It’s garbage in, garbage out for the Conservatives
So the Tories mislaid a decimal point? So what, you might say. Mistakes happen. It’s embarrassing that the error wasn’t picked up, but no-one’s perfect – certainly not the Tories. So whilst this headline gives some temporary amusement, it isn’t in itself proof that the Tories are unfit to run the country or are generally innumerate.
I don’t believe for a minute that the Conservatives decided to spice the report up a bit by changing the figures, unlike the game played last week by Chris Grayling. But let’s look at the quote in more detail. In ‘Labour’s Two Nations’ it stated:
“Teenage girls are almost three times more likely to become pregnant. Young women under 18 are three times more likely to fall pregnant in the most deprived areas compared to the least deprived areas. In the most deprived areas, 54 per cent are likely to fall pregnant before the age of 18, compared to just 19 per cent in the least deprived areas.”
Did no-one ever think about the sense of these figures before they were published? I understand that Conservatives don’t like to make too many forays into local council estates,but surely someone had noticed that there wasn’t a pregnancy rate of over 50% amongst the teenagers. Maybe more worryingly, the Conservatives really believed that there was a teenage pregnancy rate of 1 in 5 in the most affluent areas of the country. Do they not get out much, or do they mix with the ‘wrong sort’? Do CCHQ’s researchers not realise that a calculator only gives the right answer if the correct information is entered? Has ‘garbage in, garbage out’ ever been a more appropriate phrase?
Sadly, but probably unsurprisingly, Children’s Secretary Ed Balls decided to turn the whole saga into a conspiracy, saying:
”David Cameron’s latest deception and airbrushed statistics cannot conceal the fact that the Tories haven’t changed.”
Whilst of course the Conservatives seek to minimise the whole thing, with a party spokesman telling us:
“A decimal point was left out in a calculation. It makes no difference at all to the conclusions of a wide-ranging report which shows that Labour have consistently let down the poorest in Britain.”
Which in some ways is right. But it also goes to show that the truth has become a casualty of the message – and that the Tories have no idea what is really going on across most of the UK.
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- Conservatives admit that they didn't do enough to stop Ian Oakley
- Conservatives’ use of crime statistics ‘selective and mendacious’
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