The real reson why Gordon removed the 10p limit

There has been a lot of noise about why Gordon really removed the 10p tax threshold and reduced the 22p one to 20p, most of it revolving around his need to grandstand. This explanation by Phil A of Critical Faculty Dojo is by far the most plausible as it involves our old friend "relative" poverty and what's more he spotted what would happen nearly a year ago:

Before Gordon's last budget there was much rending of clothes and gnashing of teeth over ‘Child Poverty’. New Labour had foolishly promised (though why breaking some promises should bother them more than others is not clear) to halve child poverty in Britain by 2010 - and there was no way they were going to meet that target.

That NuLab, especially TB, love making headline catching promises without having a clue how to deliver is nothing new, but when it comes to children there really is nowhere to hide in the modern world. The problem with this one was that for some reason we only talk about relative poverty:

Now New-labour were presumably too stupid to realise this is effectively impossible when they set this target. But because of the way the formula is calculated ‘Child Poverty’ is defined by a moving set of goalposts. If you were to somehow magically increase the household incomes of all families, every single one, who fall within the definition at midnight on Sunday - and then re run the figures the poverty line would have increased and you would still have children living in ‘poverty’. You can do the sums for yourself if you care to.

I think most people with half a brain cell had worked that one out and bloggers have been ripping in to it for some time.

So now comes the old sleight of hand:

So what has this to do with the abolition of the 10p tax band? Well there is one way of getting a temporary boost to the child poverty figures. It is a matter of percentages. If you take from the really poor who it would take a lot of cash to lift out of actual poverty and give that to those who are not so badly off just below the ‘poverty’ line and only need a little to lift them out, then you can keep the goal posts more-or-less where they are and improve the figures no end. It works especially well if you mostly just take from those poor who have no children.

Gordon may be many things, mendacious, cowardly, traitorous, venal, pick your favourite, but he isn't stupid and I think there is more than a kernel of truth in Phil's next comment:

One suspects it is far from a coincidence that Gordon Brown, knowing he would be judged on New Labour's rash promises on ‘Child Poverty’ decided to do the one thing that could easily improve his figures and might be made to look like a tax cut. Rather like a magician drawing your attention to his right hand whist his left does the real trick.

So it looks suspiciously like just another, albeit particularly dodgy, case of New Labour manipulating figures to pretend to be accomplishing something.

I think I can agree with Phil's analysis and until someone comes up with a better motive then this one works for me.

Manifesto pledges

I suppose we all know instinctively that manifesto pledges aren't contracts because they are open to changes in landscape, but it still comes as a bit of an insult to have our noses rubbed in it by an expensive barrister and a judge. Especially when the judge makes the flippant remark:

Cecilia Ivimy, for the Government, said: "A manifesto promise is incapable of giving rise to a legally binding contract with the electorate. It is a point which is so obvious that I don't want to labour it."

Go on love, labour the point and explain it in clear terms because this really is an important issue.

So, if manifesto pledges or promises or whatever they aren't really promises then there is no need for the Parliament Act, which was used to push through the hunting ban on the basis that it was a manifesto pledge.

Statistics: Health service waiting lists

I have just been catching up on Radio 4's excellent programme More or Less: Behind the statistics and this week one of their listeners raised this curious point:

If a hospital procedure is carried out on everyone in exactly 10 weeks, what is the average waiting time? I was particularly taken with this piece because I have been very wary of "averages" for a long time and never accept them in a business context unless I have seen the raw data. The reason for this is the average, and even above average, person is clueless as to what an "average" really tells us, especially with small data sets. (Pun intended)

Anyway, the answer to this question took me by surprise: 5 weeks.

It seems that we are really being told average waiting times of those in the queue and they get this by asking each person in the queue how long they have been there. So if the sample is large enough it is reasonable to assume that some will have been there for 1 day, others for 2 days etc all the way to 69 days. The average of these wait times is indeed 35 days.

To be fair the programme does go on to say that the Government is moving towards total treatment times, but not before misleading us as to waiting waiting times.