Aquarius: You will get a 3.6% pay rise but have to fork out £849 for your car’s MOT

Hopi bemoans the lamentable accuracy of economic forecasts, asking:

Why do governments bother making such definitive predictions of the future? Why not adopt a system of range forecasting, where we work within assumptions of probability of different outcomes?

And Chris suggests how this might look in practice:

So, if we assume that the £173bn forecast for PSNB in 2010-11 is the central point of the projection, a range forecast would take the form of saying something like:
There’s a roughly two-thirds chance PSNB will be within the range £143-£203bn, and a one-in-six chance it will be below this, and a one-in-six chance it’ll be above it.
It would, however, be impossible for a government to do this.
Every know-nothing numbskull and opportunist would claim that this is not what it is - a sensible recognition of the fact that the economic future is inherently unpredictable - but rather a confession of ignorance.

And he explains why politicians keep putting out such falsely precise figures:

One of the most important images is the illusion that they are "in charge", which requires that they deny the existence of uncertainty.

The thing is, though, that nobody believes official forecasts of GDP, spending, tax, debt, inflation, unemployment and so on. Nobody.

So, if maintaining the illusion of certainty is impossible, what role do these forecasts serve?

I think their main purpose is as media fodder. A specific number is much easier to communicate than a probability distribution, and for the media reporting a prediction, it does show that they know things in detail. A forecast of 2.5% growth may be disbelieved, it may turn out to be laughably wrong, but it can be reported with confident precision. ‘We know our stuff, because our stuff is simply what other people say, whether or not they know their stuff.’

It also allows for much more pointed challenges to be put to politicians: ‘Where are you going to find the extra £8.2 billion?’ seems a penetrating question that ought to require a detailed answer, but of course no credible detailed answers can be given, so the politician gets made to look a knave or a fool. The debate then gets conducted within the safe confines of a recorded and definite narrative, rather than out in the real world, where informed questions require you to know a lot more – including the limits of your own knowledge.

Which means that the reason politicians keep doing this is that they hope their own set of guesstimates will get picked up and used in questions to needle the other lot.

Oh, how edifying. Another way in which the news media and the political parties are symbiotic upon each other, and jointly parasitic upon the rest of us.

Exercise tip

You’ll burn calories very, very slowly just sitting around on the sofa. Which is why you have to do so very, very much of it to see results.

Cut it out

My suspicion that shouting ‘Tory cuts’ isn’t going to do Labour much good in the coming months is supported by two recent polls.

First, YouGov asked whether people thought is was possible “in principle” to reduce public spending by up to 10% "by running our public services more efficiently, and without reducing the quality of public services or the level of welfare benefits".

33% thought it definitely possible, 44% probably possible, 12% probably not possible and 3% definitely not possible.

In practice, though, the spending cuts that parties would actually make were judged less optimistically – but this finding won’t help Labour. YouGov asked whether the Conservatives could reduce public spending by up to 10% “while preserving the quality of public services and the level of welfare benefits”. 27% thought yes, 49% no. But for Labour, just 17% thought yes and 63% no.

Second, ComRes asked: “Which party do you trust most to decide where public spending cuts should be made?” 31% picked the Tories, 21% Labour and 14% the Lib Dems.

Labour is absolutely stuffed unless it can convince people that it will protect services while the public finances are squeezed. And there’s no way it can do this while hamstrung by the clumsily implausible Brown/Balls line that there wouldn’t be spending cuts under Labour. This slippery nonsense, to quote Talleyrand, “is worse than a crime: it’s a mistake”.

Picking a fight that you can’t win

Ed Balls is an idiot. He has clearly gained all his political communication skills from his longstanding boss and mentor, Gordon Brown.

Yesterday, Fraser Nelson (on his Spectator blog) accused Balls of lying about debt. (On the substance, I think he has at least half a point – although Hopi provides a zestful rebuttal, on which I’ve chipped in.)

Nelson went on to say:

Five years ago, you could lie like this on the radio and get away with it. Space is tight in newspapers, no one would devote hundreds of words and graphs - as we did - to expose a lie for what is. But the world has changed now. Blogging has brought new, hyper scrutiny. Blogs have infinite space, and people with endless energy, to expose political lying - no matter how small. Your claims can be instantly counter-checked, by anyone. If you stretch the truth, you can be exposed - by anyone.

I completely agree with this in principle, having done my own tiny share of anorakish fact-checking and dissecting of slipperiness here over the last couple of years (such as this). But there’s a big but: a blog, even a reasonably popular one such as the Spectator’s, doesn’t have anything like the impact of a newspaper front page splash.

