According to early evening news programmes on the telly, Alistair Darling has cut VAT by two and a half percent. That, according to my calculator, means a new rate of 17.0625 percent.
Do you think they meant to say "a cut of two and a half percentage points", perhaps, to 15%? A reduction of some 14.3 percent.
But don't trust my figures. I told you I was no good at maths.
And I'd be useless as a newsreader, a job which you might think would demand of its practitioners the ability to communicate information accurately for the enlightenment of us dimwit masses.
