Anthony Painter

On Monday I described the Conservative campaign as slippery as an ‘oily fish smothered in Super Lube.’ I was being generous. They are dishonest and viciously scare-mongering. The Tories, having been caught out misusing crime statistics have carried on regardless with sending out millions of direct mails misusing the statistics.

Evan Davies gets stucks in. The only issue is that he didn’t seem to be aware that when Chris Grayling said that there is no way to compare violent crime over time he is actually lying and he knows he is. There is the British Crime Survey.* And he repeats the lie repeatedly. To see this being done, take a look at the blog of the Today programme’s Mark Easton. Since 1995, people’s experience of violent crime has fallen by 50%.

Here is the full recording.

* Apologies, I was writing while listening. Mark Easton made exactly this point at end of the interview. Chris Grayling’s response is laughable- you can’t trust a professional survey but you can get the truth just by ‘talking to people in the street.’ Wally. Also, the reality is that it doesn’t matter particularly if certain things are excluded- as long as the data is comparable and in the British Crime Survey it is.