The ignorance of the Great British Public

A poll has just been produced by Ipsos MORI for the Royal Statistical Society and King’s College London, which reveals a high level of ignorance among the British public about various social statistics.

But before you read the results and get too smug, take this test published by the Guardian to check your own level of knowledge. (I managed ten out of ten, but only by guessing on the basis of choosing the opposite of likely tabloid newspaper prejudices).

IPSOS Mori’s results reveal a shocking level of ignorance among the Great British Public:

• On average, the public thinks that teenage pregnancy is 25 times higher than official estimates.
• 58% of people do not believe that crime is falling, even though it has been falling for many years.
• 29% of people think we spend more on Jobseeker’s Allowance than pensions, when in fact we spend 15 times more on pensions.
• 26% of people think foreign aid is one of the top two or three items of government expenditure, when it actually comprised only 1.1% of expenditure (£7.9bn) in the 2011/12 financial year. More people select this as a top item of expenditure than pensions (which cost nearly ten times as much, £74bn) and education (£51.5bn).
• People estimate that 34 times more benefit money is claimed fraudulently than official estimates. On average, the public thinks that £24 out of every £100 spent on benefits is claimed fraudulently, compared with official estimates of 70p per £100.
• On average, the public thinks that 31% of the population are immigrants, when the official figure is 13%.

Since I am writing this blog and you are reading it, it is safe to assume we share membership of a minority with an interest in public policy issues. Most people do not share our level of interest and cannot reasonably be expected to have a detailed knowledge. So the issue here is not ‘ignorance’ so much as the fact that perceptions vary so wildly from reality, and that this variance distorts the political climate in which decisions are made.

The Guardian’s analysis reports that the Royal Statistical Society cites three main reasons for popular misconceptions:

1. Political spin – Politicians tend to twist numbers for their own ends rather than discussing statistics even-handedly.
2. Tabloid journalism – The researchers argue “the media has to try and genuinely illuminate issues, rather than use statistics to sensationalise”.
3. Data literacy – If statistics were taught differently in UK schools, the public would have a better ability to critically assess evidence for themselves.

Politicians’ dishonesty, sensationalist journalism, poor education or merely popular indifference? All play their part but the most important question appears in the least likely of sources.

Of all the daily newspapers, you might expect the Daily Express to defend popular prejudices most but, to be fair, the Express’s report is even-handed. It quotes Hetan Shah, executive director of the Royal Statistical Society, who poses the key question:

Our data poses real challenges for policymakers. How can you develop good policy when public perceptions can be so out of kilter with the evidence?

This question reveals the risk, or rather two risks; two (small ‘c’) conservative responses.

The populist response – which is more likely in an age of followership – is for politicians to adopt policies intended to mollify popular prejudices irrespective of the evidence, for example by demonising welfare recipients. But why must public policy genuflect to popular ignorance? Yes, we live in a democracy and government should reflect the will of the people, but that does not absolve politicians of respect for the truth or responsible leadership. If an opinion poll says that a majority believes that 2 + 2 = 5, it remains the duty of politicians to remind people that it equals 4. To do otherwise is to abdicate all responsibility. After all, it’s not as if rank populism has succeeded in raising popular respect for politicians.

The elitist response is expressed by Alex Massie in the Spectator. He seems to suggest that popular ignorance can justify ignoring the public and concentrating power still further. His message seems to be, “leave it to the grown-ups”:

The public mood matters – and measuring it is important – but when it comes to the detail of actual government policy the public is, generally speaking, clueless.

Massie adds:

...the next time you find yourself outraged by some politician’s witless stupidity you might pause to remember the clay with which they have to work. It’s not a pretty business.

No, it’s not a pretty business, but we seem to have forgotten what true political leadership entails. It is neither the craven populism of “give ’em what they want” nor is it Massie’s contemptuous elitism. It is about standing up for truth and justice, even at the risk of short-term unpopularity.

As everyone involved in politics knows to their cost, the age of deference has gone. The Great British Public has no fear of challenging any politician. But what poll-fixated politician would risk reciprocating by telling the Great British Public when they are talking demonstrable bollocks? Paradoxically, such brutal honesty might earn more popular respect. Challenging popular falsehoods treats the falsehood not the believer with contempt. Repeating popular fallacies to curry favour with the public treats the believer with contempt, and is why such rank populism has contributed to the decline in popular respect for politics and politicians.

Executive pay – because you’re worth it

You know those excuses for the obscenely huge amounts of money handed over to company chief executives? It’s a reward for high performance and all that? Turns out to be complete bollocks.

