It has been said the national newspapers don’t
possess the level of specialist knowledge we at Leasing
Life can boast when reporting on the leasing market.
Who can blame them? At times it can be
complicated and not, shall we say, always information of a pressing
urgency to the somnambulant commuter aboard the 7.36am from
Basingstoke.
We were surprised therefore to see a UK
national newspaper tackling some statistics on lending to leasing
companies (readers will remember Bank
lending to lessors down 16% from LL Newswire 109) with due
deference.
Is that a national title acknowledging the
importance of leasing in the UK? Alas, with a victory for leasing
comes a grave defeat for mathematics and journalism.
The reader will be fully aware a 35% drop from
£602bn does not, as the newspaper and several other online titles
asserted, give £23.8bn. That would be a drop of 96%.
Anyone troubled by such a figure, which
brazenly declared itself fact towards the bottom of a press
release, could have glanced at the source of the statistics quoted
where they would have discovered the figure £36.5bn, which,
coincidently, when one subtracts 35% gives £23.8bn, thus avoiding
the same critical miscalculation.
It appears, overwhelmed by this new found
enthusiasm for the interests of the UK’s leasing industry, the
newspaper’s economics editor misplaced their understanding of
percentages.
Either that or they’re guilty (could it be
possible?) of copying statistics from a press release without
actually reading them or thinking about them in any way.
Photogenic leasing
Nothing says successful
business relationship like four men posing beside a big yellow
digger.
At least that is presumably the reasoning
behind the latest publicity photo which winged its way to Leasing
Life HQ this month.
Something, however, seems amiss.
Perhaps it is the suggestion this asset
finance deal with ground works contractor Tanner & Bruce was
conducted on an excavator in a building site and not, as you might
suppose, in an office.
Is it the classic poses of Richard Stevenson
and Paul Hore of Lloyds TSB Commercial Finance, straight from the
cover shot of a folk album, which seem at odds with their business
suits?
Harris jumpers may be more fitting. And hard
hats.
Yes, I think that is it. Woolly jumpers and
hard hats in all press pictures from now on chaps.
