Why numbers no longer win arguments

1 ANSWERS

1. Brett
   

   Numbers used to be cold, hard and clinical - a clincher in any argument. Now look at them: fluffy, soft and left meaningless by woolly-headed thinking, says Michael Blastland in his regular column.
   
   Numbers lack warmth. Cold as last year's love, they sit counting their fingers. Think of numbers and what do you see? Dust and ledgers and the yellow fingers of a parched accountant.
   
   No longer. Numbers have had the mother of makeovers. No ordinary scrubbing up, shiny PR or new logo, this transformation is complete: they have turned into their opposite.
   
   Once they stood aloof. Now they gush. Now you can't shut them up for heart-felt passion. They cry and cheer and sneer and shout. Formerly a counterweight to emotion, they are often now nothing but. The one thing they don't do is count.
   
   A number in the news is no longer a cold fact, it is a killer fact, with all the murderous zeal that word implies. Journalists everywhere know the meaning of the phrase, the dagger of detail that runs the opposition through: the 23% up! The £16m wasted! The 140,000 children!

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