Public sector myths (Part 94)

From the comments over at LabourHome:

I can't help but think of healthcare assistants, teaching assistants, binmen, groundsmen and care workers etc who make up the vast bulk of the public sector.

But they don't!

Only about one quarter of the eight million taxpayer funded jobs fall into the above categories i.e. 'doing something identifiable and of value'. Heck knows what the other six million do all day long.

There is more of everything in densely populated areas (2)

Continuing my occasional series ...

LabourHome have got themselves all in a tizz over a map of the UK that allegedly shows the areas with the highest concentration of BNP members, because it looks very similar to the map showing Labour constituencies, from which they deduce that the BNP are an electoral threat to Labour in particular.

Well, duh. We knew that anyway. Further, we are well aware that:

a) Labour do best in towns and cities; the Tories do best in rural/suburban areas.

b) You could take a map showing areas with the highest concentrations of people with any random characteristic (left handedness, a liking for chocolate, membership of a particular political party) and you'd find that that this looks similar to the BNP map - because such a map would simply show the areas with the highest population densities, i.e. towns and cities, which happen to be areas where Labour tend to do well.

c) Ergo, the map tells us absolutely nothing new.

H/t Obnoxio The Clown (scroll down to RT's fine bit of editing in the comments)

Fun on-line poll!

Over at LabourHome, "Have Labour put and end to boom and bust?"

Results so far: 'No' 118 votes; 'Yes' 2 votes.