Home repossessions soar. Up 61% from last year.

I know. I was being charitable and assuming an error in his calculations. However as I was implicitly highlighting in my post, the 1991 figure isn't even 500% of the 1989 figure, let alone an increase.

What do you mean "let alone an increase"? It *is* an increase. (Just not of 500%).

LOL. Aren't the figures, showing a 5x increase from 15k to 75k, alarming enough without me adding a mis-quote ? Thanks for correcting my maths though I was a bit weary when I posted it last night.

It's still wrong, a quintupling is not a 5x increase, it's a 4x increase.

A quintupling per se is not alarming. It depends on how significant the base line is. Probably 15k is insignificant, and 75k is just enough to make people take note.

That is to say that an increase by 60k is noteworthy but not alarming, and it would be equally noteworthy no matter whether from 15k or from 5k, but in the latter case it would be alarmist to correctly point out that the increase had been to 25x the original amount.

It makes more sense to relate the number of, and the increase in, repossesions to the total number of mortgaged properties out there, than to a previous number of repossessions.

... not to mention that using percentages for factors such as this is rather silly. Percentages are good for showing proportions, e.g. amounts less than 100% and maybe up to 200% but above that it's much clearer and more helpful to say "five times" rather than 500%.

Hmm, well if quintupling isn't 5x then what is it? :-)

To my mind if something has increased "by 5 times" then the current amount is five times the original amount. I know you are suggesting that it means that it's had 5 times the original amount added to it but I don't think that's what generally accepted in common usage.

It's one of the problems (again) of using percentages, a 10% increase is clear in it's meaning. Using the same logic a 200% increase means that we now have three times as much but I suspect that in many cases what is meant is that we have twice as much.

Lets just say it "went up" 5x ;-)

You work it out how you want. As far as I'm concerned with my A level maths (from 30 yrs ago when A levels meant something) 15k to 75k means it "went up" 5x ;-)

Well, we can see now what *your* A level meant! :-( Not that this has anything to do with maths.

It's meaningless to say 5x without making clear whether you mean "by" or "to". The trouble with common usage is that it often doesn't.

Common usage has a lot to answer for. If something goes up "by half", it clearly can only mean that it has increased by half its original value to 1.5x its original value.

If something "increases one and a half times" does that mean by 150% or to 150%? I guess it depends on what school the speaker went to.

Yawn

Yawn

More warnings on repossessions and the economy, this time in todays Telegraph.......

The days when you could have it all are over (Filed: 27/10/2005)

You can believe Government statistics when they're bad. Yesterday the Department for Constitutional Affairs, which has responsibility for the courts, released figures showing that the number of home repossession orders has risen 66 per cent on the same quarter last year. Twenty thousand orders have been issued by the courts, threatening the owners with eviction unless payment plans are adhered to.

Why has this happened? Part of the explanation lies in the expiry of cheap fixed-rate mortgages. Two years ago, the Britannia Building Society offered a fixed rate of 3.24 per cent; now it has reverted to the standard variable rate of 6.1 per cent, causing disaster for bad planners and the unlucky. At the same time, the rules governing insolvency have been eased, encouraging more people to declare bankruptcy and forsake their homes.

But the real explanation lies not in passing changes to the mortgage markets or the law. 20,000 people are in danger of losing their homes because they represent the trailing edge of a desperate national phenomenon: consumer debt. There are 66 million credit cards in existence, more than one for every man, woman and child in the country. On these and other forms of credit (including mortgages) we collectively owe each other more than £1 trillion, slightly less than our national annual income (and, incidentally, more than the combined national debts of Africa and South America).

The explanation for mass consumer debt, of course, is cheap money. For years we have enjoyed low interest rates, as inflationary pressures in the economy were tamed by the supply-side reforms of the 1980s. Now those reforms are under threat, as the channels of the economy become choked with taxation, regulation, and bureaucracy. Public sector inflation is running at around five per cent. With oil prices so high, a rate rise may be the only way to see off inflation - but it would devastate thousands of families.

The lenders who, with their glossy brochures and invisible small print, induce us to take out all this credit, insist that the repossession figures are nothing to worry about. They point out that only a tiny proportion of mortgagees are in arrears. Yet as an economist quoted in our news pages today points out, before the great credit crunch of the early 1990s, the repossession order figures turned out to be a better guide to the coming calamity than the state of arrears.

A repossession order represents the final warning for a homeowner. Yesterday's figures might serve the same purpose for the economy as a whole, for its supervisor, Gordon Brown, and for those reckless borrowers - us.

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In message , Crowley writes

No, because if you look at the number of repossessions as a percentage of all mortgages it is only a 2.75 x increase.

In message , Crowley writes