Thursday 28 January 2010

They've been doing overtime in The Department of Fakestatistics

From The Daily Mail (where the crowd is lapping it up of course):

Children as young as 11 are drinking the equivalent of 15 shots of vodka a week. An NHS survey of children between 11 and 15 last year found that one in six - an estimated 550,000 - said they had drunk alcohol in the previous week. Their average consumption was 14.6 units - equal to a pint of beer a day.

Had they done a survey on children between 7 and 15, then no doubt they would have found that only one-in-twelve had drunk alcohol, but the article would have started with "Children as young as 7..." Presumably they mean that the one-in-six who drink drink a pint a day; surely that's not the average for all 11-15 year olds?

...Almost as many girls as boys admitted drinking.

They could have said "Boys hardly drink more than girls", couldn't they?

The survey by the NHS Information Centre found that children are much more likely to drink if there is another drinker in their family. Only five per cent of youngsters in teetotal households ever touch alcohol, compared to 31 per cent in households where three or more people drink.

Well duh.

Around half of all pupils said their parents would not mind them drinking as long as they did not have too much.

That's the whole point, isn't it, the concept of "too much" which is by definition usually A Bad Thing.

The survey, which questioned pupils in 263 secondary schools across England, also found small falls in drug-taking and smoking. Eight per cent of pupils said they had taken drugs in the previous month while six per cent were smokers.

Junior spies.

10 comments:

Furor Teutonicus said...

And of course, these arseholes who work on these surveys were NEVER in school.

If they had been, they would know that no school boy would be caght bloody DEAD saying he did not smoke fifteen joints a day and dink six bottles of vodka per week, whilst throwing one over Heidi Klumm three times a night.

Gregg said...

Is that all? Bloody soft kids these days.

And my word verification is 'stolyma', which sounds like a vodka to me.

John Pickworth said...

WOW! FT, you got my school days bang on there, its so uncanny...

Well, when the lads were around of course ;-)

In actual fact, I never smoked a single cig until I was 19 and three quarters. I don't do drugs, then again, I was in primary school during the 60's so perhaps I did but was just too stoned to remember? Oh yeah, and I was scared witless of girls, still am.

Kids aren't stupid either. The authorities happily assume a child cannot do any wrong and will automatically tell the truth when face by an important person on Government business. They couldn't be more wrong. Most of them will smell a rat and fib; any tale but the real one. Kids are great at keeping secrets, especially those concerning their private life.

I remember my class being asked by the music master what gifts the kids had received that Christmas. Quite an innocent question you might have thought? But each of us replied with a list of unlikely items that included at least a new bike and several other must haves for the time (mid-1970's). In actual fact, only three of us got a new bike that year, most having to settle for the usual fare of jigsaws, games and comic annuals. In part our answers were exaggerated so as to appear poor (times were tough then for everyone) but also because we just didn't want a teacher to know our private stuff. And remember, this was an entire class, not just a few savvy individuals.

I'd further argue that kids today are even more suspicious of authority. They know what's going on.

bayard said...

Ah, the Daily Fail. This Facebook group just about sums it up on the matter of health: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=269512464297&ref=nf

Mark Wadsworth said...

B, that is awesome :)

Dick Puddlecote said...

That must be a severely abridged list. Smoking isn't on it.

Furor Teutonicus said...

Does cannabis not trump tobacco in "ban it" poker?

Furor Teutonicus said...

WOW!

That is 2,400 bottles of beer!!!

Or six per day. When you do not take the bottle deposit into account.

bayard said...

"Or six per day. When you do not take the bottle deposit into account."

Only in Germany - bottle deposit is but a fading memory to our fathers in the UK. Here we have "recycling" instead.

Furor Teutonicus said...

"Recycling" is O.K when you get paid for it.

Although with bottles, YOU have paid it in the first place, so...

We have it on beer and pop tins (at 25 cents), Jpghurt jars (25 cents) and plastic pop bottles 15 or 15 cents depending on size)as well.