Is there such a thing as a politician we can trust?

"If you repeat a lie often enough it becomes the truth."

- Joseph Goebbels

It's times like yesterday that I seriously think I'll never vote again.

In the last few days, there has been a lot of comment about remarks made by the Prime Minister David Cameron during Prime Ministers Questions on February 22nd. You can read the analysis by Channel 4 news here. I won't go into the full analysis of the stats as C4 have done an excellent job.

Basically, what Cameron said was that there would be more visible Police this March than a year ago.

Theresa May said much the same thing about a month or so ago, and was widely criticised and ridiculed for saying this. A larger proportion, yes, but of a smaller number. Result: net decrease in "visible" police.

And here's what really gets my goat about this;

1. Was this a simple statistical mistake? No, it can't have been. One might have been able to be generous the first time, but the Government would have known that it was an unsustainable and indefensible statistic following Theresa May's use of it. Mistakes are made of course, but they should be rectified, not trotted out repeatedly.

2. Did the PM not really understand the issue? I sincerely hope that's not the case. If he did not understand the significance of what he was saying then he is not fit to be PM.

3. Did Mr Cameron simply regurgitate what he was told to say, without checking the veracity of the claim? See my answer to 2). You'd think he'd have learnt his lessons from the "45 minutes" saga.

4. Does the Government really think that we are stupid enough to unquestioningly fall for these bland statements? Probably. This is the only explanation that I can think of. They surely can't be saying these things with an "honestly held belief" that it's even partially true.

The only conclusion that I can come to is that HM Government think that the soundbite of "more visible police" is what will get the attention and that people won't read the small print. What's even more depressing, politically, is that I think all of the parties would have done the same thing. We've had 13 years of Spin from New Labour where such statistical deception was commonplace. Previous Governments have of course done the same but somehow now it seems more blatant and endemic.

It's very simple sub-GCSE maths to analyse this topic, and Mr Cameron and his aides seem incapable of this.

Is there such a thing as a politician we can trust?

Update 16th April 2012:

Turns out Mrs May has "form" for distorting the truth and misrepresentation for her own ends. Remember the "cat" story? Mrs May, during a speech to the Conservative Party Conference, claimed that an illegal immigrant was not deported because he had a cat. The Daily Mail reported the story here.

The slightly more rational view of events can be found on Channel 4's FactCheck blog.

"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

Now, just to show I'm not entirely biased against the Conservative Party, let's subject Ed Miliband to the same scrutiny. On April 2nd, he said

“According to the British Crime Survey, violence, theft and robbery are going up – the fastest rise in a decade”



Really? The funny thing is, I seem to recall the Opposition making similar claims when Labour were in power, but the Labour Government dismissing these claims as scaremongering.

Once again, let's leave FactCheck to do the analysis. Read it here.

"Now Then Lad..." by Mike Pannett

This has been, by some considerable distance, my favourite book of the last 20 years. I don't think I've read a book virtually in one sitting since I was at school, but I was able to completely immerse myself in this first book of Mike Pannett's. I often get too bored or tired to read more than five or ten pages at a time with most books but not this one.

The title might take some explaining though to those of you not fortunate enough to have lived in Yorkshire. I've been here about four years now, and I no longer say "Good morning" or "Hello" when I'm greeting someone. A quick, firm nod and a "Now then...." is all that's needed.

Mike Pannett left his roots in North Yorkshire to join the Metropolitan Police in London. After ten years he wanted to return to home and transferred to North Yorkshire Police. This book, the first in a growing series, takes us through Mike's readjustment to country life, and policing a new and much larger patch.

All the tales in the book are true, which really endeared it to me. I was a country lad myself, born & brought up in Somerset, now living near the border of East Yorkshire and North Yorkshire. I was also a Special Constable for a number of years, so this book was almost tailor made for me. Having said that, I think that one of the clear strengths of the book is that it strikes the balances so well that it will appeal to everyone. There is sufficient explanation of police procedures to clarify certain situations without going overboard and losing those without police experience, or getting bogged down with minutia. Similarly, there is just the right amount of picture painting of the beautiful countryside without becoming too sentimental, and the perfect quantity of details of Mike's personal circumstances without turning it into a soap opera.

I'm not very familiar with North Yorkshire just yet, but I enjoyed being able to recognise and picture some of the locations mentioned in the book, and it was but a short journey from there to imagining Mike on patrol on the roads near me.

The book moves along at a reasonable pace, making it easy to keep turning those pages. It's a well written and easy read, and you will feel at home with it very quickly. This isn't Heartbeat, tales of a long-disappeared golden age, or a "country's better than city" argument. It does however paint a very affectionate portrait of life in the country where you'd think, as a copper, it was continually calm and quiet. It turns out it's not quite like that all the time.

Very much recommended. You can buy from Amazon using the link above.