Anglo-American oddities
US voting procedures, and particularly the electoral college, have come under attack by those who assume that things are much better over here. But the House of Commons functions as a kind of electoral college itself, and a highly biased one. There is a very real prospect that next year could see the Conservative support as high as Labour's, but Tony Blair still returned to office with a mini-landslide in terms of seats won. At the last election it needed only around 25,000 votes to elect a Labour MP, more than twice that to return a Tory, and 100,000 to send a Lib Dem to Westminster. If the same pattern prevails in 2005, then with turnout again at 60 per cent, a split giving the Tories 36 per cent of the votes, Labour 30 and Lib Dems 25 would produce a parliament with 218 Tory MPs, 334 Labour and 69 Lib Dems (plus 38 others).
A fillip for Green
Philip Green has been awarded dividends totalling some £700m this year in his Arcadia and BHS companies. £647.5m of this is going to him and his wife, although much of the money to pay it is having to be borrowed from the companies' banks. £647.5m represents the total annual income for an entire town of 50,000 people, such as Weymouth or Margate. It also increases the share of the country's personal incomes taken by the top 1 per cent of the population by almost one percentage point. If, as is reported to be the case, the Greens will not be paying tax on their dividends at anything like 40 percent, the effect on net incomes will be even greater.
Drug targets
Performance targets are becoming notorious for the unintended ways they can alter the behaviours of those supposed to comply with them. (It might be as well to avoid going on to the streets late in the month if you are in an area where the police are struggling to hit their prescribed number of arrests.) But what happens when you do not really know where you are starting from? The home office has committed itself to seizing 16 per cent of the heroin on the market in 2006 (against 10 per cent in 2003) and 26 per cent of the cocaine instead of 12 per cent. But how will they know? Seizing 60 per cent more heroin or more than twice as much cocaine will not prove anything unless they first have a good idea of how much there is around. Which they don't. And if supplies continue to rise, bigger seizures could mean missing these targets (even if by an unknown margin).
Out of date figures
There is an understandable tendency to regard the most recent figures published as representing the up-to-the-minute situation. Very often this just ain't so. Here are two recent examples. Oliver Letwin leapt at the latest statistics for employment in the civil service (showing an increase of 12,000) as undermining Gordon Brown's campaign to bring about cuts of around 100,000. But the newly published figures related to a period ending in April, which was also the starting point for the proposed cuts. The government has also been under attack for what is perceived to be a further increase in income inequality since 1997. But all the available information tends to relate to 2002 or mid-2003. This ignores the impact of the big changes in tax credits and other benefits which are still in the pipeline and yet to show up in the figures.
US voting procedures, and particularly the electoral college, have come under attack by those who assume that things are much better over here. But the House of Commons functions as a kind of electoral college itself, and a highly biased one. There is a very real prospect that next year could see the Conservative support as high as Labour's, but Tony Blair still returned to office with a mini-landslide in terms of seats won. At the last election it needed only around 25,000 votes to elect a Labour MP, more than twice that to return a Tory, and 100,000 to send a Lib Dem to Westminster. If the same pattern prevails in 2005, then with turnout again at 60 per cent, a split giving the Tories 36 per cent of the votes, Labour 30 and Lib Dems 25 would produce a parliament with 218 Tory MPs, 334 Labour and 69 Lib Dems (plus 38 others).
A fillip for Green
Philip Green has been awarded dividends totalling some £700m this year in his Arcadia and BHS companies. £647.5m of this is going to him and his wife, although much of the money to pay it is having to be borrowed from the companies' banks. £647.5m represents the total annual income for an entire town of 50,000 people, such as Weymouth or Margate. It also increases the share of the country's personal incomes taken by the top 1 per cent of the population by almost one percentage point. If, as is reported to be the case, the Greens will not be paying tax on their dividends at anything like 40 percent, the effect on net incomes will be even greater.
Drug targets
Performance targets are becoming notorious for the unintended ways they can alter the behaviours of those supposed to comply with them. (It might be as well to avoid going on to the streets late in the month if you are in an area where the police are struggling to hit their prescribed number of arrests.) But what happens when you do not really know where you are starting from? The home office has committed itself to seizing 16 per cent of the heroin on the market in 2006 (against 10 per cent in 2003) and 26 per cent of the cocaine instead of 12 per cent. But how will they know? Seizing 60 per cent more heroin or more than twice as much cocaine will not prove anything unless they first have a good idea of how much there is around. Which they don't. And if supplies continue to rise, bigger seizures could mean missing these targets (even if by an unknown margin).
Out of date figures
There is an understandable tendency to regard the most recent figures published as representing the up-to-the-minute situation. Very often this just ain't so. Here are two recent examples. Oliver Letwin leapt at the latest statistics for employment in the civil service (showing an increase of 12,000) as undermining Gordon Brown's campaign to bring about cuts of around 100,000. But the newly published figures related to a period ending in April, which was also the starting point for the proposed cuts. The government has also been under attack for what is perceived to be a further increase in income inequality since 1997. But all the available information tends to relate to 2002 or mid-2003. This ignores the impact of the big changes in tax credits and other benefits which are still in the pipeline and yet to show up in the figures.
