GRAND THEFT AUTO...

I had to share this with you as it is a piece of genius data analysis. A comparison of car theft crime rates with sales of a video game purported to be one of the factors behind a rise in crime over the same period...

Shoots (pun intended) down those who say video games promote crime.

It comes from an interesting infographic that looks at car crime rates, unfortunately in the US rather than anywhere else, though there is a small section on international rates of car crime. This includes the alarming statistic that 9.7% of all car theft in the world occurs in Britain.

By any measure this is quite a surprise given that Britain's 62.2 million people account for barely 0.1% of the world's entire population. However, our car stock is going to be higher given much of the world doesn't even own one.. leaves the blog to go and find statistics on global car pool..

DIRTY FEET...

Every once in a while you have to do very little on a blog to create an impact!

This is one of those posts. A great and engaging infographic, with colour, attraction and loaded with information. Enjoy.

Global Carbon Footprint infographic

NEW GRAPHICS...

This week we are excited at 'Polonsky Towers' as we have launched a new Infographics business (@ewinfographics if you want to follow us on twitter).

Therefore, I thought I'd keep the blog posting light and simply put up a link to an infoG (I am getting tired of typing that long word already?!) about a subject that means something to me - hailing from the land of Fish and Chips as I do...

So, without further ado (click the graphic to go to the original large scale version)...

by Wildyles

east west infographics also has a pinterest board if you want to follow us.
Here's the link.

Expect more along the same theme very soon.

BRICKS OR HORSES...

Here’s an interesting detail. Since the early 1970s what happens in the bloodstock market is mirrored by the property market and wider economy 18 months later.  By that I mean the sale values of unbroken, unraced yearlings.  When they reach a peak, the property market runs ahead for a year and a half and then tops out.

The last boom for yearling sales reached its peak during 2006.  During that year property investor John Magnier bid $16m for a colt named The Green Monkey. The horse proved hopeless and values tailed off. So too, did the economy and had a disastrous year in 2008.

And the good news is...

...at end 2011 the bloodstock market is buoyant again!

Prices achieved at Tattersall's October sale in Newmarket were up 35% year on year.  Property investor Sir Robert Ogden bought a filly for £900,000.

So, in 18 months will the property market and fortunes be booming again?  On the strength of the econometric analysis you wouldn't lay odds much higher than 2:1 or maybe even odds on?

ECONOMY WATCH..

  

Who knows where the UK economy is heading?

Public sector employment is falling.  That is, in the main, a good thing.  From where I sit - and it is an educated and informed position - the people I've seen losing jobs in the public sector in the past year or two have been well deserved recruits to the dole lines.  The really good ones, the committed individuals, are still there or left in frustration some years ago.

I wouldn't employ many of the recent redundancies let's put it that way.  These are the people who could never quite grasp that the rest of the world wasn't full of 'training days', extended leave periods for illness and the like.  Almost every email to one of these people would get an instant auto-response saying, "sorry I am out of the office until x and will not be receiving my emails...'

But private sector employment took a hit at the beginning of the recession.  And it hasn't picked itself up yet.  Not even to fill the drop in employment from two years ago let alone to create new jobs for all those useful public sector people now sat at home [at this point the reader should not get unduly concerned for their welfare as many of these people are sat on bundles of (our) cash from very attractive redundancy payments let alone the promise of their cosy public sector, final salary pensions kicking in].

So, here's what the graph looks like with some historical perspective...

Who knows where that line is going to turn - up or down?

In short, nobody.

 

NOBODY'S BITCH...

David Droga is an ad executive who jumped out of his fat salary partner position in New York some time ago.  He now runs a very successful 120+ strong advertising agency in New York and has a client list that includes Puma, Unilever and Microsoft.

David's advice to anyone who seeks him out to ask such is, "not all the stars will line up at once, you don't need a wacky point of view, get yourself a strong business partner and don't pitch unless you get paid."

In other words, "You're nobody's bitch."

Times are harder than usual to come by work for anyone involved in the pressing of palms, listening to clients problems, dreaming up of creative solutions.  But I fully agree with this adage.  There's absolutely no reason to go and prostitute yourself on the streets at the lowest common denominator price.  You only end up working harder for less.

This is relevant. In the UK right now we are facing a veritable tsunami of ex-public sector employees deluging into the one-man band world of 'consultancy'. They are clutching a little black book of former colleagues and contacts at local authorities and regional agencies across the land.

