Fun With Numbers

From yesterday's City AM:

THE NIGERIAN economy is nearly twice as large as official estimates previously suggested, making it Africa's biggest, after a recalculation by the country's statistical agency.

The exercise has pushed the west African nation’s calculation of nominal GDP in 2013 to 80.2 trillion Nigerian naira (£295bn), far higher than the previous estimate of 42.4 trillion naira.

This new method, announced yesterday, means the country of 170m people is Africa’s largest economy, outstripping South Africa by £60bn, and is the 26th biggest in the world.

From today's City AM:

We are about to see a beautiful demonstration of this with the British economy, where the official statisticians will shortly entirely and drastically rewrite decades of history...

One change will see research and development spending classified as capital expenditure; at a stroke, this will raise the level of the UK's economic output by a cool £25bn.

That’s just the beginning: overall, the statistical deckchair shuffling will boost the size of the UK economy by between 2.5 and five per cent, a shockingly large amount (and a vast range that makes it hard for outside forecasters to be able to predict exactly what the Office for National Statistics (ONS) will come up with).

Illegal Immigrant/Baby Smuggling/Housing Fraud/Employment Tribunal Fun

From The Soaraway Sun, May 2008:

A WOMAN who smuggled a baby bought for £150 into Britain to get a council flat was jailed yesterday. Peace Sandberg, 40, got off her flight from Nigeria at Heathrow airport with the tiny lad and headed straight to a housing office to demand a dwelling. But council workers twigged when they remembered she had NOT been pregnant when she visited the office less than two months earlier.

Jailing her for 26 months yesterday for child trafficking, Judge Sam Kathkuda told the Nigerian she was “a stranger to the truth”... The Home Office will make a decision about whether to deport Sandberg after she is released.

Twenty-four months later, from The Evening Standard:

A convicted baby trafficker banned from Britain for 10 years was arrested today after she sneaked back in to try to claim thousands of pounds at an employment tribunal.

Peace Sandberg, 42, was jailed for 26 months after she bought a three-month-old baby in Nigeria for £150 and tried to pass it off as her own to get a council house. After her sentence she was deported back to Sweden, where she holds Swedish/Nigerian citizenship.

But the former housing officer still pursued a race and sex discrimination claim against former employer the Peabody Trust — and turned up in London today at the start of tribunal proceedings.

Police were informed by the trust and arrested her...

Nice bit of blackmail ...

From the BBC:

Representatives of 10 African countries are meeting in Ethiopia to try to agree a common position on climate change, months before a crucial UN meeting.

They are expected to renew demands for billions of dollars in compensation for Africa because of damage caused by global warming. And they are likely to ask rich nations to cut emissions by 40% by 2012. African nations are among the lightest polluters but analysts say they will suffer the most from climate change. BBC science reporter Matt McGrath says the move to agree a common negotiating platform for Africa recognises the continent's failure to make its voice heard on the debate...

Delegates from powerhouses South Africa, Nigeria* and Kenya are among those expected to attend. They will discuss a suggestion that developed countries should cut emissions by at least 40% by 2020, and that richer nations should provide $67bn (£40bn) a year to help the least well-off cope with rising temperatures.

* Ahem, maybe Nigeria could make a start by shutting down its oil wells?

"Fantastic Opportunities in a Multi-National High Street Bank"

This appeared in my in-box, so my immediate thought was to reply with a traditional "Go f*** yourself".

Having opened it, I noticed that it was in fact a perfectly legit e-mail from a recruitment agency.

Tee hee!