Friday, Nov 23, 2007
Inflation figures fixed, no, surely not ?
BBC: Question Time
Looking back at a question time from 20th Sep. Very interesting for the number of resons.
The 1st question was about Northern Rock, and it's intesting to see the attitude at the time from Hoon.
Both Paddy Ashdown and Janet Street Porter alluded to a coming house price crash and blamed to fact
on the bubble been created by a cetain chancellor allowing lenders to give out cheap credit.
There is also a classic from John Redwood, accusing the government of fiddling the inflation figures
before the 2005 election.
Posted by doomwatch @ 11:11 AM (837 views) Add Comment
14 Comments
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1. jason said...
Indeed. I remember seeing this!
Last nights Question Time was a shambles with the same figures spouting crap!
2. Icarus said...
Of course the Hoon went on about 'sound fundamentals' (had he been listening to Fionnuala?) and tried to say that the problem started 'abroad'. His other point was that the £20+ billion was a 'loan to a solvent bank'. All highly debatable to say the least. Paddy Ashdown accused the NR board of 'greed, stupidity and lack of foresight'. Wrong - there was only greed. Applegarth et al. knew what they were doing. The got the share price (temporarily) high enough for them to make a killing.
3. seanb303 said...
i don't know if anyone has noticed but the recent loss of 25m detail by hrmc revealed something really shocking
which for some reason was never mentioned by the media
the fact that 25 m people nearly half the population need benifits to get by
those people are probably all in fulltime enployment plus both parents have probably got jobs
yet they can't make ends meet and need taxcredits,childtaxcredits and other support
that is just crazy
4. Yellerkat said...
seanB, everyone with a child gets CB. It's the oldest universal benefit out there - even if it just picks up the champagne bill.
5. holding out said...
That is not the number of people on benefits. Child benefit is and always has been given universally. The 25 million actually consists of about 7 million families.
6. cornishman said...
Completely off subject, but regarding the 2 missing government CDs and 25 million people.
Is there a techy person who can explain to me how all that data can be got onto two discs? I believe that each disc has about 750 million bits on it. If there are 25 million people on there, that's only 60 bits of space for each person - to store their name, address, bank details, NI number etc. It would take more than 60 alphabetical letters to record that, how can that detail be recorded in binary in such a small space?
Just curious. Can anyone can help?
7. Bored@work said...
@Cornishman:
Best guess would be data compression. Something simple like lzw compression could result in reducing size dramatically. Still, it might not actually be CDs that are missing, they could easily be DVDs, with could be 4.7 or 9.4 GB of data per disc, depending if they were dual layer or not.
8. drewster said...
According to this article on the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3185213.stm), Child Benefit was introduced around 1977. Even before then there were other similar types of benefit. In 2006 the amounts paid were:
- £18.10 per week for the first child, tax free.
- £12.10 per week for each subsequent child, tax free.
So a family with two children gets £1570 a year tax free. Not a massive amount, but I'm sure it helps.
This short and easy-to-read research paper compares child benefit levels across 22 countries:
- http://www.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd5/174summ.pdf
The UK ranks 7th for child benefit (1 being highest paying, 22 lowest) although they include all other family-related benefits and tax credits too.
9. drewster said...
Cornishman, I read somewhere that they were DVDs (4.7 GB capacity) not CDs (0.7 GB). I can't find an authoritative source for that info though.
10. Techy said...
To cornishman, this wouldn't explain the 60bit thing totally but simple alphanumeric data can be compressed very well. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_compression. Now whether HMRC are smart enough to think about using it is another matter...
11. the northerner living in oz said...
3. seanb303 said...
i don't know if anyone has noticed but the recent loss of 25m detail by hrmc revealed something really shocking
which for some reason was never mentioned by the media
the fact that 25 m people nearly half the population need benifits to get by
those people are probably all in fulltime enployment plus both parents have probably got jobs
yet they can't make ends meet and need taxcredits,childtaxcredits and other support
that is just crazy
I have noticed for some time that housing cost’s have become so out step with real wages.
All these benefits have to be paid for that is why taxes are on the Increase
The thing is that a lot of these benefits are required for people to
Afford to live in private rented houses.
Private rented house costs nearly twice a council house so for the last
15 Years the tax payer has indirectly funded the lavish life style of
The BTL Parasites.
12. Egomaniac said...
Cornishman,
one word. compression, think about zip files. If there are 25 million records some of them will have the same address. no need to store that twice.
13. cornishman said...
Thanks to all for the answers to my point @ 6
14. doomwatch said...
Thanks all for high jacking this post. The CDs no doubt contained a shrunk database backup done allegedly by the genius staff at EDS, the Texas based
"consultancy", which runs most government IT systems these days. Real value for money.