Written By:
Eddie - Date published:
9:21 am, August 25th, 2010 - 7 comments
Categories: Economy, john key, making shit up -
Tags:
Prime Minister John Key has credited his government’s economic policies for the price of fruit and vegetables falling by 6.5%.
Some ‘experts’ have argued that if prices have fallen it’s probably because the strong dollar relative to our trading partners has seen the world price internationally traded foods fall when dominated in New Zealand dollars.
But those guys are dicks. It’s clearly because of all those fruit and vegetable price reduction policies the government has introduced.
Others have pointed out that the fruit price index is really only down 3.9% since November 2008 and vegetables are actually up 14.4%.
But who are you going to believe? The facts or that Nice Man Mr Key?
The Prime Minister could not be contacted for further comment because he was holding a press conference unveiling further details for the government-sponsored piss-up at ‘Party Central’ and new laws criminalising parents who let teens have a sip of wine with dinner.
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a lie a day keeps the media at bay?
Is that a deliberate tactic? Tell heaps of lies in rapid succession and hope (know) that the noble fourth estate (pfft) will only have time to pin you one one or two (or none) of them.
The Labour MPs say that it takes a few days to gather all the relevant data and correct stats in order to counter the govt every time they do this.
And that’s never going be good enough, ‘cos by that time there are a whole new batch of lies to counter and last week’s ones have sunk in.
Ideas?
Amend parliaments standing orders so that all statistical claims must have mathematical proof presented, with sources and any estimates/assumptions clearly detailed. That way the opposition party could run through the presented numbers and sources and at the least say “this doesn’t look right”, as well as giving them a leg-up on where to look for real data.
captcha: identify
lawl, that’s the classic Gish Gallop, and yes, it’s a deliberate rhetorical tactic, used to overwhelm your opponents with bullshit, rather than actual evidence.
Me thinks someone should pass the above link onto Labour MP’s, for there has been much research done by the global evilutionary science conspiracy into countering the tactic. Of course, the currently available solutions may need some modifications to deal with the media’s inability to deal with reality. aka Labour will likely be accused of “bullying” and “being unfair” to Key, when all they’re doing is fact checking his claims, and not letting them pass by unchallenged.
So how do they choose the ‘basket’ of fruit and veges to make this comparison? Is it in-season stuff only? Do they compare the prices on a ‘real’ money basis to the same ‘basket’ the previous year? Has there been a glut in the in-season fruit this year? So many variables… I can’t help thinking that it would be easy to manipulate the figures one way or the other.
I can only say that I’ve switched off listening to Fruitcake Key and his deputy, Nutbar English.