Thursday, 22 March 2012

Evening Standard: policy based evidence

The Evening Standard solemnly reported some Home-Owner-Ist shite a couple of weeks ago, which included this statement:

An analysis of estate agent Savills’s deal book found that three in 10 properties in London worth more than £2 million have been in the same ownership for more than 10 years.

Fair enough, so seventy per cent were bought within the last ten years. Nationwide's calculator tells us that a house in Greater London costing £2 million in Q4 2011 would have cost £1.4 million in 2002, so the seven-out-of-ten who bought in the last ten years must have been earning a good wedge back then and there's no earthly reason to assume that they'll be earning much less now.

From today's Evening Standard:

Vince Cable’s mansion tax, an annual levy on biggish houses, was avoided largely because most people who own £2 million-plus homes are wealthy but have little in the way of an income stream. That run-down, five-bedroom place they bought 30 years ago just happens to have turned into a potential goldmine in the years since they raised a family who flew the nest.

Yup, in the space of two weeks, instead of it being three-in-ten people who bought more than ten years ago, it's "most people" who "bought 30 years ago".

FFS, by all means tell lies, but can't these people at least agree the official lies and stick to them? Or do they flip-flop like this deliberately just to remind the Winston Smiths among us that the truth is whatever they want it to be at any given moment and they reserve the right to change it without notice?

3 comments:

Robin Smith said...

That is the nature of systemic robbery

Sarton Bander said...

The ES is over-priced

Lola said...

To 'them' 1984 is a manual, not a caution.

Minitrue amends everything all the time.