Zeusblog

Julia and I are getting more and more annoyed with the news recently. It seems that every item has a ‘this has cost the economy blah blah million pounds’ angle. So the recent snow cost the British Economy £XXX million and will apparently be responsible for 6,000 small businesses going under. Then the snow melted and the damage to potholes will cost £250 million in London alone.

What a load of old nonsense. Who works these figures out? And how do they work them out?

I’ll tell you – lazy journalists work them out by sticking their finger in the air and thinking of a big number. And lazy viewers and newspaper readers don’t think things through and then get outraged by the huge sums bandied about. And Daily Mail readers get even more outraged by the effect it has on house prices too.

The snow didn’t cost whatever they said it did, because we’ll all work a bit harder to catch up – so it actually improves productivity. In fact, if you could put a value on the grins on everyone’s faces when they took a day off and went sledging, the recession would be over. 

And as for the cost of London potholes – well that would assume that the councils had any intention of filling them in in the first place. (That was a pleasing sentence with two ‘in’s together – it’s always fun to goad the spellcheck isn’t it?) And quite how lobbing in a bucketful of tarmac which will wear away in a month or so adds up to £1 million, let alone £250 million, is beyond us.

I could go on and on but now I’m getting worried about the cost to the economy of me writing this and you reading it – it could run into billions and affect our house prices too – so I’ll stop now.

Chalky