Dompost learns not to take English’s word

Written By: - Date published: 1:09 pm, February 17th, 2010 - 13 comments
Categories: bill english, Economy, Media - Tags:

Relying on Bill English’s statements in the House yesterday, the Dompost writes (not online):

“Statistics NZ has revised the growth figures going back about two decades and discovered that between 2005 and 2008 the economy grew a mere 0.9% a year, not 1.5% as previously reported. And last year’s recession was deeper than we thought.”

Actually, growth averaged 1.7% per year from the September years 2006, 2007, and 2008. The revision brought that down from an average of 2.2%.

You know, it’s fair enough in a way that the Dom got conned on this one. They trusted the Minister of Finance to get his maths right. But perhaps they’ll check for themselves in the future and print a correction tomorrow.

After all, English is the guy who was busy rorting the housing allowance for tens of thousands of dollars while the economy shrank 2.2% in his first year, after all. Probably not the most trustworthy authority on the economy.

PS. I see David Cunliffe has the first question today “To the Minister of Finance: Does he stand by all his recent statements?”

13 comments on “Dompost learns not to take English’s word ”

  1. blinded by the right 1

    You need to alter your headline or your post, they don’t really correlate.

    Perhaps “Dompost needs to learn not to take English’s word”?

  2. Bright Red 2

    Oh dear. English repeated his broken numbers again in Parliament.

  3. ‘Revised’ is probably the key word here. The GDP tables for calendar years 2005 through 2008 do show GDP growth of 1.575%. English must be privvy to further revision. According to Statistics NZ revisions can be quarterly, annual or irregular.

    • Bright Red 3.1

      I’m on the Stats site now. I don’t see any revision apart from the major revision which came out in December with the September 2009 numbers. It’s those revised numbers that you’re using to get 1.575%.

      I find it hard to believe there has been another major (and secret) revision since that revision in Decembmer and the infoshare numbers, which are updated with any revision, come out like Marty says.

  4. tc 4

    Blinglish could feed them any BS and they’ll regurgitate it as fact……it’s all the MSM can do as the independant intelligent senior folk were driven/paid out sometime back.

    The nat’s must warm their hearts with this subserviant behaviour…..he who holds the power …..

  5. George.com 5

    I have figured out how English got his figures so wrong. He was actually wrongly quoting a different set of figures. Rather than GDP growth, he was using a set of internal National Party calculations. You see, I think that if you take the dollar amount that English double dipped, divide that by the amount of weeks John Key has been on holiday whilst Prime Minister and then minus the number of people added to the dole queue during Nationals time in Govt, you arrive at the figure of 0.9.

    [lprent: classic.. ]

  6. peterthepeasant 6

    George,
    I find your comment on “Morecamp and Unwise” very perceptive.
    I am really worried these two clowns will be back again next time around.

  7. David Cunliffe 7

    English’s has sounded increasingly shrill and desperate over recent days – he can’t come up with a straegy to go forward so he has fallen back on blaming all his problems on the Opposition!

    Work is underway to deconstruct the revised GDP figures – there is a multi-year retrspective adjustment and our team is working through the technicalities. I will give Standard readers an update as soon as we can line it all up.

Links to post

The server will be getting hardware changes this evening starting at 10pm NZDT.
The site will be off line for some hours.