£45 billion of bollocks

The Count is back after and enforced absence. I was herding reindeer in the Arctic with some of my peasants. This was, conceivably, an attempt by the Countess to gain full control over my Siberian empire. Sleeping under the stars sounds very wonderful, except when it is my 20 centigrade and hypothermia is setting in. Luckily, I could count on my loyal retainers to run off with the bloody reindeer and leave me stranded.

There are some people who think this is all fantasy. Ha. For you doubters, the Count is going hi-ttech and adding an image of my overnight arrangements with my peasants. I will also add a picture of the bloody reindeer. And one of most faithful retainer: Nesta the dog.

In between chasing reindeer round the Arctic the Count was also obliged to write a book. Well, two books having fooled two publishers into thinking I had something worth saying. The were fooled and then I found I was the fool who had to write the bloody things.

So this has not given the Count the time to Count the Cost of Folly. With Blair and Brown arguing over who can sink the ship best and fastest, there is no shortage of folly ot count. But no sooner does the Count resurface from the Arctic, (chased by kid Cameron showing off his green (or greenhouse killing) creds by helping destroy the arctic ice cap with his trip to the Arctic) than the Count is confronted by one Professor Bone

Professor Bonehead professes that the UK Universities are worth £45 billion to the UK. Let it never be said that he may lack a teeny weeny bit of impartiality as he is President of Universities UK.

So how has Professor Dickhead done his professorial calculation? He has observed that the income of the Universities is £16.9 billion: he then multiplies that by 2.5 because he wants a big and impressive number and then concludes that the universities are worth £45 billion a year to the UK.

Pure meadow mayonnaise. Bonebrain is using the same calculation that the Countess uses when confronted with her latest and greatest credit card statement. They confuse cost and value. If the universities cost the long suffering taxpayer £16.9 billion, that does not make them worth £16.9 billion. They are probably causing huge damage to the UK by churning out illiterate dumbshits who expect to be vastly paid for minimal work just because they have a BA (hons) in media studies from Hull. And as for multiplying the cost by 2.5.... Brown and Blair may as well say that the government is worth £1,300 billion a year to the UK (even although that is greater than the GDP of the UK): first, take taxation at £550 billion and then multiply it by professor Bonehead's multiplier and suddenly you have the value of all the paper shufflers in Whitehall.

Its enough to make the Count want to go back to reindeer herding...