Inequality

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Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881), a man who was on two occasions the prime minister of Great Britain, once said, "There are three types of lies - lies, damned lies and statistics". One of the implications of his remark is that statistics are not only frequently untrue, but are often deliberately used falsely. And yet, statistics can be very revealing because they can quantify, and therefore clarify, that which may be hidden or obscured. When they do this the revelation that they uncover can be startling.

Yesterday my newspaper reported a statistic that not only brought me up short, but made me feel extremely uncomfortable: in fact, made me feel ashamed to be part of our society. The charity, Oxfam*, has calculated that the total wealth of the five richest British families exceeds that of the poorest 20% of the population. In other words this, handful of rich people have more money and assets than the least well-off 12.6 million Britons. Could the starkness of that contrast, the iniquity of that inequality, the shame that it brings to every politician and law maker, and to every individual voter, be made without the force of that statistic? I would encourage anyone who reads that statistic and is as appalled by it as I am, to at the very least, remember it when elections come along; to cast their vote for the party that pledges to reduce inequality; to vote for those who will ensure the rich pay a greater share of their wealth to achieve that goal; and only endorse those determined that the poor and less well-off will receive a larger share of the national income.

I was recently in Canary Wharf. Along with the City of London (the financial district not the greater metropolitan area) this is one of the two centres of finance in the UK. It exudes wealth. From the up-market eateries to the private security guards, manicured gardens and spotless streets it speaks of money. What better to represent today's post than the gleaming steel and glistening glass of two of the many banks to be found there.

* In January 2014 Oxfam also reported that the 85 richest people in the world had more wealth and assets than the poorest half of the world's population!

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 10.4mm (28mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/400 sec
ISO:125
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Two eye-opening statistics

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Newspapers and the internet throw statistics at us all the time. A good number or a summary encapsulated in a figure is a powerful tool for grabbing your audience. But you have to be careful. Sometimes the statistics are a product of a journalist's innumeracy, are often simplified, extrapolated or taken out context from more complex data, rendering them inaccurate at best or fictitious at worse. So, it is with caution and an element of scepticism that I present two statistics that I came across recently. The first, on initial inspection, seems to have nothing to do with photography - but it does. The second is directly photography related.

In a recent Guardian newspaper article about data storage I read the following:

"DatacentreDynamics' research also reveals that British datacentres consume 6.4 gigawatts of power annually – enough to power 6m homes – and that is set to increase by 6.7% over the next year."

That is an awful lot of electricity, even allowing for the fact that a significant proportion of the data stored here is for overseas users. It also clearly underlines that cloud computing and electronic data are not quite the no-cost or even low-cost option, that we sometimes think. I used to be sure that photographs viewed on screens and stored on servers, and that blogs such as this one that exist away from the computer on which they are written, used less physical resources than prints and paper. But do they? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

The second statistic that brought me up short was reported on the website, "Visual News", and is a graphic that purports to be "A Snapshot of the Photography Industry". It documents the rise of the phone camera, the consequent decline of the point and shoot camera, the dominance of sites such as Facebook and much else. It also includes the following:

"Today we snap as many photos every two minutes as humanity as a whole did in the 1800s."

In other words it takes us 120 seconds to accumulate the number of photographs that were amassed in the 100 years between 1800 and 1900. Which prompted me to think that the first statistic about energy use for data storage could well be accurate! It also made me consider whether ever higher pixel counts on cameras should be opposed on environmental grounds, something that hadn't occurred to me before. All of which has little to do with today's photograph, taken on an overcast day, of boats on the river at Ely, Cambridgeshire. Except these two further thoughts. Firstly, this shot represents yet another addition to the total data stored across the world. And secondly, I wonder how much electricity this one image uses in a year and at what cost?

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 28mm
F No: f5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Surveying Easter

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Did you know that 42.379% of statistics are made up on the spot? Really! Including this one! And, although this old joke is a good one, I often wonder if it contains more than a little truth.

A couple of weeks ago I read the results of a survey that said, "only 22 per cent of people we quizzed in Liverpool were able to identify Easter as the day on which Christians celebrate the miraculous resurrection of Jesus Christ following death on the cross." The report went on to lament that many thought Easter was an opportunity to indulge in chocolate, and quoted representatives of Christian churches bemoaning the lack of focus on the teaching of Christianity in schools: "Teachers and curriculum supervisors should take serious note of these findings" one respondent fulminated.

Now, whilst I can appreciate that Easter bunnies, fluffy yellow chicks, chocolate eggs and bonnets do figure in many children's and adults' idea of Easter, I cannot believe that only just over one fifth of people know that the Christian belief in the resurrection of Christ is the reason for this celebration. Especially in Liverpool, for heaven's sake, a city noted for its religious character. The trouble is that today surveys are carried out for reasons other than finding out information. Promoting a brand, creating a headline, instigating a debate, attracting attention, are all reasons that seem to figure larger than finding anything approaching a truth. Surveys are used to confer a spurious authenticity and to mask the real intention. It's very easy to devise a survey that gives you a contentious result, or indeed, the finding that you want. In fact, I wouldn't find it very difficult to produce a survey demonstrating that most people do know the real reason for Easter - all I would need is the power to set the questions.

Today's photograph isn't an example of the barrel distortion of the Zuiko 11-22mm lens, which is very well controlled. It shows an Easter display in the fine bow window of a flower shop at Market Deeping, Lincolnshire. The window itself is probably late C18 or early C19, and lends itself to this sort of thing very well. This establishment always puts on a good display for Christmas, Valentine's Day, Halloween and Easter, and passing by the other day I took this snap of the bunnies, chicks, eggs and sunlit reflected buildings and sky on the other side of the street.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 11mm (22mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/125 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On