"UK deficit 'more than predicted'" runs the BBC headline. How much more? "The UK's deficit is about 2.7% more than Chancellor Alistair Darling acknowledged in the pre-Budget report, the Institute for Fiscal Studies says." they say.
2.7% more? More than what? I think we could accept a deficit that was 1/30th of a previously announced figure. No, what the BBC mean is it is higher than the previous figure by 2.7% of the value of GDP, and the difference is about £39 billion, which is about 50 or 60% higher than previous forecasts.
Way to go BBC, but why stop there? Why not give us the figure as a percentage of another totally irrelevant figure? Let's go with the total net worth of China, the United States and Saudi Arabia, and then you could come up with an increase of 0.0001%, which we can all forget about.
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Remind me. Just how much did it cost us in cash terms to fight the Second World War? There is a special irony there, in that those who were alive at the time are going to be the ones who are going to suffer the greatest proportionate loss in terms of the reduction their real incomes. And it is going to be a lot, lot, more than 2.7%. The BBC will not mention that, of course, it lies outside their target market segments as defined by age profiles, or something.
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