The ongoing news that senior members of the Conservative Party have been playing politics with Crime Statistics continues to rumble on.
The UK Statistics Authority has slapped the Tories for 'damaging public trust'. This blog believes that Cameron is deliberately introducing fear for electoral reasons, and is undermining public confidence in the Police.
In notes attached to the letter, the statistics authority said it regarded "a comparison, without qualification, of police recorded statistics between the late 1990s and 2008/09 as likely to mislead the public".
Like Grayling, David Cameron has form on getting crime statistics wrong. On a recent visit to Medway, where he launched his infamous 'Broken Britain' campaign he incorrectly asserted that violent crime had risen, when in fact it had fallen.
The UK Statistics Authority has slapped the Tories for 'damaging public trust'. This blog believes that Cameron is deliberately introducing fear for electoral reasons, and is undermining public confidence in the Police.
In notes attached to the letter, the statistics authority said it regarded "a comparison, without qualification, of police recorded statistics between the late 1990s and 2008/09 as likely to mislead the public".
The authority said the British Crime Survey (BCS), an annual questionnaire of 46,000 people, indicated there had been a big fall in violent crime since 1995.
It said the BCS was the most reliable way of assessing the trend, because it was "not affected by changes in reporting, police recording and local policing activity, and has been measuring crime in a consistent way since the survey began in 1981".
Like Grayling, David Cameron has form on getting crime statistics wrong. On a recent visit to Medway, where he launched his infamous 'Broken Britain' campaign he incorrectly asserted that violent crime had risen, when in fact it had fallen.
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I'm tempted to say not to worry about the Tory "campaigning" as it seems almost invariably counterproductive, as the cuts in the tory lead suggest.
ReplyDeleteBut rousing people re violent crime is criminally irresponsible when there is no need, just another character issue really.
I referred here http://quietzapple-musing.blogspot.com/2009/08/labour-44-or-conservative-42.html to such quality of civil life issues.
While the poll which showed the tory lead cut to 1% may have been a shock to Paul Waugh it should not have been to anyone who has an open mind and bears in mind the bias the tory billionaire led media drips constantly.
Thus Labour naifs like Rentoul and Tom Harris view such talk as meaningless, it appears, while the truth is that it is hard to succinctly portray the all pervasive nature of their influence on our culture without developing one's own jargon.