Douglas Carswell's Blog

Blame the forecasters, not the weather

“UK weather defies prediction, say forecasters”.  Or so runs the headline in the Guardian.  Pesky weather, eh. 

Perhaps a wiser way of looking at it is that the forecasters often turn out to be wrong. 

Only if you have an elevated faith in the ability of experts to forecast things do you end up writing headlines that suggest it is the weather that is out of sync. And it is not only the weather and forecasters. 

A few years back in my part of Essex, experts tried to predict future demand for school places in different parts of the district. When these predictions turned out to be wrong, I remember an official implying that the mismatch between pupils and places was somehow the fault of the people moving about too much, rather than the planners.

Over the coming months, I expect that lots of expert economists – who have been busy predicting how government spending and bank bailouts would rescue the economy - will be implying that the economy has got it all wrong.  The truth is that they got it wrong on the economy. 

Blame the forecasters. Not the weather.  And the economists, not the economy.

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