Here’s the abstract of an academic paper published earlier this year, Performance for Pay? The Relation Between CEO Incentive Compensation and Future Stock Price Performance:

We find evidence that CEO pay is negatively related to future stock returns for periods up to three years after sorting on pay. For example, firms that pay their CEOs in the top ten percent of excess pay earn negative abnormal returns over the next three years of approximately -8%. The effect is stronger for CEOs who receive higher incentive pay relative to their peers. Our results appear to be driven by high-pay induced CEO overconfidence that leads to shareholder wealth losses from activities such as overinvestment and value-destroying mergers and acquisitions.

[With thanks to David Grace for spotting this.]

Scientific proof that James Delingpole is an ignoramus

Did you have the misfortune to hear the appalling James Delingpole on this weekend’s Radio 4 Any Questions? As usual, he paraded his ignorance and prejudice about climate change.

As an antidote, do watch and, indeed, relish the forensic demolition of Delingpole by Sir Paul Nurse during a BBC2 Horizon documentary:



(This is just a short extract but you can watch the whole documentary ‘Science Under Attack’ here).

Delingpole later complained on his blog that this interview amounted to ‘intellectual rape’. No James, it’s simply that Sir Paul Nurse is President of the Royal Society and a Nobel Prize winning scientist, whereas you aren’t.

Are there scientific reasons to oppose gay marriage?

There aren’t.

Busted: the greatest authoritarian myth of all

The Communications Data Bill would not have prevented last week’s murder in Woolwich. I know that. You know that. Even MI5 knows that.

But here’s another authoritarian myth busted: The greatest authoritarian myth of all – that Mussolini made the trains run on time. In fact he didn’t. Brian Cathcart explained why in the Independent in 1994:

Say what you like about Mussolini, he made the trains run on time. That was the famous last excuse for Fascism, conveying the idea that while dictatorship might not be very nice, at least it got things done.

It is an argument we may hear again following the election triumph of Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and its allies, who include neo-Fascists. After all those years of chaotic politics and corruption, perhaps what the country needs is the smack of firm government. Mr Berlusconi, people may be tempted to say, could be just the man to instil punctuality in those recalcitrant Italian train drivers.

But did Mussolini really do it? Did Il Duce, in his 20 years of absolute power, really manage to make the railway service meet its timetable? The answer is no.

Like almost all the supposed achievements of Fascism, the timely trains are a myth, nurtured and propagated by a leader with a journalist’s flair for symbolism, verbal trickery and illusion.

Cathcart goes on to cite several eyewitness accounts of the unpunctuality of Italian trains in the 1930s. And we now know what a shambles Berlusconi turned out to be.

But why dredge up an article written in 1994 about events before the Second World War? It is because the article concludes with an important lesson:

Typically, [Mussolini] fell victim to his own propaganda. Mussolini’s biographer, Denis Mack Smith, points out that Italy usually imported its coal by sea, but after the Second World War broke out this was no longer possible and it had to come overland. The Duce’s railway system, however, was not up to the job.

“Only two of the nine railroads through the Alps had been provided with double tracks and their capacity was estimated as equal to little more than a quarter of Italy’s peacetime needs,” writes Mack Smith.

“As the trains running on time had become one of the accepted myths of Fascism, and as Mussolini had never charged anyone with the task of planning communications in the event of war, the matter had gone by default.”

Authoritarianism simply doesn’t work, and it’s the same whether the dictatorship is in politics or business (as Jonathan Calder explains here and here). Without the benefits of an open society, poor decision-making is never open to scrutiny or tested by criticism. That is because there is no tolerance for critical thinking and people are afraid to admit failure or suggest improvements. Hence bad decisions go unchallenged. Indeed, the spectacular failure of Fred Goodwin at RBS was largely the result of his dictatorial methods and the climate of fear he created.

Despite this, authoritarianism remains fashionable in certain quarters. In a period of uncertainty, there is a temptation to believe that the answer to all our ills is a “smack of firm government” – just look at the wistful hankering for a messianic leader that surfaced after Mrs Thatcher died. Meanwhile, the television shows The Apprentice and Dragons’ Den ignore the example of Fred Goodwin and continue to encourage the idea that management is basically about being macho and shouting at people.

In our age of impatience, instant gratification and shortened attention spans, it is harder to argue for such time-consuming processes as critical deliberation or rational problem solving. So politicians assert their authority through ill-thought-out ‘initiatives’. What matters is getting things done, without stopping to ask whether these things are any good. The difference nowadays is that, whereas Mussolini declaimed to huge crowds from a balcony, today’s managerialist politicians read out a press release in a branch of Morrisons.

Immigration: proof that The Sun is talking bollocks

Yesterday’s edition of The Sun claimed that foreigners would outnumber native British people in London by 2031.

Well, whaddya know? It turns out that The Sun’s claim is complete and utter bollocks. Full Fact has checked the facts and discovered a dubious form of statistical methodology:

(Abuse of research + absurd extrapolations =) bollocks + malevolence + dishonesty = complete bollocks.

