As the Producers of Newsnight feel this is relevant, and are NOT just harping directly from the Labour Electioneering Playbook, I presume their will be some political balance in this?

After all if the “Tory Toffs” line is designed to show who is in “in touch” with the voters, presumably they will ask the following:

Are the Labour Leadership “in touch”, let’s see:

Top Dog – Gordon Brown – son of the manse, degree and PhD at a precocious age. Normal?

His Boss – Lord Mandelson of Foy and Hartlepool – someone who is “in touch with the common man” if ever there was one. Doesnt everyone live in a Minimalist interior designed Notting Hill Penthouse worth £2.5 Million with no mortgage on it? Long live the Workers!!

The official Labour Deputy Leader – Harriet Harperson – Niece of (I think) The Countess of Milford Haven, Daughter of a Harley Street Physician, educated at uber posh St. Paul’s.

Let’s not forget of course our future unelected
Euro-Tsar too, ………..The Rt, Hon Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, who was educated at Fettes Academy (The “Eton of Scotland”).

How, How, How do they get away with this nonsense?

EPIC DALE!

(Matt Munro is an accountant)

The median income is the the ‘middle’ income, i.e. where 50% earn less than the median and 50% earn more. Seems the appropriate way to garner what the most typical wage is.

The mean average is inappropriate because two thirds of people earn less than it and if Bill Gates moves to England the mean average would shoot up despite the fact nobody else is any better off. The median hardly moves because of one person’s massive wage, which is why it is so good at measuring a meaningful average.

It is really annoying that people are so crap at basic maths – especially the media – but I suspect they do it deliberately and the public follow it hook line and sinker – no wonder people don’t understand that 60k is not average.

@6 Median is not the same as average, median means (in simple terms) the value that comes up the most often in a data range. I.e more people eran £23k than any other single amount, it is therefore not directly affected by very high/low numbers, which an average would be

An average family = 2 working parents, and with median incomes at around £25k, that means a family income of circa £50K, and if they have kids a coupld of K on top in tax credits.

The problem with council funding is that business rates (a potentially huge source of local govt income) are creamed off to national govt and then occasionally given back for the odd scheme that meets some spurious central agenda (e.g in Bristol the roads can only be “improved” with central govt funding if the improvements include bus/cycle lanes). Any govt that is serious about giving power back to the people needs to allow local taxes to be spent locally. and in a way that local people, rather than whitehall, decide.

Cameron hasn’t gone far enough: how about a promise to reduce all bandings in Wales by at least one band?

It might be better to wait for some details rather than factoring in an endless stream of assumptions?

By the way, while you’re feeling in an investigative mood, could you have a look around and see if you can find where Labour’s “we’ve saved 500,000 jobs in this recession” comes from. You wouldn’t only scrutinize Tory estimates, right?

If you are in the bottom 60% of earners and you vote tory you are going top get screwed. Either through higher taxes or lower services.

These average salaries mean nothing because they are kept artificially high by the huge amounts that the very rich earn. Much more relevant figure is the number of people who earn less than 30 thousand a year. It is well over 75% of the population.

D-Cam is doing the gig for London only? I am so fucking confused! I thought he was the caring NuTory that wanted all of the UK to be on an up if and when he takes No10.