A Tangled Web

A Poor Guardian

 

The Guardian, the bible of Left liberal English opinion, has an editorial today purporting to show the Republic of Ireland as being wealthier than the UK.  Doubtless the paper will use its bias to attempt to convince Ulster's pro-Union majority that they were, in fact, 'Oirish' all along; irrespective of long-established Unionist preferences on the constitutional and nationality fronts.



Of course, no statistics on prosperity have much effect on the average voter except the figures dealing with 'gross annual income'.  Of the principal international financial institutions, the World Bank is one of the few which prefers to use indicators of average yearly income than statistics relating to either GDP or GNP.  As we can see from the 2002 results (the most contemporary available figures) the average annual income in the United Kingdom is over $2,000 higher than that of the Irish Republic.  Indeed, the British level of GNI is the fourth highest in the EU (surpassed only by Luxembourg, Sweden and Denmark).  Using GNP or GDP indicators fails to take sufficient consideration of transnational monetary flows: the GNI method is the best calculation for measuring the wealth of average citizens.  On this score, the Irish Republic is still a long way behind.  The Guardian will have to do better than that!!