The only way that bloggers’ forensic work will have any impact on the public is if the mainstream media pick up on it. Bear this in mind as you read Nelson’s description of what happened after he put his post up:

Ed Balls has just called me up about my post from this morning , hopping mad. He instructed me to "take that post down now". … "You should not call me a liar," said Balls. I told him that if he doesn't want to be called a liar, “he shouldn't tell lies”. …
Balls told me if I keep the post up, it will "expose" the sort of publication that we are - and our "political" bias. … You'd think Balls has perhaps by now worked out that The Spectator is rather pleased to consider itself a thorn in the side of this tawdry, mendacious government. "So you will take the post down?" Balls said. I just laughed. He hung up.

Hmm, Ed Balls. He’s a Cabinet minister, right? Probably gets a fair bit of media attention, eh? I wonder whether a furious spat between him and a blogger might be a much bigger news story than a blogger furiously criticising him and then him ignoring it...

Ooh look, there’s Fraser Nelson on Newsnight.

Swine flu goes viral

The total number of swine flu cases confirmed in the UK is doubling roughly every six days.

(The Health Protection Agency didn’t give daily figures for June 27-29, just saying that there were 1687 confirmed new cases in that period. I’ve divided that figure evenly to give bars for those three days.)

It’s clear that in many parts of the country, the containment phase is now over; elsewhere, containment won’t be much use for long. The swine is out of the bag.

But this shouldn’t send us all into a panic. Of these 6538 cases, only three have resulted in deaths – and in all three cases, there were serious pre-existing illnesses.

The official number of cases is also too small. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that only 1 case in 36 over there has been confirmed. Even if our detection systems are better, then this still suggests that the large majority of cases are going undetected – mostly because the symptoms are very mild or even non-existent.

If the confirmed UK cases amount to, say, a quarter of the total, then that would make a fatality rate of about 1 in 9000.

The major worries will come if a drug-resistant strain of H1N1 starts spreading - or, as the Guardian’s health editor warns:

The biggest concern for public health experts is that the flu will die down and then return in an altered and more dangerous form in the winter. The one positive side of the rapid spread of infection is that those who get it now may have some degree of immunity.

And, of course, countries with less developed health services will be hit harder.

Failblog

Fifteen minutes ago, I hadn’t heard of Failblog. I’ve just spent fifteen minutes trying not to laugh out loud.

Man in the FT

The FT today publishes an interview it did with Peter Mandelson on Friday (when the world’s media were force-feeding themselves and anyone who came near them a certain celebrity death). It begins thus:

FT: Do you want to start by paying tribute to Michael Jackson, Peter? Everyone else seems to be doing that.
PM: I’m not absolutely sure who Michael Jackson is. Is he the ... he’s called Jacko, isn’t he?
FT: I believe so, in the idiom, yeah.
PM: No, I don’t want to say anything about him, although I once nearly met him in Berlin. Anyway, what I want to talk to you about…

Hmm.

(Then there’s some stuff about politics and that.)

Always tip cash

The bastards:

Employees of Tragus - which owns Café Rouge, Bella Italia and Strada - have come under pressure to ensure service charges are paid by card, and at least one waitress has told the Observer that they are being threatened with dismissal if they do not generate enough card tips. ...
Cash tips go directly to staff, but those paid by card go to the company. ...
...Tragus had sent a memo to restaurant managers telling them to crack down on employees encouraging customers to leave cash. Staff are forbidden to tell customers that the optional service charge is used to subsidise the national minimum wage paid to waiters.
...
A waitress in one Café Rouge restaurant claimed that the manager produced a weekly league table showing how much each waiter had collected in service charges. Those in the bottom three were denied the free food enjoyed by their colleagues. If this happened two weeks running, they could be sacked. Tragus denies this.
...
“I love my job, but the bottom line is this: if you want to help Tragus pay my wages (around 14% of it), then leave a tip on your credit card. However, if you want to tip me for the service you have received, I'd be very grateful for a couple of quid in the tip tray.”

Typo of the day

…in light of the current swine flue outbreak…

The pigs are getting out the chimney!!!

Mervyn King slams Tories on debt

I’m not kidding.

A biased and simplistic headline, to be sure, but no more so than the many ‘Kings slams Labour on debt’ stories running today.

