Miscalculating the cost of public sector pensions
If it’s a good story, who cares about an extra zero? The Daily Telegraph on Tuesday ran a splash saying that by 2015, public sector pensions would be costing every household £4,000 a year.
This came from the Office for Budget Responsibility figures showing that public sector pensions will cost £9.4 billion a year in 2014-15. There are 26 million households, so the cost per household is 9.4 billion divided by 26 million: £361.53.
The Telegraph miscalculated this as £3,615 then rounded it up to £4,000. (Or at least that's what I'm guessing happened.) That’s the version that ran in the paper, below:

Catches the eye, doesn’t it, even without the nice picture of Catherine Zeta-Jones alongside? The Telegraph can never be accused of not knowing its readers.
If you search the Telegraph website, there are links to both headlines, though the story they link you to has been corrected. It says £400 in both cases.

Lesson: teach journalists to divide. It pays dividends.

Elsqueak (not verified) wrote,
Tue, 22/06/2010 - 21:14
" Lesson: teach journalists to divide. It pays dividends. "
Unlike BP in the near future.
Richard Blogger (not verified) wrote,
Tue, 22/06/2010 - 21:30
You mean like the Conservative party told us before the election that 54% of girls get pregnant before they are 18? (The actual figure is 54.32 per 1000 women aged 15-17 year get pregnant.) These are the people who are currently cutting public spending, can you trust them to do that according to their published plan? Can you trust the figures in the plan?
Pete Green (not verified) wrote,
Tue, 22/06/2010 - 22:18
It brings a whole new meaning to the phrase 'divide and rule'.
bunbury (not verified) wrote,
Thu, 24/06/2010 - 12:34
It's just to distract attention from the misleading use of a simple mean. The majority of those households of course will be paying a lot less than £361. What ever happened to pennies on income tax?
Post new comment