Nonsense Stat Of The Day.

In the light of the England football team's inability to qualify for the European championships a lot of the press will be running stories like this one:

According to one study, by the Centre for Economic and Business Research, based on an examination of the impact of the 2006 World Cup and Euro 2004, the effect of non-qualification could be as much as £1 billion.

The report predicted England's failure to reach Euro 2008 would lead to a dramatic drop in advertising revenue for television companies, along with a sharp fall in income for betting companies and supermarkets.

Around £300 million was spent on advertising during last summer's World Cup in Germany.

Beer sales would also go flat - the last thing the brewing industry needs after it emerged yesterday that their profits had tumbled by 78 per cent between 2004 and 2006.

The CEBR suggested that a successful tournament for England would contribute to a boost of more than £285 million for pubs, clubs and off-licences.

This is utter bollocks because it assumes that people who would have spent next summer going to pubs, having bets* or watching television are going to curl up in a dark room for a month instead. Whilst it is obviously saddening to see the alcohol and gambling industries take such a hit, their potential customers will simply spend the same amount of money on different things, or on the same things but spread throughout the year. Perhaps someone might even spend some of that time and money teaching some English kids to play football, I mean there are quite a lot of Croatians over here now willing to work.