Fun with numbers

Here's the FT's entry for the Meaningless Statistic Of The Week Competition, from an article headed "Government shores up housebuilding":

The public purse is now funding almost half of new home building, demonstrating the extent to which the government is shoring up the construction industry amid a historic slump in private sector development... This compares with just a fifth of new homes that were funded by the public sector in the last few months of 2007 as the housing boom entered its final phase

The chart in the print version shows that social housing starts are constant at around 2,500 per month, but private sector housing starts have fallen from 15,000 to 3,000 per month, i.e. private sector housing starts are down by eighty per cent. Now that's a far more interesting, not to mention a far more meaningful, statistic.