your selfish, self-interested actions are those of a TORY. You betray the poor even as your sanctimonious columns use their plight for your own ends; you protect your own wealth and privilege, your position on the Guardian unearned except by inheritance; you are greedy for power. And your Part doesn't just support Tory policies when they have to; they go around actively coming up with Tory policies, or even more-Tory-than-the-Tories policies (ninety day detention without trial; I.D.iot cards; 18% capital gains tax; 75p for pensioners; light touch banking regulation; tuition fees; privatising the health service and all the rest).

Polly Toynbee, you ARE a TORY.

We can TALK to Tories. We can hold our fluffy noses and WORK with Tories. But we don't FORGIVE them.

Un peut cross? Oui!