The maths of rioting
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Thanks for downloading the More or Less podcast from BBC Radio 4. Here's Tim Harford.
Hello and welcome to More or Less, a statistical water cannon that we're not afraid to use. Over the next 27 minutes, we'll try to answer one of the least pressing questions of the week. When should you buy a lottery ticket to make it more likely that you'll win than die before the draw takes place? But we'll also be dealing with the financial crisis. And first of all, with the riots and looting across English cities this week. Why did they happen? Was it the cuts? Soft policing? A broken society? And can a look at the numbers tell us more? Here's Harriet Harman, Labour's deputy leader.
There is a sense that young people feel they're not being listened to. That is not to justify violence. But I think that when you've got the trebling of tuition fees, they should think again about that.
When did More or Less introduce the question about riots and what will the episode cover?
When you've got the EMA being taken away, when you've got jobs being cut and youth unemployment rising and they're shutting the job centre in Camberwell, well, you should think again about that because this is going to cost money. This does not help. All of this does not help reduce the deficit.
OK, well, let's try to figure this out. Here's Phil Kemp. Phil, you've been hard at work on all this. What have you found? Well, Harriet Harman seemed to be suggesting that budget cuts were linked to the riots. But the journalist Toby Young, writing in his Daily Telegraph blog, rejects that argument. And he quotes figures to prove it. He says the average monthly public expenditure in the year ending June 2011 was actually higher than the year ending June 2010. So he's basically saying that there haven't been any cuts yet. Is that true? Yeah, well, basically, it is true that even adjusting for CPI inflation, the government did spend more last year than Labour did the year before. So Toby Young, yeah, he's right about that.
OK, well, I'd like to look a little closer at this. We've heard this kind of claim before. And actually, Toby Young cites as his source Fraser Nelson, the editor of The Spectator. We interviewed Fraser about this last series. Now, a couple of things are worth mentioning. The first is that, sure, year on year, spending was slightly higher in the most recent year. But over the past six months, there has been a distinct decline in spending. And the second thing to say is actually two big chunks of government spending. They're roughly the same size as each other. So one is departmental spending. That includes defence, the NHS, police. And the other is what's called annually managed expenditure. That's interest on the national debt, pensions, unemployment benefit.
Now, departmental spending is being cut. Annually managed spending is rising and the two are roughly balancing each other out. Which raises the point that you can't really blame cuts in general. You want to look at specific spending, which might be expected to affect the mood in inner city Manchester or Birmingham and so on. And that's exactly what Harriet Harman tried to do. So she pointed to cuts in education maintenance allowance, the rise in university tuition fees and cuts to youth services as possible causes. Now, what's going on here? Well, the EMA isn't being scrapped until September. And tuition fees aren't being raised until next September. So if there is an effect there, it's an anticipation of cuts that haven't happened yet.
But what's happening to youth services is certainly worth paying attention to. I looked at Haringey Council, which includes Tottenham, where the trouble started. Their youth services budget has taken a cut of £1.6 million this year. That's down from just under £3 million last year. And it goes down even more next year, so they'll be spending less than £1 million. And that's a cut of around 70%. It's a massive cut. It is massive. What is it per teenager? What? I'm teasing. I'm teasing. I've looked this up already. OK, so there are about 20,000 teenagers in Haringey, roughly. Now, a cut of £1.5 million to youth services is a cut of £75 per teenager.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:50
2
When did More or Less introduce the question about riots and what will the episode cover?
0:50–4:00
3
What evidence links government spending cuts to the recent English riots?
4:00–9:21
4
How do departmental spending and annually managed expenditure affect claims about cuts?
9:21–22:47
5
Can austerity and historical data predict unrest in Britain specifically?
22:47–27:55