Today
I checked the calculation of the couple who came to persuade me to
move from propane to natural gas. The source material was my bills of
the last 12 months, which give the kilos of gas used to two decimal
points. Ignoring this and using only rounded-up integers, I got the
total to 490 kilos, compared with the 489.56 of my visitors. I cite
this because it's an example of something I've mentioned a couple of
times before; there seems to be no recognition here that the decimal
points are, well, pointless. In newspapers, it can be worse, when
numbers can be given to 3 decimal points. I've suggested this is done
to give specious numbers an air of veracity. But it may be that
people just don't think. Or that they're never taught to use their
common sense. Other theories very welcome.
It
struck me today that the Spanish press are essentially 'scandal
rags'. Not because their behaviour is scandalous, like,
say, the defunct News
of the World, but
because there's a constant procession of reports on corruption in the
corporate and political worlds. The nearby city of Vigo figured in
two of these today. The first was an investigation into a missing 3m
euros in the port area and the second was further detail of fraudulent mis-management of the company Pescanova, whose president sold many
of his shares just before the company filed for bankruptcy and saw a
99% fall in its share price. More on this here.
Needless
to say, the Spanish government has now revised all its forecasts for
the performance of the economy and its key elements. Growth
expectations are down and taxes will rise again. Improvement in the
unemployment rate has also been postponed until growth returns in 3
years time. Maybe. More here.
Gruesomely,
some Spaniards are taking extreme steps to improve their financial
situation. One has cut off his hand and another his lower arm, so as
to make huge insurance claims. Sadly, neither of them succeeded in
their cack-handed attempts to fool their insurance companies. What
next? An auto-decapitation?
The
EU:
As I was saying, the institution has no real idea of how to defeat –
or even attack – its fundamental problems. As as our Ambrose put it
today: Germany’s
Bundesbank has issued a devastating attack on the bond rescue
policies of the European Central Bank, rendering the eurozone’s key
crisis measure almost unworkable. . . . The
9m window of opportunity created by Draghi has been wasted.
Finally
. . . An EU-based joke cartoon in Private
Eye
has Mrs Merkel addressing fellow Eurozone members and saying: A
tax is ze best form of defence.
The
sort of thing that makes her so popular. Another one tomorrow.
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