Liz Suggests

Email registration

Free weekly email update

Great products and special offers for Spectator readers

Click here for great value events

Channelling Dean Baker

Wednesday, 7th May 2008

Dean Baker is an American economist with something of a mission to persuade newspapers to put numbers into proportion. There's no point in telling people $x billion from the Federal budget, for example, as most people have no idea of the size of said budget and thus the numbers are meaningless.

While I disagree with Dean on many things (start with basic worldview and work up from there) this necessity of explaining numbers has my full support. So, another brick in that particular wall:

Green belt land equal to 1,100 football pitches is being concreted over every year under Labour, research published today suggests.

Oooh, my, sounds terrible, doesn't it?

Using government statistics, the CPRE has calculated that in every year since 1997, an average 1,100 hectares of green belt has been developed. A hectare is roughly 2.5 acres or 12,000 square yards. At least 45,240 homes have been built on the green belt since 1997.

Horrors! OK, there is one response:

He added: "What the CPRE fail to tell you is that since 1997 the overall amount of green belt has grown by 33,000 hectares."

Hmm. But how important are these numbers?

Around 13 per cent of England is designated as green belt.

Ah....and England is roughly 50,000 square miles, or 32 million acres, or 12.8 million hectares. 13% of that is 1.7 million hectares of Green Belt. Or, by the CPRE figures we're building upon 0.06 % of the green belt each year. Or in 17 years we would build upon an entire 1% of it.

Oh Noes! in two centuries time it could all be gone!

OK, back to sleep everyone, having put this number in proportion we find that there are probably better things to worry about. Anyone know how to get a particularly stubborn stain out of a white shirt?