Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

"There are three kinds of Lie; Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics"

by johnofgwent

Who said that ? Well, the quote above is actually attributed to Benjamin Disraeli, a man more renowned perhaps for the way he curried favour with Queen Victoria who preferred his manner to the more staid approach of Mr Gladstone. Or so it was said when I studied British Economic Political and Social History 1760-1832 as the central core of my GCE History O Level. It would be some years later before I realised the true level of animosity between these two, as best reported here on a BBC Website page dedicated to "witty quotes"

Once at a social gathering, Gladstone said to Disraeli: 'I predict, Sir, that you will die either by hanging or of some vile disease'.

Disraeli replied, 'That all depends, sir, upon whether I embrace your principles or your mistress.'

So no love lost there, then !

But this sort of thing hasn't exactly gone away, has it. We who are old enough to remember all know how the Conservative Government under Margaret Thatcher rigged the recording of whether a man was unemployed or not to mask the true depths of despair in large parts of this country thanks to the destruction of its industries.

But it was a Labour Government who performed the neatest trick of all, "ROSLA", forcing 15 year old schoolchildren bereft of any academic qualification whatsoever to remain in school, bored as hell, disrupting the place for those with hopes of academic success, when they could and should have been allowed to go out and seek apprenticeships providing "on the job" training in "skilled labour trades" as they had for decades before. But no, their aspirastions, and those of the adacemically gifted, were both cruelly manipulated in the name of reducing the unemployment figures so the government would appear to be in a better condition than they really were at the start of their campaign for the next election.

A trick New Labour have repeated, forcing our children to stay in school until the age of 18, so as not to soil the pristine unemployment figures. Well that was the grand plan but the meltdown of all sectors of this country has rather put a spanner in Gordon's works, has it not.

And we all recall how stand-up comedians used to be able to crack a one liner about "such and such a politician" (especially a roads or transport minister, they were always good fun as the butt of such jokes) being caught over the limit by a christmas drink drive campaign but then released without any action being taken after the chancellor of the exchequer had applied a "seasonal adjustment" to the figures.

So I'll hand it to Gordon Brown, his idea of making the Office of National Statistics "independent" of government and free to publish "the truth" as it saw it, free from the usual spin the likes of Number Ten's army of political advisers had grown accustomed to apply, but hey, Gordon, I wonder how you feel about that choice now, eh ?

For of course we all know that when the Home Office were told the currently available figures for knife crime were unfinished, and inaccurate, they rode roughshod over the explicit instructions of our so-called "Prime Minister" in the vain hope of spinmeistering a "feel good factor". And we all know where it got them. But did you know the Home Office broke TEN Government Rules when it did this, and then tried to pin the blame for the faulty sums on the ONS ? I wasn't aware until now that Jacqui Smith and Jack Straw were so out of control. Were you ?

Or perhaps they were doing Harriet Harman's bidding to help her take over the "top job". Maybe Gordon will get back to his throme room fresh from addressing the US Congress and Senate to find there's been a coup d'etat. It wouldn't be the first time, as William Hague (a man better known round here for disastrous money handouts to foreign businesses who took it and ran instead of setting up the jobs they promised) tried to "barrack" her into admitting at yesterday's "Not The Prime Minister, Because He's Busy Organising His Retirement" Questions session in parliament.

But now, of course, the ONS has retaliated for the "Jack and Jacqui" double act's use of them as the butt of everyone's jokes.

Now whilst the Daily Torygraph struggled to put the case in 2008 that the 200,000 British passport holders who buggered off from these shores in 2006, bringing the total of such people to five and a half million, or "one in ten of our current population", and The Daily Mail at about the same time wanted us akk to recoil in horror at the fact that one in ten of our children have never been on a british beach holiday, right now the biggest stink in politics is the "furore" in the office of the Immigration Minister Phil Woolas over the "topical" release by the ONS that at the cvery same time the government were recording - ready for later trumpeting - the fact that "oneion ten british citizens were overseas", one in ten people in this country were not born here

Now some of those people will be children born to servicemen serving in Germany at the time of Thatcher's Cold War. Some will be grandchildren of Indian Civil Servants ordered by King George (who was their Emperor as well as our King) to "leave their country of birth and go and administer our colonial interests in the African Continent".

But rather a lot will indeed be people with no link to this country allowed in and given the rightto remain and claim British Citizenship.

You can't have it both ways, Mr Immighration Minister. Either you tell your pals in the two halves of the Home Office to stop pissing about with official figures,or you find youyrself pissed on by those same statistics providers. Sauce for the goose ands sauce for the gander, and all that.

But if five and a half million people here "now" were "not born here", while a similar number "born here" are not now here, what difference does it make ? Wel, some would say none. Others might point to higher birth rates amongst the residents of these islands who are not indigenous people and claim we will be overrun in two decades or less. Others may well point out the fact that our benefit system is being exploited by polygamous men who can claim for every one of their wives as a dependant. I know of two religious cults that permit polygamy. So ask yourself how many of those claimants for two or more wives at the same time are disciples of the Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Saints, and how many are adherents to the Cult of The Dead Paedophile.

Now personally I think these statistics - ALL OF THEM - are about as useful as the ones that reveal that one in ten broadband users surf the web whilst sitting on the toilet. So I'll end my article by concentrating on that fine piece of statistical information. How the hell do they know for a start ? Areyou a secret bog squatter surfer ? I wonder of the owner of the magnificent blogonthebog.blogspot.com knows of that "factoid". And so, while holding that thought, I'll leave you with the words of Godley and Creme from their 10cc days,

....And the seat of learning
And the flush of success
Relieves a constipated mind....

Righty-Ho. I'm off to another day of fun and frolic.

Anyone seens the air freshener there's a distincly malodorous aroma in here...