Flattened by Stats.

I was sharing a few beers last week with a huge Stiffmouse fan who is, if not the actual person, Matt Cardle. That is when the X Factor star fancies inhabiting an alternative body to sling back several incognito pints in the dingy marquee behind one of Sheffield’s most disreputable pubs, lit only by a weedy string of post apocalyptic Christmas lights. This meeting and noticing Stiffmouse page views for November are heading for 500 made me for a moment feel quite bullish. But after a further moments analysis I figure there are less than thirty people consistently bored enough to follow my blog. So how do I feel about thirty? And in itself isn’t that a question that could shake our numerical world like a CGI earthquake, conflating as it does the pre-cision of numbers with the inde-cision of feelings? I suspect numbers are merely our way of applying a fanciful post accuracy to, in more simple terms, what is or isn’t enough. Anyway thirty is somewhere between a pitiful percentage of world population and a decent audience for a pub gig. Similarly in terms of large and small numbers the numerous millions in the government compensation fund for the damage caused in the summers riots has so far paid out £3,500, and the £6 million available in the bankruptcy settlement to pay the swindled but hopeful Christmas savers in that collapsed Christmas saving company of a few years ago has been reduced by £8 million legal costs to -£2 million. How do we feel abut that?