Wednesday 2 May 2012

Dull Political Post - Ignore

While responding to this article in the Guardian -  No, Boris – spending more on London won't fix the country's economic woes.  Which includes the sub-headline:  London gets the lion's share of taxpayer money for health, housing and transport. Now Boris wants to blow more on the capital. But his argument is flatly wrong.

Using the figures provided by the writer, Aditya Chakrabortty, economics leader writer, I spent 10 minutes with my spreadsheet to get this....


Region

Spending Population        pop%    spending
North East
4 24,378      2,515,442 4% 5%
North West 11 63,663      6,853,200 11% 12%
Yorkshire and the Humber 8 44,427      5,142,400 9% 8%
East Midlands 6 35,238      4,172,179 7% 7%
West Midlands 8 46,591      5,267,237 9% 9%
East
8 44,098      5,388,140 9% 8%
London
14 78,957      7,753,600 13% 15%
South East
11 63,109      8,000,550 13% 12%
South West
7 41,546      4,928,458 8% 8%
Total England 79 442,007     50,021,206 83% 82%
Scotland
9 51,629      5,222,100 9% 10%
Wales
5 29,121      3,006,400 5% 5%
Northern Ireland 3 18,898      1,799,392 3% 3%



541,655     60,049,098


Which I think shows that regional spending in the UK is largely in line with population.  True London does get 15% of the spending with 13% of the population but then basic services cost much more than in the rest of the country. It certainly doesn't constitute the lion's share.

Now I agree with Chakrabortty that we need to spread the economy more evenly throughout the country but this kind of mendacious, statistically illiterate attack on London and Londoners while fashionable in this Olympic year is not exactly helpful.

4 comments:

Leslie said...

Well there you go again, being logical and making sense by using simple mathematics. Honestly, what ARE we to do with you?

drbmiller said...

Hmm...
North West (where I live)
10% population
9% spending
London
13% Population
15% spending

So you get 3% more (equivalent of 1.9m more citizens than you have).
That sounds like the "Lions Share" to me.

Ben Aaronovitch said...

According to my figures the North West gets 12% spending with 11% of the population.

Have you got your own figures - post em if you've got them.

Ben Aaronovitch said...

Some more figures from my spread sheet.

Average per capita spend...
England Only £8,336
Whole UK £9,020

Percentage of per capita spend above the England only and Whole UK figures are as follows.

England UK
North East 10% 7%
North West 5% 3%
Yorkshire -2% -4%
East Midlands -4% -6%
West Midlands 0% -2%
East -7% -9%
London 15% 13%
South East -11% -13%
South West -5% -7%

Scotland 12% 10%
Wales 10% 7%
Nth. Ire. 19% 16%

Given that London's living costs are 25-30% greater than Manchester's and that the bulk of service spending is on workforce than London looks under resourced.