Frank Field would fail GSCE maths

In a piece here he summons all his reserves of pompousness and says:

Had I been asked, I would have argued for a target that was achievable. The 2020 goal isn’t. Any candidate sitting GCSE maths should be able to explain that raising everybody above a set percentage of median income is rather like asking a cat to catch its own tail. As families are raised above the target level of income, the median point itself rises.

I wonder why he wasn't asked?

The spending database

No-one at the moment really understands it enough to come up with information other than possibly-interesting tidbits. At least the Guardian has broken it down so one can look at it in a spreadsheet - by month is small enough. In April 2009, for instance, total spending net of negative spending by about £57bn, in November (far less money in receipts) it was £81bn. The largest items are - as you might expect - state pensions, the NHS, social security and so on.

The big question surely is - does it pass Benford's Law? This is where the first digit of numbers, regardless of scale (so 10, 150, and 1120 are all "1"), follow a distribution in these proportions:

d p
1 30.1%
2 17.6%
3 12.5%
4 9.7%
5 7.9%
6 6.7%
7 5.8%
8 5.1%
9 4.6%

Anyway,the answer is yes, it does pass, so nothing to see here.