Don’t Believe The Statistics, Rip Off Britain Is Alive & Well
Saturday, 12. March 2011
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When I was training as an accountant one of the subjects I had to cover was statistics. At the start of the course we were shown a graph of the stork population in Sweden over a 5 year period. We were then shown a graph of the baby births in Sweden during the same period and the two graphs were virtually identical. As more storks were born more children were born and vice-versa. So it would be a logical conclusion that what we were told as children, before we received sex education, that storks delivered babies to their mums and as more storks were born more mums received babies.
Now whilst this may be a good reason why I am now the proud father of 27 kids it goes to prove that you can’t always draw the right conclusions when using statistics. And so to a report that has a headline ‘British Drivers Pay Less Than Their American Counterparts.’ Wow have I been wrong with all my presentations over the last few years?
Does rip-off Britain no longer exist? The report continues, in a recent study by the American National Automobile Dealers Association(NADA) that the average cost of cars in the US are 35% higher than in the UK. The average cost of a car loan was also found to be correspondingly lower. What a load of bullshit!
First of all my own analysis found that in most cases you would pay the equivalent amount in dollars in the US as you would in pounds sterling for the same car in the UK. So a car costing £20,000 in the UK would cost £12,500 in the US.
So how has the writer of the article got it wrong? Well what they meant that on average we buy cheaper cars in the UK than the large gas guzzlers that many still opt for in the US. Whilst they buy big Cadillacs over there with fuel tanks the size of a small oil field we are happily tootaling around in a 1.0litre Micra costing significantly less – get it?
And the same applies to finance, no, finance isn’t cheaper over here but because we are funding cars that cost a grand over here whilst the Americans are funding cars costing the equivalent to £50,000 it’s not surprising that the average spent per month on finance is less over here than it is over there. In truth if you take out a car loan in the US you will pay 2.9% APR (US Bank website), over here you can expect to pay 9.9% APR (HSBC Bank). So there you have it, statistics saying one thing and me, as always telling you the naked truth – yep, rest assured that we still live in RIP OFF BRITAIN! By Graham Hill
