Grayling slammed by IDS: ‘profoundly misleading’
Another day another Tory policy badly fluffed up.
Today it was Chris Grayling who was taken apart for badly distorting crime stats in order to popularise the Tory ‘Broken Society’ narrative.
Grayling claimed there had been a “968% increase in serious violent crime”. The claim was made in an email to the BBC’s Mark Easton.
But they compare statistic before 2002 to those after, despite a big change in measurement.
And did New Labour do that to massage figures in their favour? In fact, the opposite.
The Home Office had been accused of under-estimating violence for years because the decision as to whether an incident was a violent crime had been taken by police.
…
After 2002, though, officers were obliged to record all incidents as violent crimes if the alleged victim said that is what it was. The aim was to stop police fiddling the figures and to get a better picture of violence. The obvious result was to send the statistics shooting up.
So the figures increased thanks to a more honest approach, which Chris Grayling immediately used to further his own agenda.
Easton now reports that some of Chris Grayling’s own colleagues admit this was the wrong approach:
Now former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith has written to me to say he agrees that such comparisons are profoundly misleading.
To emphasise the point – a senior Tory now admits his colleague’s approach to crime stats was “profoundly misleading”.
Grayling was questioned about this on the Today programme this morning by Evan Davis.
ED: Did you know that the recoding method had changed when you sent these figures out?
CG: Well there is certainly change sin the recording method at the time but the point is that these are the figures .. they are the only comparators available, they are published by the Home Office, Mark is wrong when he says that the Conservatives have included certain items in the figures .. we’ve included nothing, we don’t create crime figures, we use the official crime figures published by the Home Office ..
ED: But the Home Office provide caveats and say these figures should not be used for comparison? Did you know that that is what they advised when you sent these figures out with comparisons to be made?
CG: Take the case of Milton Keynes for example, the one that Mark has just given, what actually the police officer in Milton Keynes said was look, there are all these things contained in the violent crime figures, these are the violent crime figures that are published now this year by the government ..
ED: But you have provided them to be compared with earlier crime statistics that were collected on a different basis and which the statisticians warn should not be compared. I’m just asking did you know that the statisticians said these should not be compared?
CG: I know there has been a change, I also know the Home Office has continued to use the same comparators. Now as an opposition party we don’t make the statistics, we can only use what the Home Office publishes. The Home Office itself continues to sue these comparators and so ..
ED: I actually have some example provided by you of where the Home Office does provide these comparisons but they provide the caveat?
CG: Well when these figures where reviewed in 2006 independently the independent assessors actually said very specifically that the changes that were made .. the comments made by the Home Office, the caveats they put in had been put in because they were the most likely to be politically advantageous to the government. They say so specifically. But look, Evan, the whole point of all of this .. we can dance around, you know ..
ED: No it is not about dancing around and picking little .. it is not being pedantic, you are inviting people to make a comparison of two sets of figures that are apples and oranges?
CG: They are not apples and oranges, these are the figures. When the government made another major change ..
What a shambles.
Is CCHQ planning to issue memos to bloggers?
An interesting email arrived in our inbox this morning.
A treat for you. The guestlist for last nights tory bloggers drinks held at 6.30 in the Tweed room of the City Inn.
Eric Pickles and the CCHQ press team told the bloggers they would be given 7am briefing emails or “talk point memos” during the election campaign which would include the days lines and strategy and rebuttals to Labour attacks.
Update: This above bit hasn’t been confirmed.
But we were also tipped off on the invitations list:
CentreRight / Big Brother Watch A Conservative’s blog, Tory at Sea, The Blue Idea, CentreRight, Platform 10 / Thoughts From North Durham, Blaney’s Blarney, Political Piffle, evanprice.blogspot.com, Terrible Tory Girl, Tory Bear, Londoner’s Diary, Right Honourable Lady, Iain Dale’s Diary, James Burdett, Tory Politico, John Ward in Medway, Conservative Home, A Very British Dude, Man in a Shed, Wardman Wire, TrueBlueBlood, Burning our Money, Mike Rouse Ltd., Nadine Dorries, conservatives4heroes, Tory Aadvark, Oberon Houston, Dizzy Thinks, Shane Greer, Simon Emmett, Stratford Conservative, Daily Referendum, London Spin, Daily Referendum, Steven Adams, Byrne Tofferings, Party Reptile, Tim Roll, Blue Blog, Tory Rascal, Tory Totty, Croydonian, theconservativeblog, DavidCameronFacts, Guy The Mac, TheRedRag.
