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Anorak News | Fraser Nelson On Brown’s Porkies

Fraser Nelson On Brown’s Porkies

by | 17th, July 2008

DOES Gordon Brown tell the whole truth and nothing but? Fraser Nelson looks at the details…

1. “We now have the second biggest defence budget in the world”. This dodgy figure is cooked up by looking at military spending in nominal terms – rather than adjusting for purchasing power parity (PPP). If you spend £1 million it will obviously go further in China than Britain – which is why analysts routinely use PPP adjustments for international comparisons. Brown takes the raw data from the Stockholm Peace Institute (find it here, pdf). Unadjusted for PPP (ie, the dodgy raw data Brown uses) than America is first ($547bn) then Britain ($59.7bn), China ($58.3bn), France ($53.6bn) and Japan ($43.6bn). But adjust for PPP and the real figure has Britain fifth. And by the way, Brown inserted “as a share of GDP” afterwards. He’d forgotten his own scam. If you take it as a share of GDP then Britain at 2.6% is fifth behind the India (2.7%), Russia (3.6%), the US (4.0%) and the Saudis (8.5%).

We’re number 24…



Posted: 17th, July 2008 | In: Reviews Comments (3) | TrackBack | Permalink