Monday 8 February 2010

K+A complaints - another "perfect balanced sample"

I read with great amusement the latest posting on the Kennet and Avon Boaters website, "Truth will out". As neat an example of certain people in BW apparently manipulating information to create the result they want I have not seen in a long time. Another way of looking at the numbers is to point out that:

It seems that of the sixty three complaints about boaters that BW cited to justify their proposed mooring restrictions on the Western K+A, thirty of these were from one person!

A second look at the figures then confirms that fifty four of the total sixty three complaints, in fact came from just four complainants! If you exclude the four serial complainers and look at the remaining number of complaints, then in fact on average BW received only one complaint about boaters every two months!

Let us not then also start to consider whether these numbers represent complaints about sixty three individual boaters. In the extreme this could represent sixty three complaints about one boater?!

Finally let's not consider how many of the sixty three complaints actually received had any any merit - if they were registered 'complaints' how many were actually formally investigated or upheld by BW?

I do wonder if the BW Board even realise that some of their officers are proposing major policy reviews on the basis of such flimsy justifications?

(Does this also mean that if boaters can generate sixty four letters of support for the status quo, BW will drop the whole thing?!)

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