Nixon famously/allegedly* once said "The rate of increase of inflation is going down", a phrase much derided by people who understand maths.
I had assumed that politicians were taught not to come out with such tortuous crap and go for a straight lie instead. Not so apparently. "Employment Minister" Jim Knight reared his ugly head yesterday and actually said "These figures show a significant slowing in the rate of increase of unemployment" (see the first few seconds of the embedded video half-way down this article). Seriously, WTF is that supposed to mean?
* Delete according to taste.
Thursday, 15 October 2009
Life copies satire, sort of.
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3 comments:
Well he certainly didn't learn it at school, having sat through most of the same English classes with him. You would have been slapped down for such misuse of the English language.
He must have picked it up in some apparatchnik module later.
BTW it should be reared his ugly BALD head
I may not have made it all the way to Govt Minister, but I still have all my own hair.
It's the little victories that count.
wv. uppers (heh)
I think I can get what's left of my brain around the concept that an increase in unemployment of 40,000 one month then 30,000 the next and 20,000 the next is a "slowing in the rate of increase of unemployment".
Not that a slowing in the rate of increase tells us anything useful. It might be good news because it shows the recession is biting less deeply than was feared, or it might be appalling news because the figures were expected to be much lower.
It means that the rate at which the unemployment is increasing is not going as fast now as it was in a previous quarter.
Still a wank though.
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