The main culprits have probably resurrected their LinkedIn profile lately and addded a whole heap of similar concubines to make themselves feel warm and cosy (LinkedIn UK had 3m members in late 2009 and had added a further 1m by June 2010 for example).  A few are already taking the leap, taking the money (correction taking the taxpayers money) and setting up on their own.  Cheekier ones amongst them have secured three month handover contracts and are contracted back to the place that let them go - typically to train more junior staff how they did their job (because it was so difficult you know).

And so, just like the chart of public sector employment that runs sharply uphill between
1998 and 2008 (see my previous blog) one should expect a sharp increase in self employment in the next decade.  And if these people don't set up so called consultancy businesses they will probably start to bake cupcakes and sell them given what I've seen on facebook and elsewhere?

Thing is for most of these people, they were not very, how shall we put it, efficient at their job - we know that now - by 2008 it took 30% more public sector employees to keep the machine oiled as it did in 1997.  I know this from first hand and can show you examples of people taking a month-plus to write reports that would have taken me a matter of days - and they had whole departments of research support too!

Anyway.. To my opening point..  I had a meeting with a prominent property agent last week at which he was moaning about the fact that work is getting harder to find, contracts to secure etc etc.. The reaction of his company - one of the top four commercial agents in the world - is to start to drop day rates, commission fee percentages and fight it out with everyone else in the market.  Now I think this is false and promptly told him so.  There's nothing wrong with becoming more competitive - and any consultant's client should force this as much as possible - but I think by simply competing on price in such a naked way sends out (at least) three very unprofessional and poor signals:

• the first is a statement that we can do it for less but in the past
  ten years when times were good we were taking more money
  out of your pocket than we should have been.
  Not a great statement to make?

• the second is saying we are desperate enough now to undercut
  our rivals just to secure your business - hence you the client are the
  most important factor in the equation and wield all the power.  This
  of course should be something that a good consultant makes a client feel
  whilst very firmly retaining the control in the relationship.  I tend to try
  and make the client see the benefits of hiring our firm or buying our products
  and they then feel grateful for you pointing out their competitors are already
  doing this so they might just lose out if they don't etc etc - regain control.

• Lastly, by dropping fees in an all-out battle with competitors you say, "we are
  no different to anyone else." I firmly believe my business to be unique.  We do
  things others don't.  Our services stand above the crowd.  Why would I want
  to line up on the Mac-menu with everybody else? Conviction and stamina have
  got me to where I am today in my business.

One thing is for certain then, our day rates will not be dropping now times are a little harder.  Our product prices are now lower it must be said, but clients are being told how we have achieved this - economies of scale, knowledge of their geography, not quite as much background research going into the final product unless they pay the old, higher price.

I am nobody's bitch!

Interesting links:
Social networking stats for 2010 summary
10 surprising facts about LinkedIn membership in the uK

WHAT A WHOPPER!

  

I am having to work today, a Sunday.  A very rare ocassion for me, but worth it believe you me.  My leisure time doesn't come cheap so if you want a piece of it, you're gonna have to pay a huge whopping amount per hour for me!

Talking of whoppers, I noticed this morning that somebody in the UK won the Euromillions Lottery prize outright.  A huge £84m+ for one winning ticket.  I reckon even Charlie would've swapped in that slip of golden Wonka paper for that lottery ticket?!

But, it does make you wonder how the people that suddenly come into such a large sum (you could launch a fairly serious takeover of a stock market listed company with that kind of cash) cope with it.  I wish them well.

All I know for certain is.. it wasn't me! so on with the Sunday working.  Which makes a refreshing change to be honest.. just not every weekend!

A quick late addition, something I've stumbled across today in a search for research on housing market trends since the Census (if you have any, pls contact me!): a recent research paper on The First 15 years of the UK National Lottery was published by the House of Commons Research Library in late 2009. Link is here.  Some interesting highlights.
  

A QUICKIE...

Polko is getting busier.. so a quick few nods to other things I've found on the web rather than anything fresh..

It also avoids me uttering anything to do with the up coming election on this blog (apart from that statement itself). There's gonna be a lot of hot air and crap blogged between now and the election and I for one am not adding to the Gigabytes of wasted storage on it.Put simply, I'm already bored of it all.

This is hilarious - basically somebody taking apart a stupid poll about how bad teenagers are at managing finances, etc.  The main point being the publisher gets it seriously wrong with a few pie charts that don't add up or shouldn't be pie charts at ll..  Funny enough, but then the original publisher tries to be funny and clever about their use of the pie charts and gets it wrong again in the comments to the blog! doh!  Worth a read - it's only a short article.

Freakonomics - Steve and Steve are at it again, pushing their brand forward!  As if taking the two fantastic books Freakonomics and and Superfreakonomics and adding to them with a lively website and blog, then taking this and airing a downloadable Freakonomics radio station on iTunes were not enough...

