Interesting Links for 09-11-2012

[andrewducker]

• Has the EU Budget been rejected by auditors for the past 18 years?
  (tags: eu money fraud )
• Republicans control the House of Representatives because of massive gerrymandering
  (tags: usa politics fraud )
• What to do if you see your identical double
  (tags: hallucinations )
• Obama regrets promising new Game of Thrones book
  (tags: obama

Comments

[strawberryfrog]

Huh- the google Nexus 4 review contrasts starkly for the opinion that I had from several colleagues, i.e. "it's an LG. I had one of those. Never again. Avoid it." As a consequence it's back in the running for the role of my next phone.

[andrewducker]

You could give it three months and see if the glass bits all fall off...

[strawberryfrog]

Are you suggesting that I *not* buy one for about three months and see how other people get one with it? Fair enough, I do that with other gadgets too.

[andrewducker]

Yup - that's what I did with my Galaxy Nexus, and unless you urgently need a new phone there's no reason not to wait three months. The price will probably drop slightly too!

[randomchris]

Popular vote share for President - 50% to 48% or thereabouts.
Electoral College share - 332 versus 206 (assuming Obama takes Florida), which is about 61.8% to Obama.

Popular vote share for House - looks like at best 52% to 48% in the Democrat-Republican split (impossible to determine due to some Democrat-Democrat contests). House share - currently 233-192, which is about 55% Republican.

So I'd say that overall, that's a balanced outcome. One party got only slightly more of the vote, and got the Presidency by a big margin, but the other party got the House by a slightly smaller margin.

[andrewducker]

A balanced outcome would be "President Obama" (cos he got more votes overall than the other guy) and a house share that matched the voter percentages in each state.

Of course, a better voting system would be a massive improvement.

[theweaselking]

Uh, you say that like you think a larger share of the electoral college *matters*, or that getting the presidency "by a big margin" somehow makes up for winning the vote for the House and still losing the House.

That's only "balanced" in the Fox News "we give the truth and each variant on the lie equal time! Oh, we ran short of time so we cut the truth" sense of the word.

[philmophlegm]

The article linked to in that first link is at best misleading and at worst plain wrong. I'm guessing that it wasn't written by an auditor, and in fact not by anyone who understands what an audit does or what the powers of the European Court of Auditors actually include

[philmophlegm]

So let's look at this year's report, and see what opinion the ECA actually issued. That should be "opinions" not opinion, because in this report, the auditor actually issues a separate opinion on

[philmophlegm]

When fullfact.org states that "the EU Budget has not been "rejected" or "refused" by the auditors" it is also correct, but then this doesn't happen. (Well, actually in the commercial world, auditors do sometimes refuse to sign until the client pays their fees from last year's audit etc.) The ECA has issued an adverse opinion on these accounts. When fullfact.org says "its payments have been consistently found subject to significant error for the past 18 years. This is hardly good news, but it isn't as serious as some headlines imply" I think the website is being misleading

[andrewducker]

They agree at the end that "its payments have been consistently found subject to significant error for the past 18 years." - and their summary, to my eyes, seemed to agree substantially with yours.

So far as I can tell, the point is that there is 3.9% of errors, and anything more than 2% of errors count as "material" (or "significant"). Therefore there are material errors, hence an adverse opinion.

And you both agree on this.

Where, presumably, you disagree is the "So whose fault is all this?" section, where they point out that 80% of this funding is spent through national governments, who are responsible for the errors there, and that very little of the money is going missing through fraud. But as you don't talk about that bit above, it's hard to tell!

[philmophlegm]

No, the bit I disagree with is the underlying tone of the article which I interpret as "Eurosceptic newspapers are always banging on about this, but it's nowhere near as bad as they make it out to be". Since the europhile media is presenting the same story with much the same spin, and the opinion of the auditors is pretty damning, I don't think it is an accurate portrayal of the facts to say that "This is hardly good news, but it isn't as serious as some headlines imply."

[andrewducker]

They explain why they don't think it's as bad as it's made out to be - because the estimates of actual fraud are considered to be very low, and the responsibility for dealing with it is largely not at EU level. I can certainly see a quibble with both of those (the first statement is from the council, not the auditors, and the EU ought to have more controls over how governments spend its cash. Although many people would then complain about the latter). But you don't seem to be interested in engaging with their arguments - and tone can be argued over indefinitely (I agree that they should have included other sources for their quotes at the top though).