Great (And Unfulfilled) Expectations Of An Intelligent Journalist

With official figures confirming the widely held view that the UK economy is going to hell in a handcart, you'd expect an august organisation like the BBC to report this important news to the public they allegedly service. And bless them, they tried the darnedest. Unfortunately, there is no try, there is only do, or do not...

Because what the Beeb are actually reporting is "UK economic growth at standstill". And unlike James Graham's example, it's not just faulty headline composition, the whole article talks about "growth being unchanged" and "growth contracting". In case it needs spelling out, what the ONS measures is the percentage change in the size of the economy, which either shows it to be growing, contracting, or stable. This month's figures show the economy at 0.0% change, i.e. stable; the growth isn't at a standstill, for this quarter it simply doesn't exist.

I wouldn't mind, but this comes just a day after part two of the annual GCSE easier-than-it-was-in-my-day-a-thon. Well clearly it's not if even the economics journalists can't correctly evaluate a percentage change when it stares them in the face...