Stats boss slams Tory use of crime figures

The head of the UK Statistics Authority has slammed shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling for misleading use of crime figures. Sir Michael Scholar pulls few punches in the letter to Grayling, which said his comments were likely to undermine public trust in official statistics. Grayling's comparison of numbers of violent …

[Anonymous Coward]

The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

"he is quite prepared to name and shame individual politicians should he need to"

He's got a busy few months ahead then!

[Anonymous Coward]

Politician is a Liar Shock

Bears continue to defecate in timbered areas

[The Original Ash]

Undermine public trust in official statistics?

I have no trust in official statistics to begin with. There is no less than "zero."

[John G Imrie]

Re: Undermine public trust in official statistics

Have you tried using imaginary numbers?

[Cynical Observer]

Imaginary Numbers?

You mean the sort that the politicians use on a daily basis :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Been there, done that

68.8% of all statistics are made up on the spot

[Pablo]

I disagree

I think it's perfectly logical to consider "negative trust" in this case. Zero trust merely means that when a anyone attempts to persuade you with official statistics, it has no effect. If you had negative trust, then you would be inclined to believe the opposite of whatever the statistics were purported to show.

[Anonymous Coward]

Change in reporting

I'm always curious as to what they mean by a "change in the way figures are recorded" because they never expand on this. I would definitely say they try to hide increases using this ridiculous catch-all excuse.

It rather makes you question how they recorded the figures before the method changed, did they just write it on a Post-It note and throw it out the window?

[Colin Guthrie]

Re:

They do expand on it, it just wasn't written/reported here. Basically in the past it was up to the police to decide what made a crime violent, but now the person reporting the crime ultimately decides if it's violent - or something like that. Ultimately it's gone from being an educated judgement to having hard and fast (and encompassing) rules. Arguably this change makes the numbers more robust, but it did mean the figures shot up.

[The Cube]

Well done that man

Good to see somebody (in a position to do so) standing up and calling liar on this bunch of expense fiddling, corporate lackey, lying parasites that infest Westminster. Now if only there was a politician worth actually voting for instead of a list of "who should we shoot first to make the world a better place"...

[Dave Murray]

The Usual Lies

My grandpa always used to say "there's lies, damn lies and statistics." He should have added "and then there's the things politicians say."

At the end of the day you can easily twist any statistic to say anything you want, especially when talking to politicians or most of the public who don't understand stats anyway. Factor in an unspecified "change in the way figures are recorded" and all your stats are useless. And, that's the way the government wants it because then they can manufacture any truth they want.

[Kwac]

Grandpa's 'Lies, damn lies and statistics'

The 'lies damn lies & statistics' line (originally either Disraeli or Twain) is often repeated by those that know forkall about statistics.

If you notice, a politician (who knows nothing about stats) is being berated by a statistician (who does).

[Fogcat]

Facts 'n' Figures

During my past working life I have had cause to have contact with staff from the ONS and certainly the ones I've worked with are bright and well aware of the implications and limitations of data and were (at least with cenus dats) cautious to the point of paranoia about allowing any individual data being deducable, even from combinations of other data.

So Ash I have a lot of faith in the actual numbers of official statistics, I don't have trust in the way the media or politicians interpret that data.

And as for "change in the way figures are recorded" being a way to hide increases.... the change is actually really easy to find....

"Instead of police deciding whether an incident should be recorded as violence, the new system required them to do so whenever an alleged victim asked them to. As a result, the level of recorded violent crimes soared by an estimated 35 per cent in the first year."

So that does tell us the public regard more crimes as violent than the police do - but tells us notrhing about the actual change in occurences.

[g e]

Just vote Liberal

Not cos you LIKE them (good lord, no) but simply because...

1. It'll stick the boot in to Lab and Con who both richly deserve such

2. We KNOW Lab and Con make a dogs breakfast out of the country, but Lib haven't yet had the chance to show they can, too, so fair's fair.