Here are some extracts from the Bank of England Governor’s testimony to the Commons Treasury Committee yesterday. You’ll be able to discern some implicit criticism, as well as praise, of the government position:

[18’05] …there will certainly need to be a plan, for the lifetime of the next parliament, contingent upon the state of the economy, to show how those deficits will be brought down if the economy recovers, to reach levels of deficits below those which were shown in the Budget figures. I think the Budget was commendably honest in setting out the fiscal picture, I think there’s just as good a chance that the picture will turn out to be better than was painted in those single numbers than it being worse. And that’s encouraging that that degree of honesty is there. But I think we have to confront the fact that these numbers are very large and they pose a challenge to the UK which we will need collectively to deal with.
…
[20’55] …it’s likely to be necessary to spell out a path for the reduction of deficit such that if the economy were to recover along the path assumed in the Budget projections for GDP, then I think the time over which deficits need to be reduced is likely to have to be faster than was implied by that projection. But I think what is most important is not to fix an arbitrary timescale for reduction of the fiscal deficit, but to recognise that whatever it is, it will have to be dependent on the state of the economy. But I don’t think we can afford to wait until the parliament after next before taking action to demonstrate credibly that the United Kingdom is going to reduce its deficit and that fiscal policy will be credible.
…
[22’30] …I think we need to recognise that although we are finding it easy to finance those deficits now, by issuing gilts, there could be challenges down the road. And I think all that’s needed is not action now – it would be quite wrong now to take action this year – but what is needed is credible statement of the path that will guide the reduction in deficits over the years, made contingent on the state of the economy.

A fair summary of this would be: deficits need to come down, and should come down faster than projected in the Budget – but only once the economy returns to decent growth.

Now let’s go back to what David Cameron said in April:

Now some people say: let’s get through the recession, let’s get through the election we can keep on spending more, keep on borrowing more, and deal with the debt crisis later. Wrong - seriously wrong.
…
Controlling public spending and delivering more for less must start right now. Not next year, not after the election – now.

Whereas Mervyn King says:

it would be quite wrong now to take action this year

Brown announces inquiry into announcement of Iraq war inquiry

“We must learn the lessons of this senseless waste of not-too-awful publicity, while also covering our own arses,” he said. The inquiry will be conducted in secret, chaired by a former Downing Street press officer who for presentational security reasons is known only as ‘M’, and will report in spring 2017.

I before E, except when it’s not

My dander is up. My goat has been got. My blood has been brought to the boil.

First, this is pretty sound:

The spelling mantra "i before e except after c" is no longer worth teaching, according to the government. Advice sent to teachers says there are too few words which follow the rule and recommends using more modern methods to teach spelling to schoolchildren.

Dead right: protein, seize, their, either, veil, weird, height, science, ancient, species, society…

But then this:

But some people believe the phrase should be retained because it is easy to remember and is broadly accurate.
Bethan Marshall, a senior English lecturer at King's College London, said: "It's a very easy rule to remember and one of the very few spelling rules that I can remember and that's why I would stick to it. If you change it and say we won't have this rule, we won't have any rules at all, then spelling, which is already terribly confusing, becomes more so."

I hope for Dr Marshall’s sake that she’s been misquoted somehow, or else was blind drunk when they called her up for a comment.

This rule is already a rule that we don’t have, because the English language doesn’t follow it. Teaching kids a ‘spelling rule’ that isn’t a rule is what’s terribly confusing. The fact that this falsehood is a very memorable falsehood makes it worse, not better. Stopping teaching it isn’t an abandonment of all rules, it’s an abandonment of one rule, which in fact is a rule that doesn’t hold anyway.

And… relax. Deep breaths. Sorry, I clearly need to calm down. I think I’ve been drinking too much caffiene.

Speaking of Speakers...

In perhaps the most cringeworthy moment of yesterday, soon-to-be Speaker John Bercow imitated Tory grandee Sir Peter Tapsell’s reaction to his candidacy:

You're not just too young, you're far too young, given that in my judgment the Speaker ought to be virtually senile.

Bercow is indeed young: 46, compared with Michael Martin (who was 55 on taking the chair), Betty Boothroyd (62), Bernard Weatherill (62), Viscount Tonypandy (67)… and so on.

To find a younger Speaker, you have to go back to Charles Shaw-Lefevre, 1st (and only) Viscount Eversley, who on 27 May 1839 was elected to the Speakership at the slightly tenderer age of 45 (and indeed by the narrower margin of 317 votes to 299; Bercow beat Sir George Young by 322 to 271).

Did Shaw-Lefevre’s relative youth prove a handicap? Apparently not: the Encyclopaedia Britannica records that during his 18 years in the chair, he acquired “a high reputation in the House of Commons for his judicial fairness, combined with singular tact and courtesy”.

Now, I bet you didn’t know that there’s Hansard online going back to 1803. So, on that May evening in 1839, in putting forward his candidacy, Shaw-Lefevre said:

any qualifications which I may be thought to possess for the office of Speaker, cannot in any degree bear a comparison with those of that right hon. Gentleman whose recent retirement from the Chair has now become a subject of universal regret.
…
The responsibility which in ordinary times, and under ordinary circumstances, is inseperable from the laborious duties of the Chair, is of a sufficiently grave and anxious character. But in these times I regret to say, and in the present excited state of political feeling, that responsibility is immesurably increased. Entertaining, these opinions, it may not unreasonably be thought that I am presumptions in allowing myself to be placed in nomination as a candidate on the present occasion.
…
I yield to no one in a desire to maintain the honour and dignity of this House, in a strong sense of the importance of protecting its privileges from being in the slightest degree trenched upon, and in a firm determination to exert all the energies I possess in the discharge of any duty which the House may impose upon me. With these observations I cheerfully submit myself to the pleasure of the House.

