The snow may be lovely, but what's with this blizzard of totally
meaningless statistics?  Every time some vaguely unexpected or
unusual event - let us take "lots of snow" as an example -
disrupts the smooth running of our lives, there is always
someone turning up on television or quoted in a newspaper
telling us how much the chaos has cost the country. With an air
of authority this person mentions a very large sum, and we
watchers and readers draw in our breaths and remark, "Wow. That
much?" But never have I heard an interviewer ask, nor the
asserter explain, how that figure was calculated. This time, my
informant was someone who appeared on Channel 4 on Monday
evening, proclaiming that the snow had cost "the UK economy"
£1.2bn that very day, and would cost £3bn over the whole week.
He was from the Federation of Small Businesses. I shouted "How
do you know?" at the screen and was prepared to let the matter
rest. Then I read Tuesday morning's papers and found that his
£1.2bn and £3bn had been slavishly adopted