Monday, February 27, 2012

Lies, statistics and ignorance

In a time of financial crisis, only an organisation like the UK's TUC (The Trades Union Council) could come up with such a daft idea as "Work your proper hours day". The fact that trades unionism in the UK has almost disappeared from the wealth creating sector but is still rife in the public sector probably explains such idiocy.

Anyway, enough of my personal likes and dislikes, the lead story for this day of "non-action" is that older people work more unpaid time than other age groups.

The convoluted way that these numbers are calculated has to be seen to be believed. The chances that the base data is correct is zilch. A classic case of having a rotten product (the idea) and trying to sell it with dodgy numbers. Having said that, it got a lot of press coverage, without anybody questioning the numbers.  This a a reflection on the poor quality of UK journalism than the truth of the argument. Dick Stroud

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