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Numbers and journalists

Cocaine and heroin worth £17,500,000 million seized from van at Channel Tunnel

From a regular reader.

£260 k’s worth per man, woman and child in the country.

15 thoughts on “Numbers and journalists”

  1. These valuations always make me smile – the real street value of that lot is around £7M. The cost to the importers (getting the odd load seized is priced in remember, just like shoplifting is to Tesco) is closer to £2M.

  2. BiK
    Yeah. Police are famous for it. Price at the highest you possibly pay for small amounts bought in the toilet of a club. In reality charlie delivered UK is about £10/g in those quantities. The rest is value added in the UK as it moves down the supply chain. It’s equivalent to pricing food at the farm gate on the basis of what goes on the plate in a top end restaurant.

  3. jgh, payer of taxes

    Another way journalists fail with numbers is employment taxes. Do they realise what you pay is actually twice the “headline” figure? I’ve just started a new contract, so usefully a “how to understand your payslip” leaflet came with my first payslip. I knew UK tax was high, but I was rather gobsmacked to see it in black and white.
    Employer’s NI: 9.5%
    Employee’s NI: 7.5%
    Income tax: 17.5%
    Agency fee: 2.5%
    What goes into my bank: 63%
    The National Insurance is just about exactly the same as the declared headline income tax. I don’t begrudge the agency fee, it’s almost the cheapest of the agencies I chose from, but less than 2/3rds of my employment costs goes into my pocket!

    And of course, as I run my own pension, there’s another 15% that fritters away, but that’s “my” spending. But that means less than half “my pay” ends up in my pocket! And the proggies insist we should be getting even less.

  4. Good god, once I’ve paid my council tax I’m down to 42%!

    SOLENT GREEN IS… wait…
    60% OF YOUR PAY GOES TO THE GOVERNMENT!

  5. Not to mention that they include the weight of the packing materials, dirt (when seizing plants), pallets, etc and just multiply that by some made up value anyway.

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