Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Pensioners mugged by The Independent

Pensioners are under attack again. Today the mugger is "The Independent" newspaper. They conducted a survey asking whether pensioners should be immune from cuts and got a "No" from a majority of the public and of pensioners.

Asking whether pensioners should bear their share of the cuts is a weasel of a question. How about "should the government attack the poor to give tax cuts to the rich?" How many over 65's would say "yes" to that?

Ask a GCSE Foundation statistics student what is wrong with the question and the word "bias" would appear in their answer! There are "lies, damned lies and statistics" it would seem. A good old Victorian evaluation from Disraeli.

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