Let's set the record straight

YOU don't need to be an economist to know that inflation has existed for a bit longer that 25 years - and that it practically flat- lined for most of the 1950s.

But in 1976, ah, yes, they found a new way to measure price increases, one that detected underlying inflation - and that is now Year Zero so far as Whitehall is concerned.

Yet while the new-style figure means enough to allow ministers to pat themselves on the back - and the news is not entirely devoid of meaning - the "since records began" game is still one of the oldest scams since well, records began.

Almost everything somebody, somewhere does can be claimed as the most momentous something "since records began", from weather records ("Hottest summer in Ponders End since records began!") to silly stunts ("Largest meat pie baked since records began!"). It's just up to you to decide what the record is and, well, when it began.

In the past few weeks alone, we've learned that rainfall last autumn was the highest since records began (in 1766), which seems reasonably significant, but also that urban air quality last year was the best since records began - which doesn't, given they only began in 1993. Complaints from rail passengers on services in London were said to have gone up by 14 per cent, meanwhile, the highest rise since records began.

This is probably a meaningless Since Records Began, but, of course, we don't care because we just happen to love any bad news about commuter train services.

In environmental circles, "worst since records began" figures on global warming get more frightening every year. Yet there is a body of reputable but sceptical weather scientists, especially in America, which argues, fine, it has been quite warm lately - but that the records that recent temperatures are being matched against are only 300 or so years old - a mere blink of the eye in global terms. Same thing with the hole in the ozone layer; it seems scary - but records only began a few decades ago, so how can we be sure the whole thing isn't just a scare story?

Goalpost-moving, of course, is almost obligatory in the Since Records Began game, though sometimes it is done for sensible reasons. The Retail Price Index has been calculated since 1947 from a standard selection of supposed consumer essentials, which, to help it make sense, is revised every year.

Items dropped since records began, according to the Office for National Statistics, have included luncheon meat, custard powder, tinned ravioli, malt vinegar, 21-in colour TVs, packet soup, leggings, low-alcohol lager and iced buns. Oh, and women's cardigans, although they were reintroduced in 1999.

Some economic records, the ONS says, are really old. Customs and Excise import and export data, for example, goes back to the time of Charles II. So when we are told about the highest imports or whatever since records began, it probably means something. Census figures, too, are available in an unbroken chain since 1801. So if, after the next census in April, we are told Britain's population is at its highest since records began, it probably will be.

EMPLOYMENT statistics records, on the other hand, only go back officially to 1984, when the International Labour Organisation agreed a definition of what employment and unemployment actually are. Tough one to call, that.

If one thing has had the Since Records Began industry booming in the past few decades, it is, of course, the Guinness Book of Records. How does it decide when records began when it is dealing with such things as pole sitting (45 years by St Simeon the Younger, Syria, AD 552-597) or the longestlasting rainbow (three hours, Gwynedd, Wales, 14 August 1979)?

As often as possible, according to Stewart Newport, official Keeper of the Records, they rely on bodies such as sports federations and government statistical offices. "But when it comes to those Guinness-ey things like pancake-tossing records, balancing beer glasses on the chin, eating baked beans with a cocktail stick or stamp licking, which we really initiated, then we're the governing body, in effect, because we keep the records."

Copyright 2001
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