Billy - Interesting information regarding the addition of irregular publishers to the count. One more category for the secretary to keep up with (as a side note, that has got to be the worst job on the BOE). I tend to agree with you that if they included all the irregulars in the total count, it would have pushed up the numbers more than 3%. However, the WTS must be doing something with that data. The local congo & CO can easily tally up the irregulars and I think its on the CO report, right? (trying to block that out of my memory). So, the WTS must need that data in their system for something. As you stated, time will tell since the bump is only good for one year (like the 15m provision for the infirmed, it was a 1 year bump in terms of percentage of increase).
I've been told that the number of irregular tends to run between 10-20% depending on the area. So, adding them all in would make the average go much higher than 3%. Also, the average and the peak would be much closer.