Fun with numbers (4)

From The Times:

"... last year there were 95,374 court orders for mortgage repossessions; but only 27,100 actual repossessions."

"Caroline Flint, the [bootylicious] Housing Minister, will today pledge an extra £9 million over three years to fund debt advice and legal support for families facing repossession."

OK! £9 million divided by 3 years divided by 100,000 repossession orders per year = £30 for each household. That'll pay for about ten or fifteen minutes of solicitor's time.

Wringing even more irony out of this:

1. It is meaningless to compare the number of actual repossessions in any year with the number of repossession orders in that year; you have to compare them the number of orders in the previous year, as these cases drag on for a year at least.

2. The state-owned Northern Rock will no doubt be at the forefront of lenders applying for repossession, so we've got three different taxpayer funded bodies battling it out (the bank, the CAB and the Courts).

3. That £30 per case is laughable, no doubt it will soon blossom to hundreds or thousands of pounds per case, and they'll have to set up a quango; a regulatory body; a funding agency and an ombudsman etc. to deal with it.

4. The idea that a Nulab minister could be physically attractive is rather weird.

H/t Taffee at HPC.

Dice.