A couple of days ago, we were told that "The total cost of alcohol to society [i.e. England] has been put at £55 billion." That works out at £1,058 per person. From Scotland, now comes the heartening news "Alcohol abuse* [only] costs every Scot £900 a year".
Well done Scotland, problem solved!
* The article sees the words "abuse", "misuse" and "use" as more or less synonymous.
Tuesday 12 January 2010
Epic fail in the fakestatistics department
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5 comments:
I'm getting more than £1000 of pleasure from alcohol.
Anon, exactly. You'll note that a large chunk of the alleged costs is "cost to the economy" i.e. people with hangovers are less productive. Well whoopie-doo! You could just as well argue that working a five-day-week rather than a seven-day-week costs the economy about £300 billion or something.
'people with hangovers are less productive'
So what if they are? That's a management issue, not a hook to allow the government to meddle in pricing once again.
JM, that was sort of my point. People with hangovers probably get promoted less and paid less, so that 'cost to the economy' is in fact a purely private cost borne by the individuals concerned.
Only £900? Good grief, that's only 45 bottles of decent Scotch!
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