A charts post

Some links, with combined themes of data visualisation and rage.

This is from the Economist but don’t let that put you off. I still hear people saying “well, you say the Euro is awful, but what about bedroom tax eh eh?” This is pure whataboutery. The enormity of the disaster is pointed up by the 10th and 90th percentile bars.

That said I suspect the UK would look worse if they didn’t include the recovery in 2009-2010 in there. Also, the IFS estimates of the impact of austerity usually have a curve with a great big bend just before you get to the poorest 10 per cent.

Similarly, here’s the latest version of the Eurozone vs. US comparison. Euro fail:

fail

I think I’ve said this before, but one of Obama’s greatest achievements has been stalling the austeritarians, with the classic device of setting up a commission to think the unthinkable. American lefties have been promising that he’ll implement a plan to gut social security or whatever realsoonnow since inauguration in 2009 and in some cases pre-inauguration, but here we are deep into the second term, and the issue has slid way down the agenda. Despite going to the wall with government shutdowns and all kinds of drama, neither the teabaggers nor the very serious people have managed to deliver a pukka federal austerity budget, and the chart makes the distinction very, very obvious. Given how powerful the institutional forces for austerity economics evidently are, this is a little masterpiece of delaying tactics. I guess he really is a Fabian.

And this is probably the best chart as such I’ve seen for a while, from here. The blue is what respondents think the ratio between CEO pay and workers’ pay should be; the red is what they think it is; the grey is the actual value.

actualestimated

It’s from the Harvard Business Review, but I notice they had the goodness not to actually title it “Yippee!!!”

And here’s a map of local authorities in England by percentage declaring an English identity:

The obvious point is that English == rural and eastern, with some twists. (East Lancs, for example, seems to change from valley to valley.) On an opt-in basis, basically no big city would go for an English parliament. (Leeds and Bradford are diluted by including their dales hinterlands in the metropolitan districts – you can get pretty woodsy and technically be in Bradford.) Nigel Farage would have to pick between Hull, Sunderland, and Torquay for his capital.

I’d like to see a chloropleth version of this with population scaling, and I’ve got the data in Fusion Tables so I may yet have a crack at some more maps. Also, it validates the finding from my Monarchist Map that Purbeck is weird, although I’ve been there and to be honest it wasn’t hard to spot. Before you ask, Ken Clarke’s constituency, which was the only big concentration of Jubilee parties north of London, stands out for its relatively low Englishness. I presume they’re like me, BRITISH, DAMMIT.

15 Comments on "A charts post"


  1. It strikes me too that Ireland had the chance to escape some of the bank debts, but the Dail, being totally in thrall to the bankers, agreed to take it all on, which has left the country with crippling debts. IIRC, something similar happened in Spain.
    The obvious point being don’t let your banking system run up massive debts, and if they do, don’t take the burden on them onto the general government system, because you will be fucked.

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  2. On ‘Englishness’, 52%+ still seems pretty high – I’m quite surprised. The big dark green blob that is That London tells its own story, too. You can see the stage being set for Westminster Tory panic & ‘white working class’ myth-making – on one hand the Kippers of Clacton & Hartlepool (who’ve basically never seen a brown face & don’t see why they should start now), on the other a none-more-multi-cultural everyday reality.

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    1. I need to test this, but the data set, the NOMIS 2011 Census National Identity question, provides “English only”, “English and British”, and “English and one other” as options*, and I presume the number in the map is the inclusive definition, the percentage declaring any English identity whatsoever.

      *It also does this for all the options – British, Welsh, Cornish, Scottish, Irish, Northern Irish – so you can opt for Welsh but British, English but Welsh, etc.

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      1. Still surprised – when I was a kid ‘British’ was What We Were, and ‘English’ went along with an enthusiasm for morris dancing and real ale. (Both of which I’m very much in favour of, but I realise I’m in the minority.)

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      1. No dark green in Manchester or Birmingham, though, or anywhere else outside Greater London as far as I can tell – apart from a whisker to the west which appears to be Uxbridge, aka Heathrow.

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          1. I’m making a point about ‘dark green’ as distinct from ‘light green’. My original comment starts with a reference to the 52% ‘light green’ cutoff, but the London point was meant to be separate & to refer to the complete absence of sub-37% dark green areas outside the M25 (unless Uxbridge counts).


      2. And Oxford – handy hint, you can find Oxford on maps by intersecting the line up from the Solent with the line West from the River Blackwater estuary 🙂 ) – in these sort of demographics Oxford is helped by Oxford district being tightly drawn round the city – absurdly so, really, hence lots of aggro over growth, building, the green belt etc. Though of course Oxford East had a Labour MP in the dark days of 1987.
        I am the (adults) membership secretary of our athletics club – England Athletics want your nationality and want English / Welsh etc. – what I say on the form is “Nationality (optional – asked for by England Athletics for U.K. please indicate English etc.)”. Without doing a precise count I reckon over 50% say British not English.

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  3. That HBR post is amazing. Nice find. (though the scale on the chart is a bit difficult to read …. maybe just old age.)

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  4. Given the awfulness of the Eurozone, and its unresponsiveness to grassroots political reform, what do we do? Isn’t this a kipperish argument in favour of either sandbagging Europe further or encouraging countries to withdraw from the Euro?

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    1. Isn’t this a kipperish argument in favour of either sandbagging Europe further or encouraging countries to withdraw from the Euro?

      Just bombing the ECB into a reeking crater would probably do the trick. Remember, last time the RAF flattened Frankfurt, it was the start of thirty years of high economic growth, greater equality and improving civil rights.

      Reply


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