I’ve stripped out the real names and email addresses. Some of the bloggers mentioned above didn’t attend. And we haven’t confirmed whether they all received invitations, but many have confirmed they did.
—
Sending out a ‘talking points memo’ has been an old trick with the Republican right and it wouldn’t surprise me if CCHQ copied it here.
After all, it does follow cosy dinners with Tory bloggers.
It’s however difficult to see some like Matt Wardman follow the line set by CCHQ as they are avowedly non-partisan.
Similarly, the likes of Thomas Byrne are unlikely to swallow any anti-EU propaganda. Dizzy recently claimed he is no longer a Tory but he hates Labour enough to follow.
But if a memo was issued, it’s likely most right-wing bloggers mentioned would toe it while desperately burnishing their ‘independent’ credentials.
It could also be that CCHQ is planning to outsource their negative campaigning to bloggers.
It’ll be interesting to see if right-wing bloggers jump on similar stories during the day on an issue.
After all, Tories have coordinated attacks in the past on the Financial Times and the Telegraph.
Update: Note that as soon as Left Foot Forward published, presumably having gotten the same email, they were almost instantly attacked by many on our list.
Damn, that memo machine is working already. Let the games begin!
Update 2: Matt Wardman confirms a briefing with bloggers took place.
Update 3: A Stratford Conservative lets slip:
As Eric Pickles said this is the first real election to be faught online so lets make sure we win it!
No, that doesn’t sound like trying to rally bloggers for a Tory cause at all.
Update 4: I’ve also been told a senior Tory in the comms team sent out an email to bloggers asking them to comment on Will Straw’s article. Nope, absolutely no coordination at all.
Samuel Coates said this recently:
That said, the real strength of the centre-right blogosphere up to now has not been in working together or toeing lines. Its strength has been its independent spirit.
And who believes that any more?
Does Simon Jenkins shit in the woods?
I believe that the best response to the careening unexamined prejudice of the esteemed Mr Jenkins’ latest article on Comment Is Free is a line-by line takedown.
The pope is right and Harriet Harman is wrong. I might prefer the opposite to be the case but, on the matter in hand, Voltaire’s principle should apply. The Roman Catholic church may be a hotbed of religious prejudice, indoctrination and, somewhere in the United Kingdom, social division.
…and sexual discrimination, intolerance and ugly homophobic dogma.
But faced with Harriet Harman’s equality bill and her utopian campaign to straighten all the rough timber of mankind, the pope’s right to practise what he preaches needs defending.
Last I heard, it wasn’t Harman who was anxious to straighten out her constituents.
Why we’re taking the Treasury to court
contribution by Adam Ramsay
Today we will serve the Treasury with legal proceedings. We are trying to stop them allowing RBS to pump public money into fossil fuel projects driving us towards climate catastrophe.
As I discussed a week ago, the Royal Bank of Scotland have long been Europe’s dirtiest bank. Since the bail-out just over a year ago, they have poured billions of pounds of public money into fossil fuel extraction projects driving wars, human rights abuses and climate change around the world.
Their climate impact is so high that, according to this recent report (pdf) the government could potentially do more about global emissions through active ownership of RBS than through all UK domestic activity.
They have also funded, with our money, projects which risk: inflaming wars in central Africa, destroying pristine arctic wilderness and systematically abuse workers.
We thought there must be laws to prevent such abuses of public money. It turns out that there are.
continue reading… »
Help us raise money for an ad against Rod Liddle!
The massive interest in the campaign by Indy readers against Rod Liddle as editor of the Independent has raised serious doubts even with Alexander Lebedev.
I’ve been told by several top sources at the Independent that the once-certain appointment is now being considered with greater reservation than before. Hell, the Indy’s own staff are sending out coded messages – they don’t want him there. Lebedev is still considering Liddle, but with greater reservations than before.
We need your help to make Alexander Lebedev’s doubts bigger. We want to place an advert (below) in the Independent, making the case that it would suffer greatly under the editorship of Rod Liddle.
If the Indy refuses the ad, the money raised will go to three charities dealing with Somalian refugees, a women’s rape and sexual abuse support group and a charity campaiging on climate change.
Why we should support Brown’s push for a constitution and AV
contribution by Lisa Harker
Most of the reaction to today’s speech to the Prime Minister’s ippr speech on constitutional reform has taken the view that it was an exercise in political manoeuvring.
Far from ‘new politics’ it is old Gordon, out to ‘wrong foot’ and create ‘dividing lines’ between Labour and its opponents. Even those more sympathetic to the need for reform, have adopted a weary tone that these ideas, coming so late in the day, are going to make very little difference.
