Thursday 8 September 2011

Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

Helen, Your Freedom and Ours, has a post with an explanation of what constitutes imports and exports where the compilation of the various figures are concerned.

She ends her post with the words: "Is it not time to publish a more up-to-date version?" - to which I would insert the word 'correct' twixt 'up-to-date' and 'version'.

Well worth a read!

3 comments:

Dead Dog Bounce said...

So by my reading, some of UK export and import trade is with counter-parties outside the EU, but miss-labeled as intra-EU trade due to the use of Rotterdam or Antwerp as intermediate ports?

WitteringsfromWitney said...

DDB: Yup and has been an on-going fiddle for yonks!

TomTom said...

Worse than that. Because of the EU Tariff levied on goods shipped THROUGH Rotterdam it shows the Dutch as having the highest per capita net contributions to EU Budgets even though the tariff is paid by customers in other countries who buy the goods sourced via Rotterdam

Take for instance oil products.....