Boggart Blog Central

Increasingly desperate as all their efforts to stem the advance of the BNP in barking, Barnsley and Burnley seem to amount to nothing, the Labour government has resorted to its favourite tactic: telling lies.

This month alone they have told lies about Swine Flu (apparently hundreds of people who lived near you have died of it) ; the have claimed unemployment has started to fall when in fact the only reason the figure was lower is that they stopped counting people whose benefit has been suspended because they have not tried hard enough to find jobs; today they announced the economy is out of recession and growing once more though the 0.1% growth in the final quarter of the year was achieved as a result of the government's manufacturing monopoly money to a sum equal to about 10% of the gross domestic product and giving it to banks, public service contractors and foreign car manufacturers.

The most outrageous lie however has been the claim that "reported" crime has fallen. Nobody now reports crime as they fear they will be arrested and charged with not being polite enough to the burglars who have broken into their house and are stealing all their stuff. Added to that, Labour's Politically Correct Thought Police, knowing that most crime is committed by males aged 12 - 24 stopped counting crimes committed by the under 16 because the poor little darlings don't understand mugging and housebreaking, twocking and setting fire to property is wrong.

What is really off - pissing about the Labour government, and let's not delude ourselves the Conservatives will be any different when they are in power, is they persist in the irrational belief that if they chant statistics over and over again the only people who will not believe them are the most misanthropic and congenitally evil supporters of the rabid right. People who do not believe official statistics are insane, Gordon Brown more or less said a few months ago.

Insulting the punters by calling them stupid is bad enough, saying they are insane is suicidal. It is not the people who refuse to believe statistics that are bonkers but those dwindling few Guardian writers who believe the statistics put out to make the case that Labour politicians are really nice people who are doing a good job in very difficult circumstances.

If you are one of those people who clings to a lingering feeling that Labour can't be all bad because they care about minorities, orphans (so long as they are not British orphans) and foxes, her is an example of how statistics are made to tell lies.

A recent report complied by a left wing think tank to address the appalling take up of GCSE A level courses in Languages complained that criticism of the state education policy on Language courses is unfair. Yes it is correct to say A level pupils in private schools got a lot more good pass grades in languages than state school pupils. "Look at the statistics," they whined, "80%of pupils in private schools take at least on A level in a foreign language, only 40% of state school pupils are entered for the exams. No wonder the private education system gets better results.

Let's re - examine that in a computer professional's logic rather than New Labour logic. The number of pupils in private education in 7%. The number of pupils in state education is 93%. So 80% of 7% is … I could never be arsed with maths, let's say about 5.5% and 40% of 93% is roughly 37%. This means five and a half percent of pupils got more A level grade A and Bs than 37%. And that is a case for banning private education?

The idea of the old Grammar Schools, the selective education so hated by the "Progressive Left" was that bright children from poorer homes who have as good a chance of getting on as those whose parents could afford private education. As usual it is a case of the left in trying to be fair to everyone ending up being unfair to everyone but trying to conceal the facts with bogus statistics. And the Conservatives were just the same last time they were in power and will be again. The audacity of their claims that the voters are too stupid to understand official data is one of the reasons people have lost faith in politics, the professions and everything.

The reason the Conservatives are losing votes universally to UKIP and Labour is losing votes to the BNP in Barking, Barnsley and Burnley ( not to mention Bradford and Birmingham), to the Lib Dems in Lichfield, Luton and Littlehampton, to the Greens in Gateshead, Garstang and Gillingham and for all we know to The Hurricane Party in Hertford Hereford and Hampshire is not because the voters there are drawn to alliteration (in fact few of the 97% educated in state schools are likely to know what alliteration is) but because they think the punters are so simple minded they will believe any old bollocks if it is backed by a few official statistics.

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