Apparently a Freakonomics film/documentary is in post-production stage and is scheduled to air at selected film festivals in the USA this Spring. Details are posted on IMDB and I will blog further information if and when it becomes available in the UK.  I'm off to America in June and will dig further when there too.  I always knew the age of the Economist would arrive!

Possibly even more exciting is the fact that Zoe Sloane plays a lead role... woo hoo! She's drop dead gorgeous as far as I'm concerned and can only add more glamour to an incredibly glamorous subject matter!

To cool down a little, consider this.  The nail varnish below retails in a High Street store at £19 a 13ml bottle for colour #505.

Why during MArch 2010 did it sell at £30 - £45 a bottle on eBay then?  Remember, there's little or no guarantee that you're getting the same product as you are in the likes of Harrods, House of Fraser or your local independent when buying from a faceless eBay seller either?

Firstly, those who are happy to pay £19 for a bottle of enamel paint (for that is all it is) because it comes in a nice glass bottle as opposed to a tin like a Humbrol paint (incidentally Humbrol #62 looks a very similar match and can be had for £1-40 for a 14ml tin in model shops or here) and bears the name Chanel are likely to be little interested in the difference between it costing £10 and £30 or more.. the demand for the product is 'price inelastic' or those who want it are unlikely to change their demand with an increase in its price (to a point obviously).  Mind you, if you consider that Humbrol are making profit at 10p/ml on their product Chanel must be laughing all the way to 'le banque' charging £1-46/ml!!

Secondly, #505 is a limited edition Spring 2010 only colour. For economists this translates into a fixed supply curve.  That means only one thing, higher prices to consumers than if supply could be increased as more people demand the product.  Matched with an inelastic demand curve a fixed supply means steep price hikes will always result from very small increases in demand for a product (following advertising for example).  Little surprise then that Chanel are happy to pay high prices for glossy magazine ads promoting #505 as the new black!

Wonder if Zoe wears #505? Doesn't say so on her website?

RECESSION WATCH..

My daily newsdrop email today included this..

UK recession is officially over

The recession is officially over, according to figures published this morning which showed that the UK economy grew by 0.1% in the last three months of 2009.

Two words (I promise!)

My arse.

WHAT A WASTE..

Re-branding has been seeping through the whole political dung heap for a while now, often under the guise of real restructuring... but in the main what has really been happening has been a complete waste of taxpayers money on new logos, new stationery, making government e-ready, etc etc. spin spin spin.. Look we're really busy restructuring.. what? we are supposed to deliver policy? No mate. Do something mate? Not me mate. I'm in New Labour. I mainly just talk about it.

Here's just one among a myriad of examples. Hold on tight to your seats as it gets extremely messy.

But first, switch on your speakers and click here if you want a nice soundtrack to the whole sad sorry affair.."

In a feat of mayhem mathematics when Gordon Brown came to power in 2007 he re-branded (sorry 're-structured') two government departments in the name of streamlining into three. See diagram below. The DES and DTI were re-divided into DCSF and DBERR with a third department created from the University and Skills functions (of DES) and Science and Innovation functions (of DTI) to be known as the Department for Innovation Universities and Skills, the DIUS.

Now DIUS went about their business getting ready their new logos, stationery, website, the mechanisms of modern government... getting exciting isn't it?


Everything was going to be different from hereon in. The country was heading into the brave new modern world of 'knowledge transfer', 'innovation', 'competitiveness', even 'advanced manufacturing'.. (Q: what do these spin concepts really cover?)

Only in June this year Gordon decided to stop the process, disband DIUS and create a new department.. the Department for Business Innovation and Skils.. clearly the University bit was getting in the way of acceptance by business.. surprise, surprise.

Trouble is DIUS has spent £953,911 on building their website alone and god knows how much more on the other goodies of empire building.. Leaks are coming out of the DIUS Commons Select Committee that the final bill for DIUS alone is around £7.1 million. And thats a minimum estimate.

Worryingly, this is just one story in the naked city of New Labour..

Continuous rebranding is clearly a waste of money. If politicans took the time to stick their head in the real world they'd notice business doesn't rebrand or restructure itself that often.

What has been happening in these latter days of the New Labour 'modernisation campaign' is a concentration on selling the product rather than having any decent product to sell. When you really dig deep it appears that most of it is generally about selling a con (spin) or wishlist rather than being based on anything solid. There appears to be a belief in the present government that if you say something often enough it will become true. And Gordon this week is repeatedly saying 'it's not over yet..' From where I'm sat he appears to have fallen foul of his own spin machine.

