(no subject)

[tinyjo]

I'm constantly surprised at how little I write about my politics here. As anyone who's sat with me through a news broadcast will know I've got an opinion on damn near everything. Well, perhaps that's not quite true but I do have what I suppose you might call strong fundamental opinions which give me a colour on almost anything that comes up. One of which is that if you listen carefully enough no statistic used in a news broadcast actually makes sense or supports the position it was intended to support. For example, a couple of days ago when reporting on Blunketts new plans to save police time the BBC helpfully told us that it would save "10.9 years of police time" (or some similar amount). All very well and good you think. That sounds like a lot. But it means nothing because they haven't told us over what period. Or over how many people. 10.9 years per year per force would be fantastic. 10.9 years per century per policeman might be quite good. 10.9 years per millennia over all forces would be hardly worth doing.

All of which has rather distracted me from what I meant to say which was that either last night or this morning there was a Bush spokesman on the World Tonight/Today programme complaining that Saddam had only offered to let the weapons inspectors back in because he was trying to avoid a war. To which one has to say "Yes of course he is. And if you had any shred of decency, so would you be"

Comments

[swisstone.livejournal.com]

This is the sort of question political interviewers ought to be asking - "So does that mean that the US doesn't want to avoid a war" - but sadly they never do.

10.9 police years

[(Anonymous)]

i got the impression that they claimed it would save 10.9 man years per year over the entire police force. which isn't exactly impressive, given that there must be thousands of people employed by the police in the UK.