Banner
any day today rss X

News and Comment July 2013

Index: 2018201920202021202220232024

2 July (Part 2) - Statistical deception

Orpington High Street Orpington High StreetI seem to have referred several times recently to my GPO Telephones training in 1963, talk about thorough, it lasted six months and ranged from climbing poles to public speaking. I hope I’m never asked to do that again! One thing I remember well was that presenting statistics in an honest and straight forward manner was always essential.

I was reminded of that today when browsing through next Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting agenda. Bexley council announced at one of their occasional ‘Open session’ meetings a little while ago that they are heading for a £40 million black hole and the government is not making things better with their programme of cuts. However Bexley will probably want to show electors that it is a really really bad problem by producing a very nasty looking graph showing nearly half their funding is at risk.

However if you correct the scales in the way the good ol’ GPO recommended 50 years ago it doesn’t look nearly as bad.

Mike Ellsmore (Director of Finance & Resources) should be ashamed of himself; has he never been trained in how to shin up a telegraph pole etc?

Never assume that Bexley council is not up to some sort of trickery.

As usual click the image to enlarge it. Mr. Ellsmore is welcome to take the corrected imaged if he ever he is allowed to tell the truth.

 

Return to the top of this page
Bonkers is a cookie free zone. Not a single one