Humanising the numbers

Gordon Brown loves hiding behind numbers.  He does it almost every PMQs – when he reels off the usual tractor production statistics – and he has done it in every Budget he’s been involved in, either as Chancellor or Prime Minister.  My guess is that he hopes to cover up not only how bad things are, but also the human dimension of the fiscal and economic crisis.  £billions, £trillions of debt, what does it matter?  So long as he can continue to talk abstractly about “investing in growth”.

Of course, revealing the debt crisis for what it is – an aberration which will burden the British public for decades – is an important cause.  It’s one of the reasons why we introduced our own debt counter – which shows each family’s share of the UK debt – on the right-hand side of the Coffee House home page.  And it’s why the latest