Plus ça change: the panegyric to the outgoing Speaker (a Scot, who apparently “was not very successful in quelling disorder” and quit the chair for a peerage and a fat pension); the laughably false modesty; the concerns about “the present excited state of political feeling”; the hailing of “the honour and dignity of this House” – but of course.

But “protecting its privileges”? Don’t think that would go down so well these days…

Unspeakable

I’m not particularly a John Bercow fan, but I’m really entertained by the attitude held by a swathe of the Tory party. Roughly: ‘We opposed him because he’s a divisive figure, and he’s divisive because we oppose him, and we can’t have a divisive Speaker, so we’ll keep opposing him.’

D’oh!

The spoof Tory MP Nadine Dorries has been detailing her soporific views on the Commons Speakership, and why she so strongly opposes John Bercow’s candidacy.

In a debate on abortion a while ago, Bercow voiced his hope for “genuinely progressive reform, rather than the antediluvian reform that some favour”.

Dorries, after explaining for us that antediluvian “means 'before The Flood' i.e. prehistoric”, says that we cannot “trust a Speaker who has such strident zealot views on such an issue” as abortion.

So she’s backing Ann Widdecombe.

Cameron’s expenses repayment timing

‘I’ve taken the opportunity today to bury some bad news’

By astonishing coincidence, David Cameron has announced his repayment of £947.29 in inappropriately claimed expenses on exactly the same day that the (heavily censored) official details of MPs’ expenses were published. This larger story tragically deprived his own tale of much of the media coverage he had doubtless hoped for.

His repayment covers the £680 claim for the repairs to his constituency home that the Telegraph revealed back in May (the wisteria) and that he’d already promised to pay back, as well as a few other smaller claims and £218.91 for mortgage overclaims that were made in error.

His statement started on the censored publication and then moved on to his own case (emphasis added):

…but I think we need a more common-sense approach to releasing this information and I hope we can do that in future.
As for myself, I’ve taken the opportunity today to, er – I’ve been through my accounts in great detail, and I have discovered an inadvertent error I made in 2006 with respect to some mortgage payments – an overclaim of £200 – and I’ve paid that money back today to the Fees Office, along with other announcements that I made previously. I’m very sorry about making a mistake like this, but I think the best thing to do when you discover it is to deal with it as quickly as possible.
…it took a long time to get to the bottom of this particular mortgage claim…
As soon as I got the information to hand, I made the announcement today and I returned the money today.

It could be an innocent coincidence, although the hastily abandoned “I’ve taken the opportunity today” line (watch the video from about 20 seconds in) might suggest otherwise.

But let’s say that it did in fact take exactly this long to sort out the mortgage claim details. Why delay the repayment for the other things, most notably the wisteria clearing that came to light over five weeks ago? This sort of delay isn’t what he suggested when he said, on 12 May:

I want to set out this afternoon the action I’m taking right now. … I mean things that my Party, the Conservative Party; Conservative MPs, the things that they will do – right now.
…
I will pay back the only maintenance bill I have claimed in eight years as a Member of Parliament.

He added:

We need money paid back now.

Well, so far this looks like little more than standard politician’s slipperiness. But perhaps there’s more to it.

On 22 May, the Oxford Mail covered a public meeting that Cameron held in his Witney constituency:

Mr Cameron said he had voluntarily paid back £680 he claimed for fixing a leaky roof and removing wisteria from his chimney.
He said: “It was for maintenance not decoration, but I felt I had to take a lead and pay back anything questionable.”

But, of course, he hadn’t yet done any such thing. If this report is accurate, it does rather suggest that he was lying.

Unnecessary superfluous redundancy

My work exposes me to some really dire language. The latest sample:

This is a multilateral collaborative partnership

As opposed to a unilateral collaborative partnership? Or a multilateral adversarial partnership? Or a multilateral collaborative rivalry?

The rest of the sentence is pretty bad as well:

This is a multilateral collaborative partnership with the aim to advance scientific knowledge and management of human influenza through integrated clinical research in order to improve patient care and human health.

A hideous spiral of confusion between means and ends. Or perhaps it’s indifference rather than confusion, coupled with the desire to be seen to be using certain buzz-phrases. That attitude would certainly explain the pleonastic pile-up at the start.

This has been written by someone who wouldn’t survive five minutes outside the confines of a large corporate bureaucracy.