3. If/when Lib do fk the country up then at least the successive government will have to use proportional representation as the Lib's should have introduced it. Almost worth the vote itself, that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Also

It's not like the Liberals haven't governed before, they just haven't done it in a long time. But then almost the only politicians currently in Westminster who have are Brown and his cronies anyway, and personally I'd rather be governed by the heap of horse shit outside in the road than the current lot.

[Anonymous Coward]

hahahahahaha

"Sir Michael Scholar pulls few punches in the letter to Grayling, which said his comments were likely to undermine public trust in official statistics."

Very funny...

[Anonymous Coward]

So?

What he's saying is: "The way the figures are recorded and reported has changed several times since the last Tory government. As such we have made it impossible to compare the crime statistics over that period. "

But hang on a mo, surely the job a statistician in this case is to make it possible to *directly* compare historical data? However it seems that in the case of crime figures the statisticians have come up with a way of recording crimes that is somehow "better" than the old way, but completely incompatible. So his department seem to have cleverly come up with a way of making sure that nobody can make a realistic comparison between the two periods and he is criticising somebody for trying to make sense of the available data.

He should be the one hauled up before the statistics police for crimes against the continuity of data recording.

[Andrew_F]

Title

So it's better to be consistently wrong than to correct a known error?

You can make a realistic comparison anyway: use the BCS, as the Home Office and Sir Michael said.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha!

The BCS is a load of fetid dingoes kidneys.

[Elmer Phud]

Is there anything that the tories are not inflating?

We've just had reports that George Osbourne had vastly - well, to the point of really bloody ridculous - inflated possible savings and now this.

'violence' can now mean someone threatening you with a dog but actual 'violence' as it used to be recorded has dropped and that's not good for those who are in the 'Lawanorder kill any potential pedo Party'.

As for 'change in the way figures are recorded', back in Maggie's time the way 'unemployed' was described changed over 25 times and - surprisingly - each time there was a new definition, the number of unemployed people dropped.

It's what happens when you let accountants run the country.

And still some want shiny-headed Dave to run the country -wtf?

[Colin Guthrie]

Did anyone hear Grayling on the Today program?

I don't know how that guy can sleep at night... he basically said "Yeah it's wrong but everyone's doing it so we're not going to listen to the big warning about misrepresentation and misrepresent them anyway." What a knob.

[Andrew_F]

There's a lot of people moaning they already know politicians lie

Moaning doesn't achieve anything, but here's someone calling politicians out on specific lies. It's better to light a candle than curse the darkness, as the saying goes.

[Dom 1]

And?

The Gov has been giving us misleading information for years - don't you just love the way they throw their toys out of the pram when the opposition do it?

A good example is road deaths caused directly by speeding. With all the Gov PR about, you would be forgiven for thinking that ALL road deaths where caused by speeding. Yet the Gov's own stats show the figure is only 7%!

Now that's what I call misleading.

As for violent crime, try sitting in the centre of any major city on a Friday/Saturday night. You'll soon get some drunken 14 year old and his mates taunting you to fight them. At least you'll have comfort in the knowledge you will be carefully monitored by the CCTV system, ready to provide footage for "Street Wars".

Paris? Even she is clever enough to detect a politicians bullsh1t!

[Anonymous Coward]

From "Yeah - right!" to "Says Who?"....

From his own point of view, I'm sure Sir Michael is right in principle.

But in real-life, it's simply impossible that public trust in official statistics could sink any lower. For my own part, and that of most people I know, that trust has been zero for as long as I can remember.

[Charley 1]

As Oscar Wilde said

"He uses statistics as a drunk uses a lamp post. For support rather than illumination"

[Anonymous Coward]

It is all about how they record the stats...

It is all about how they record the stats. Simply by reclassifing some crimes as antisocial will instantly reduce your crime rates. A drunk 22 year old kicking wing mirrors off every car in a street is not vandalism its antisocial to the men who do the stats.