Some of this is fair enough. Laying out a new ‘constitutional settlement’ would have had much more moral force if the Prime Minister had made it when he was new to office and secure in power. Coming now, in the dog days of this parliament with the public still fuming at the expenses scandal, it smacks of expediency.
Of course, the real pity is that when he took over at Number Ten, Gordon Brown did have constitutional reform at the top of his agenda for change. The problem was that he didn’t act on it.
continue reading… »
Osborne red-faced after Lord Stern backs away
We noted on LC this morning that Lord Stern, who is a strong critic of climate change deniers, was to be named as George Osborne today as an advisor.
Lord Stern has said this in the past:
Those who say that climate change doesn’t exist are being understood as the flat-earthers that they are, as the people who deny the link between smoking and cancer, as the people who denied the link between HIV and AIDS.
Nevertheless, in order to shore up their green credentials, George Osborne announced that Lord Stern would help the Tories develop ideas for a new Green Investment bank.
But Sky News is now reporting:
Nicholas Stern, a highly influential crossbench peer who has played a key part in creating the Government’s global warming policy, says he will be working not just with the Tories, but also with Labour and anyone else who is interested. “I should stress that I am not, and have no plans to be, an adviser to any political party,” Lord Stern said in a statement.
…
“I would be willing to speak to the Conservatives’ advisory group about their ideas for a Green Investment Bank, just as I am continuing to contribute to discussions with the Labour Government about policies on climate change.”
While not ruling out working with the Tories, the suggestion earlier that Tories had ‘poached him’ now look decidedly premature.
Is Lord Stern backing from the Tories after discovering the extent of their climate change denialism?
Update
Left Foot Forward illustrates how the gaffe played out on TV
Social Democracy lessons for Polly Toynbee and others
For months, the right wing newspapers have been inventing horror stories about what the consequences of what they call ‘Harriet Harman’s equalities bill’ will be. None, however, have managed to come up with as ludicrous a suggestion as that of Polly Toynbee.
She wrote today in the Guardian that she thinks that providing free personal care for elderly people might contravene the government’s Equalities bill, which expects public bodies to consider the effect of their policies on inequality.
Presumably, by the same logic, the NHS, schools, child benefit, free bus passes and every other popular and effective public service which reduces inequality should be changed so they are free only for the poorest, with everyone else having to pay.
With friends like this…
This kind of imbecility is merely an extreme example of a set of beliefs which are widely held amongst the political elite, which can be summarised thus:
continue reading… »
Libel costs Mirror £15k damages, £380k in costs
Reports of this kind seem fairly commonplace in today’s media:
Model Matt Peacock yesterday accepted £15,000 in damages from the Sunday Mirror over an article that claimed he was violent towards his ex-wife, Jodie Marsh.
The piece, which appeared in its Celebs on Sunday magazine on 13 April last year, claimed the couple’s relationship ended soon afterwards as a result of his violence.
It’s just your bog standard ‘newspaper prints minor celeb gossip and gets nailed for inconsequential sum in damages’ that seems to crop up every few weeks with banal regularity.
The Mirror, of course, also had to pick up the tab for costs, the exact figure for which is rarely disclosed… unless Private Eye get in on the act.
According to sources on Twitter, this week’s copy of the Eye reveals that he got £15,000 in damages after being wrongly accused of being a wife-beater, a law firm who’s name we all know very well – Carter Ruck – got £380,000 in legal costs out of this one case.
Difficult as it is to have much sympathy for the Mirror here, there is something desperately wrong with a system in which the lawyers are making just over 25 times as much out of a lawsuit than the injured party.
The Pope and gay adoption
There’s an old joke about the Pope’s attitude to contraception, attributed variously to Irish comedian Dave Allen or the Italian-American community at large. The punchline runs: ‘If he doesn’t play the game, he shouldn’t try to make the rules.’
I am inescapably reminded of the quip after reading about the intervention of the world’s most prominent former Hitler Youth into current UK debates about employment equality and gay adoption.
Well, New Labour in office has been adamant about its wish for ‘dialogue’ with ‘faith communities’, so it can hardly feign surprise when a religion with over 4m adherents takes it up on the idea.
I’ve heard it said that Catholic adoption agencies do good work, frequently finding homes for severely handicapped kids that are the hardest to place.
But why have specifically Catholic adoption agencies in the first place? Aren’t they a throwback to the days when knocked-up Catholic schoolgirls needed somewhere to dump the unfortunate sprog before getting carted off to the nearest Magdalene Laundry?
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