| This innocuous looking story appeared today, Wednesday 3rd June about the Welsh Government's reaction to the "right to buy" scheme announced by the UK Government. You can read the full story here |
In what I assume is a statistical or literary oversight as opposed to the more insidious slight of hand, the reported data states: "The consultation revealed 76% of respondents - including Local Authorities, housing associations and social housing tenants - supported the reduction of the maximum sales discount and 63% were in favour of developing legislation to end the Right to Buy."
Without being overly confrontational, this claim is flatly untrue. The link to the raw data substantiates it.
What the raw data says is: "The majority of respondents who stated a clear preference agreed with both proposals 52 out of 83 responses (63 per cent) in respect of ending
Right to Buy, 53 out of 70 responses (76 per cent) regards reducing the maximum discount"
The key part of this sentence that has been omitted from the official Welsh Government site is: "who stated a clear preference" - the 76% and 63% are from those who had a clear preference - not from the overall survey responders.
If we analyse the data taking everyone who replied into account, we find that the aforementioned numbers are adjusted as follows:
What looked like a significant majority supporting Welsh Government proposals has fallen to roughly 50/50 - clearly not a glowing endorsement of the proposals.
And whilst we're at it - how many responses from the 3,000,000 people who live in Wales. According to Wikipedia, 22% of the population of Wales is less than 20 years old, so 78% of this 3,000,000 is roughly 2,340,000 adults who could complete the survey.
How many responses to the survey:........ 94, of which only 30 claimed to actually be "social tenants"
Even Family Fortunes claims to survey 100 people to find out what we wear to bed!
Here at Coch Towers we are beginning to feel somewhat manipulated and over spun. We're sure that this "omission" will be claimed as just that, but sadly we fear otherwise.
Without being overly confrontational, this claim is flatly untrue. The link to the raw data substantiates it.
What the raw data says is: "The majority of respondents who stated a clear preference agreed with both proposals 52 out of 83 responses (63 per cent) in respect of ending
Right to Buy, 53 out of 70 responses (76 per cent) regards reducing the maximum discount"
The key part of this sentence that has been omitted from the official Welsh Government site is: "who stated a clear preference" - the 76% and 63% are from those who had a clear preference - not from the overall survey responders.
If we analyse the data taking everyone who replied into account, we find that the aforementioned numbers are adjusted as follows:
- 76% supporting the reduction falls to 56%
What looked like a significant majority supporting Welsh Government proposals has fallen to roughly 50/50 - clearly not a glowing endorsement of the proposals.
And whilst we're at it - how many responses from the 3,000,000 people who live in Wales. According to Wikipedia, 22% of the population of Wales is less than 20 years old, so 78% of this 3,000,000 is roughly 2,340,000 adults who could complete the survey.
How many responses to the survey:........ 94, of which only 30 claimed to actually be "social tenants"
Even Family Fortunes claims to survey 100 people to find out what we wear to bed!
Here at Coch Towers we are beginning to feel somewhat manipulated and over spun. We're sure that this "omission" will be claimed as just that, but sadly we fear otherwise.