Pictures telling a thousand words

 

 

This graph is from an Australian source and relates to the situation  as at August 2020.  It was sent to me by a friend who now works out there.  You will see that Australia is proudly in the top right-hand corner, in terms of deaths per million, outstripped by only Japan and Korea, and by minimal economic shrink only by South Korea.

In the bottom left hand corner, with the most deaths per million of population, is the UK.  We also have the largest percentage fall in economic activity.

Of course this graph shows only ten countries (plus the over-all picture for the EU.)  In case you feel the countries have been chosen rather selectively, here's another picture comparing the  performance of a few more economies.

 

 China 's economy  is still growing,  Vietnam and Taiwan only marginally affected, Australia still looking good.  This time the UK is not quite at the bottom.  At lest one economy, Spain's, is more badly affected than ours.

Still think this is selective?

Here are the performances of about 40 countries, if your eyesight is good enough to read which they are.

And yet day after day UK ministers on the media use phrases like "World Beating, "our success," guard out shores "against infection the hand of war" (Shakespeare made that last one up.)

We should recall the information in these graphs when we hear the government complaining the the BBC is given a biassed picture of its performance.