Complete bollocks + desire to make money by feeding prejudices = complete and utter bollocks.

Private good, public bad?

For more than thirty years, we have been taught to believe that the private sector is automatically superior to the public sector. Another mythbuster by nef (the new economics foundation) demonstrates the falsehood of this dogma.

For Liberals, the point is the distribution of power and the human element. The private and public sectors can both be well or badly run. They are equally capable of remoteness, alienation, bad service, waste and incompetence.

As Britain’s experience with the railways demonstrates, privatisation is no guarantee that things will improve. Furthermore, when politicians repeatedly tell public sector workers such as teachers or nurses that they are rubbish, it hardly works wonders for the quality of public service.

Few push the dogma of nationalisation anymore. No one should push the dogma of privatisation either. The guiding principle should be to put people first, which is why social liberals prefer voluntary, mutual, cooperative and social enterprise models to private or state monoliths. As David Boyle points out on his blog today, we should be exploring ways to enable local communities to develop and run their local economies and local services, instead of pushing them into dependence on large organisations.

Transferring bus services from the National Bus Company to Stagecoach, or care homes from the council to a big private operator, fails to address that need. So there is no reason to believe that a private monopoly is somehow morally superior to a public one.

Yet another myth busted: “A competitive tax system is a better tax system”

You’ve heard the arguments: Having a ‘competitive’ tax system is a good thing for the UK. Trying to tax the wealthy and corporations just stifles economic performance and puts off investors. If business and wealthy people are taxed too much, they will desert Britain for countries with a more ‘competitive’ tax system.

Does this belief in a ‘competitive’ tax system have any evidential basis?

nef (the new economics foundation) has produced another of its useful mythbusters. The evidence shows what happens when you pursue a competitive’ tax policy:

• Only big, multinational companies can afford to shift operations to take advantage of different tax regimes, so that when governments lower business taxes, local businesses face unfair competition.

• A race to the bottom means that, as countries respond to one another’s policies, everyone ends up where they started, except more impoverished and with greater inequalities of wealth.

• There is no evidence that differences in the tax take have any impact on GDP growth.

• Genuine investors are not deterred by tax regimes. They are attracted by a good infrastructure, a healthy and educated workforce, and the rule of law – all of which rely on tax.

 Oh dear. Another of those tired old right-wing tropes bites the dust.

Another myth busted: ‘strivers v skivers’

nef (the new economics foundation) has produced another mythbuster, this time debunking fallacies about welfare expenditure.

Only 2.6% of Britain’s social expenditure is received by able-bodied unemployed people. And the situation is dynamic; these people are not permanently unemployed:

In reality, people slip between employment and unemployment, often within the space of a few months, as the economy relies increasingly on short-term, low pay, insecure contracts. This happens even more in areas where the economy is especially weak. In Teesside, one of the UK’s struggling economic regions, research has found that, for many people, ‘shuttling between benefits and jobs’ has become their predominant experience of working life.

People in full-time work but whose pay is too little to live on receive a much greater share of benefits:

A far greater proportion of social expenditure is spent on people in paid work, through working tax credits, than is spent on the fit and able-bodied unemployed. Last year expenditure on Income Support and Working Tax Credits amounted to £13.8bn, more than double the £4.9bn paid out to JSA [Job Seeker’s Allowance] claimants. Taking into account all the different benefits available, and distinguishing between different groups by their primary benefit, 20.8 per cent of the total benefits bill is spent on employed people on low incomes, while only 2.6 per cent is actually spent on the able-bodied unemployed.

For the first time ever, in-work poverty has overtaken workless poverty, with 6.1 million people in working households living in poverty. Instead of tackling the problem of low income, the government is subsidising employers offering poor quality employment through working tax credits. Taxpayers are picking up the bill by topping up wages so that paid workers can feed and house themselves and their families.

The ‘strivers v skivers’ argument suggests there are two distinct groups in society and tries to pit them against one another. In reality, this caricature is a complete myth, and certainly no serious basis for devising any reform.

Postscript: Some sense on this subject from Chris Dillow (with thanks to Nick Barlow for spotting it).

Britain isn’t ‘broke’

“Britain has maxed out its credit card. The level of debt is too high, and the cost of servicing that debt risks bankrupting the UK. We’re in real danger of heading the same way as Greece.”

Really?

The ‘maxed-out credit card’ metaphor is actually complete bollocks, and nef (the new economics foundation) has just published a handy mythbuster to expose this metaphor as both false and damaging.

Old Political Sayings No.643: You can’t polish a turd

You know what they say. You cannot polish a turd – or can you?

This proposition has finally been put to the test. The MythBusters applied rigorous scientific methods and have definitively answered this age-old question:



Please, whatever you do, don’t tell Nigel Farage.

Next week: You can’t put lipstick on a pig.