The Statistics Department of Anguilla is on a media blitz. They have just launched a statistical booklet titled “Anguilla Facts and Figures 2009”. All this in celebration of Caribbean Statistics Day. The story being touted to the press is that the Deputy Governor, the Minister of Finance and the Attorney-General attended a “small gathering” at the Teachers’ Resource Centre to launch the booklet. Now, I ask you to read this and understand. Allegedly, the goal was “creating the environment for sustainable standards of living for the people demands proper policy making and macroeconomic management informed by sound statistical information”.
What the heck does that mean? I submit the following translation: “Fill out those forms we send you every year so we can decide how much to tax your backsides the following year!” That, I suggest, is all that these exercises are about.
Anyway, apropos of nothing, a few days ago I happened to be wasting time trolling though the Anguilla blogs when I came upon this one produced by the Statistics Department. Just in case you are not sufficiently interested to click on the link provided in the last sentence, let me explain. It is a Blog published by the Statistics Department promoting the upcoming 2011 Population Census. Other than the fact that they stole my template, there was nothing offensive about it.
Just that it appears to have died the death of abandonment. The only entry the Statistics Department has chosen to make on the Blog about the importance of the 2011 Population Census was that one announcement of 24 June 2009.
There is absolutely no other press release or announcement on the Blog.
There has been no follow-through since this first June posting. There is not a single comment, other than some idiot spammer from Greece
There has not, so far as I know, been any encouragement to the public to use the Blog. Maybe it was just a failed experiment?
So, I contacted them using the comment feature online. I wanted to know if this was it. Was there no plan to use the Blog effectively? Would there be no follow-through to the initial article?
That was two days ago. Response: Nil.
Typical of government? No, just of statistics. Statistics are for government to use or misuse as they want: “We are here to serve the purposes of government. The interests and enquiries of the public are nothing that we intend to waste time on dealing with or answering.”
Come on, Don. The project has started. A major government supporter has been given the "contract". Bidding? Who is being fooled?
ReplyDeleteThe booklet is actually called "Anguilla's Facts in Figures 2009" I got my copy today at the Post Office
ReplyDeleteI want to see the statistics for the load guarantee payments that the Tourist Board is giving to Kirby Hodge for flying, or perhaps more often, not flying, from San Juan to Anguilla. The ones that Donna Banks says are "Quite frankly, none of your business." Victor was on The Haydn Show last night (which was very good) and assured us we have an open government (which, stupid me, I never knew), so everything's all right then.
ReplyDeleteWish some of these current statistics were available on the Government's Statistics Department web site at http://www.gov.ai/statistics/. It's hard to get interested in statistics from 2003.
ReplyDeleteRemember folks, "macroeconomics" is, for the most part, pseudoscience. One step shy of using burnt chicken feathers to predict the future.
ReplyDeleteSee: http://www.realclearmarkets.com/printpage/?url=http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2008/12/macroeconomics_is_complete_bun.html , among other places.
Furthermore, what most people call "economics" is merely finance with the state's boot on its neck.
Just like philosophy was the "handmaiden" of theology in the dark ages, so too is finance the "handmaiden" of economics in the present. Just as philosophy and many other disciplines were finally freed from theology at the dawn of the age of science, someday finance, and Anguilla herself, will be free of the quackery that is "macroeconomics".