BREXIT! BREXIT! BREXIT!

[Svartalf]

That stat table is obviously rigged, the places held by Singapore, Switzerland, Luxemburg and the UK (Isle of Man and Channel islands in particular) in tax evasion schemes from all over the world, shows clearly that those places are a lot more corrupt than the measure applied pretends to show.

[Scot Dutchy]

They are not corrupt just have different banking rules. Nobody takes a cut for personal gain.

[Rum]

Stats are exceedingly slippery and as someone who had to gather and collate a great many in my last job I can tell you I learnt to deeply mistrust them.

[rainbow]

Stats are exceedingly slippery and as someone who had to gather and collate a great many in my last job I can tell you I learnt to deeply mistrust them.

63% are made up, according to the experts.

[Rum]

[Brian Peacock]

The IMF, as the international lender of last resort, has to have some footing by which to make its assessments. Their data might not be complete, and one may argue over whether this or that data-point should or shouldn't be included, but it is at least consistent in its methodologies.

There's an obvious flaw in an argument which proceeds upon the presumption that every statistical survey and/or comparision is flawed or corrupt, not least because it places one's own pronouncements on said statistics in the same category, that is: where does one gather the data to support one's own argument?

[Forty Two]

The ones that rank the US or the UK rather favorably as against the EU (well, the six or seven northwestern social democracies therein) are, of course, shoddy, ill-kept, and ill-conceived stats. Those that show certain northwestern European countries as the happiest, healthiest, most economically sound and productive nations on earth, are, of course, accurate beyond question.

[Scot Dutchy]

Stats are exceedingly slippery and as someone who had to gather and collate a great many in my last job I can tell you I learnt to deeply mistrust them.

63% are made up, according to the experts.

Most of it is carried out by sampling and surveys. Then extrapolated. Only countries with a form of population registration have accurate data. At least they have a decent idea who lives in the country.

[pErvinalia]

Thank God for the Dutch surveillance state..

[rainbow]

Stats are exceedingly slippery and as someone who had to gather and collate a great many in my last job I can tell you I learnt to deeply mistrust them.

63% are made up, according to the experts.

Most of it is carried out by sampling and surveys. Then extrapolated. Only countries with a form of population registration have accurate data. At least they have a decent idea who lives in the country.

No matter how accurate the data, it is the way you manipulate it into statistics that matters.

If you choose your data carefully enough, you can prove almost anything.

[Scot Dutchy]

But if the data is publicly available it is hard to manipulate. "In the land of the blind one eye is king".

[Rum]

Here’s a small example of how manipulating data can work from my last job.

Here in the UK every county (local authority) has a legal duty to provide a school place for a child. They have to be ‘on role’. This is actually quite difficult to achieve, especially for kids with behaviour issues who get expelled. As a result the numbers ‘off role’ became a performance indicator (where less us best).

The kids who get expelled should go to ‘alternative provision’, which most counties provide - I was line manager for the three in Cumbria.

Some cunning local authorities invented a ‘local authority register’, which they put their expelled kids on. No education at all - just ‘parked’ on paper and actually not legal but hey presto your performance indicator is at a stroke perfect.

[Scot Dutchy]

The same was done with the UK unemployment figures. Look at the definition of unemployed and add to that the lack of knowledge of who lives where and you have a typical UK mess.

[Rum]

The same was done with the UK unemployment figures. Look at the definition of unemployed and add to that the lack of knowledge of who lives where and you have a typical UK mess.

The ‘same’. Explain further please. I’ve just spent 15 minutes looking at how the figures are calculated. Interesting.

The lack of knowledge of where people live is no bad thing in my view come to that. Big Brother stays at arms’ length - or just a tad further away than in places like Holland.

[Scot Dutchy]

The same was done with the UK unemployment figures. Look at the definition of unemployed and add to that the lack of knowledge of who lives where and you have a typical UK mess.

The ‘same’. Explain further please. I’ve just spent 15 minutes looking at how the figures are calculated. Interesting.

The lack of knowledge of where people live is no bad thing in my view come to that. Big Brother stays at arms’ length - or just a tad further away than in places like Holland.

You really talk a load of guff. Little Englanders. Big Brother? Just because you live in a pig sty and anything better organised an that actually works you call Big Brother. Pathetic. So we all have to live with the massive administrative mess you call the "civil service". FFS. Your lot could not organise a piss up in a brewery. The whole Brexit fiasco has shown how totally disorganised your beloved country is.

Just for your info read this: https://fullfact.org/news/true-unemploy ... illion-uk/