God Bless New Labour and all who sail in her.. only to the other side of the world please!

BLACK STEEL IN THE HOUR OF CHAOS..

I got a (email) letter from the government (well Business Link anyway)
The other day
I opened and read it
It said they were suckers

They wanted to know..

Does Government Do Enough for YOUR Business?

..and then went on in a diatribe about the various forms of help we could possibly access through becoming members of the local Chamber of Commerce, booking a meeting with a Business Link advisor etc

Now, that's all well and good. But, another part of government - central government this time - has recently cheesed me off good and proper.

I use a lot of official data in my work. And I mean a lot. Like the other day when I tried to download a national dataset from a well known database and it stopped me telling me I couldn't carry on as I was asking for more than 1,000,000 cells of data. Oops. But I really did want the lot as I was mapping something across the entire UK at VERY high resolution!

Anyway.. I also needed to assemble some schools performance data and it would be easier if I had the latest dataset for the whole country - every single local authority area across 12 or so variables. Not a lot to ask for really (4,380 or so items or cells). I have the data in official Excel tables and a lot more besides for each year since 2000 as I have a friend in the central statistical office who helpfully and cheerily sends me the files. This year for some reason I forgot to ask for them in January when they were refreshed.

So, I browsed the usual website (Department for Culture Schools and Families is its name this month - the government may well decide to change it soon.. they do that you know! gives em something to do and creates new linkages between 'joined up government'). The dataset was not there - unhelpfully the only schools data anyone can get to is individual schools or individual Local Education Authority areas.. not useful if you are working on a national level unless you have a full day and nothing to do but transcribe numbers between web pages and Excel!? Which I am assuming nobody does?

I called DCSF direct. I say direct. But what I mean is I called the company that holds the contract to disseminate DCSF data. Prolog they're called. Unhelpful is not the word. After the fourth call back (first time I was placed on hold for 23 minutes and decided enough was enough, second I got cut off and third the woman was very bad mannered and told me she didn't know what I was going on abarrrrt.. with a long East Midlands drawl of an accent) was told by a very young contact centre agent that the data I wanted didn't exist..


Now I know it exists given that I have it for every year since 2000 and have been using it professionally since around 1994!

I blasted off a request on the Prolog website detailing what it is I wanted.

I got the auto-response saying it was being dealt with after a few hours.

I got a second one saying it was still being dealt with after three days.


I then got another response saying they had dealt with it. They had forwarded my request to another (this time government) department and I should get a response within 15 days. Note should not would?

15 f*king DAYS!!! I am in the real world here people. The private sector. The world where a report takes a few days to write and clients need it to use in their real world decisions. 15 days is just ridiculous!

So, I am still waiting for the response.. Approaching 10 days now.

Lucky I have the intelligence to use the telephone and call that friend in the central department that do know what they're doing. She emailed me the full national tables (all 24 of 'em) within the hour on the day when I was told they didn't exist..

Is this government doing enough for my business?

You decide.

ILLUSTRATING

On a non-political and lighter note than usual.. this morning I stumbled on a website page about creating charts in a more professional way. I'm a real Excel veteran, given that I started using spreadsheets back in the days of Lotus 1-2-3 on DOS based PCs with only a keyboard and no mouse in sight - no really! But, those Excel charts can only be pushed so far - and modelling the whole of the UK's water resource flows and stocks was about as far as you could go! I do use dashboards and can create interesting effects in Excel, such as this..


..but their presentation is growing tired I must admit. Enter three options. First is to use an add-in to Excel to increase its design look and feel. Already noe that though, and regularly use Xcelsius. It's ok, a little lcunky but good for 3-D'ing charts I guess.

Second is to ditch Excel (or rather use it to do the heavy computing and modelling) and use another output format such as Business Objects standalone packages. Expensive. Good output, but still not that pro edge and editability I want.

Third is to go to a full fledged vector graphic format. Cue Adobe Illustrator. We use Creative Suite 3 in the office and it is installed on my PC. But I tend to stick to the web-design bits of CS3, Dreamweaver and Fireworks mainly with a (very small) bit of Flash thrown in. Illustrator doesn't fill me with dread but I haven't a clue what I'm doing in it! Anyway, I stumbled on a page about 3D graphs and using Illustator's in-built charting tool.. which led me to doing this in around 5 minutes..


So, be prepared for more to come as this is seriously easy to do, can be applied to a full chart, has lots of options and can use any graphic to overlay and create a really professional look and feel.

More later. Illustrator is about to take up a good few days of my time!

YOU THINK WE GOT IT BAD?

GOING UP! America's Gross National Debt:

...and meanwhile...

