Blogger Can't Do Logic

What a joke of an economics correspondent Larry Elliott of The Guardian (lefty nonsense rag) has become. He splashes in a way that implies that people who run scoops based on inside information are somehow more credible that "secret" Treasury documents reveal that the budget cuts will cost 1.3 million jobs. Shock. Horror. The end of the world is nigh, he said flippantly.

Well it would be if you were one of the 1.3 million. But it doesn't really matter because public sector jobs are expendable, as the public sector does nothing useful really. Other than all of the bloody useful stuff it does. Blame the nasty Tories. Thatcher. Milk Snatcher, though what the fuck that has to do with anything I don't know.

Then, in the middle of the story, comes this sentence...

The Treasury is assuming that growth in the private sector will create 2.5m jobs in the next five years to compensate for the spending squeeze.

Now, I know that logic is not my strong point, but even I can work out that "WILL cost 1.3 million jobs" and "ASSUMING growth of 2.5m jobs" does not mean that it is as easy as glibly concluding that in fact this government will create 1.2 million jobs. And give school kids their milk back as well presumably. But I will still call Larry a prat.

Yes, I have every right to criticise a story that presents only part of the story in its headline to make its point. I am a past master of it. After all, either you cherry pick figures or you don't.You believe the one you want to believe and not the one you find inconvenient to your argument, something you would never catch me doing.

But even if the equation was as simple as the maths I try and employ, to suggest that the 1.3 million people losing their jobs will automatically find employment in the good old private sector is surely wishful thinking at best.

UPDATE: For the record, I don't believe the 2.5 million figure either. So why am I banging on about this? Oh, and by the way, for any lefty economists reading this, you might like to remember that it's not budgets which create jobs, it's private sector risk taking entrepreneurs. Like me. Equally, it's risk taking entrepreneurs and the free market that also leads to people losing jobs when things go wrong. Think on that.