The Times must think most of its readers are stupid...

Exhibit One

Their wildlife correspondent wails on about the proposed HS2 route 'affecting 160 wildlife sites' and provides the map below. Now, it may be that the last remaining 160 wildlife sites in the Great Britain happen to be exactly along the route, but is it not more likely that the whole of the Great Britain is dotted fairly evenly with wildlife sites, even in towns and cities?

The total surface area of the HS2 route is only about two square miles, out of a total surface area of 88,749 sq miles, so it strikes me that a more accurate headline is "HS2 route will affect 0.002% of wildlife sites in Great Britain".
Exhibit Two

The Home-Owner-Ists have to maintain the illusion that houses are really worth what they say they are, i.e. that prices rest on fundamentals or 'pent up demand' and were not merely inflated by reckless lending, and they have produced the handy chart below which gives you the impression that the demand is there, even though gross mortgage lending fell by over sixty per cent between 2007 and 2010*. The sub text is: "Hey first time buyers! Jump on the housing ladder quick or else we'll just buy up all the houses anyway!" or something.

They are of course not comparing like-with-like, between 2005 and 2007, quarterly sales were around 400,000 of which about 22% were cash sales (= 90,000 per quarter). In 2010, quarterly sales were 200,000 of which 35% were cash buyers (= 70,000 per quarter).

So if anything, while the number of cash buyers jumped significantly between 2004 and 2005, it has been fairly stable/drifting downwards ever since). * Gross mortgage lending in 2007 was £362 billion and in 2010 it was £136 billion. Net mortgage lending has fallen to plus/minus nothing, of course.