Green Energy

LAST TWENTY..

No, I'm not giving up smoking (since I never started). Nor down to my last twenty quid (which would be worrying?).

It's that time again. The post of my last twenty mp3's played on MediaMonkey. For what it's worth (well, fills up another post?)

Here it is (if you can't read it, then click the picture to see more detail):


Another strange mix... the OneTwo stuff and the 808 State electronica are fairly obvious choices for me. But those few A-ha tracks surprised me. I burnt a Best Of collection of A-ha when I was last at Sister Polko's house (bad man. home taping is killing music after all?) and when I've listened to them I've been most impressed. I'd go so far as to say that Coldplay must have listened to this CD just before they went into the studio... go on, try them back to back. Strange enough they are very similar with A-ha just slightly ahead of Coldplay given that they have the authentic 80s sound after all.

And this list marks a welcome return for Joan Armatrading on my playlist - I own every album (those big black plastic disc like things.. you remember..?) that the woman from Birmingham has ever released. One of the country's finest songwriters - when you're in the mood for it - but I think it's such a shame that she represents all that is bad with Birmingham. How many bands/singers do you know from there that have stayed? or support it in some way? UB40 are probably the only ones?? rest my case m'lord..

..which brings us neatly to The Twang. This track was played as I was just emailing a friend with a few examples of this bands material (and they may well go out and buy the CD? who says home taping is killing music now?). If you don't know about them - find something and play it. Then buy some. Or ask a friend like me to send you more! Anyway, they are a Birmingham band - not exactly famous or big in the hits list, but brilliant all the same. Check out their info here.

The other things on the list (and this is the house PC not my own work PC or my notebook) reflect a desire to play something different and shock people as to the breadth of my musical appreciation. Has it worked? You tell me.

Oh, it's also nice to see - in a six degrees of separation kind of way - that I'm never more than 20 steps away from a Braintax track too! If you haven't heard of him, then you haven't been born yet - as Jazzie B once said Get A Life... which may well be my next track played..

ONE DAY WONDER..

Point A on chart - announcement of US government take over of 2 large mortgage underwriters to "provide stability"
Point B on chart - stock markets drift back to pre-announcement levels.
Time taken - 4 trading days.



Any 1 week stock market chart says the same - by the time of writing the FTSE100 was at 5,335 points, marginally lower than the closing price of 5,362 on Thursday 4th September (i.e. one week ago) folllowing a few days of slightly better performance. The US stock indexes have followed a very similar pattern.

The much heralded support for the market provided by the US government's actions over last weekend have amounted to not a lot in market terms. True, it's early days yet.. but the market has little or no medium term memory. It reacts, it evaluates fundamental strengths and weaknesses and moves on. Fast.

When I used the phrase 'short term' in my last post I meant a little more than a week's worth of reprise.. Yet another proof that modern government's need to re-appraise what exactly their role is in the modern world.. A quick leaf through Adam Smith's 1776 Wealth of Nations and other older economics writings might provide a useful guide.. This is highly unlikely given that said books won't also provide help on how to get voted in, or how to put spin on otherwise terrible public sector performance.. For that, the government must turn to consultancy advice.

GOT TO PICK A POCKET OR TWO?

I have been looking through the latest Crime Stats released by the Home Office today and some alarming results jump out of the myriad of tables I’ve been going through.

I’m not picking on any one particular area here but it’s immediately obvious that Humberside Police need some help. They have the lowest confidence rating among residents in addressing local issues and clearing up crimes. No wonder the local rates of ‘Violence Against The Person’ recorded in both North East Lincolnshire (essentially Grimsby, Cleethorpes and Immingham) and Hull are among the highest in the country - higher than all but one Borough of inner London - and then only just squeezing in under Tower Hamlets! Hull gained the dubious honour of top marks for Violent Crime in 2006/07.

Something else caught my attention too. If you really want to be a successful criminal a quick perusal of the Home Office report would be useful. There are two types of crime with extremely low rates of detection in England at present. First up is ‘Theft or Unauthorised Taking of a Pedal Cycle’ where detection of crimes is running at 5%. Not sure whether there’s sufficient money in cycle theft to attract the Mr. Big’s though? Second in the ‘Getting Away With It’ stakes is Theft from the Person otherwise known as good old fashioned pickpocketing. Would be Fagin’s should sleep safe tonight knowing that only 4% of the 101,660 offences reported last year were cleared up in any way - and this includes tapping the offender on the wrist and sending him home - in a taxi probably - with no tea and a stern (broad definition of the word required) Police warning. That should do the trick then?

This is a useful resource if you’re interested..
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/ia/atlas.html