It wasn't just London that went blue...

In the aftermath of last week's local elections various vote tallying is still going on, but one interesting figure has emerged - the Conservatives won the most votes across Greater Manchester. (Manchester Evening News: Tories beat Labour in race for votes and David Ottewell's politics: Did your vote count?) The raw figures are Conservatives 211,818, Labour 210,130 and Lib Dems 153,533.

So all the talk of the Conservatives being only a party of the South, and particularly weak in Greater Manchester, seems rather wide of the mark.

Hat tip to Iain Lindley: Tories Beat Labour Across Greater Manchester

No wonder there's so much debt...

The answer is clear. People don't understand basic maths.

From Manchester Evening News: 'Cool Cash' card confusion comes the story of how a new scratchcard caused confusion when a buyer called Tina Farrell couldn't understand why they hadn't won:

"I phoned Camelot and they fobbed me off with some story that -6 is higher - not lower - than -8 but I'm not having it.

Did they not learn basic minus numbers at the age of 11 to 12, as the article explains? They probably also think a debt of £5.00 is higher than £5000.000. No wonder there's so much debt about.