The Metropolis

Fullfact beg for better stats from Mayor Johnson's second term. Good luck with that

Mike Pollitt | Wednesday 9 May, 2012 11:16

Oh I know. There’s boring, damn boring, and local government statistics. But independent factcheckers Fullfact make an excellent point in their open letter* to Boris Johnson upon his re-election:

“…during the recent campaign candidates from the major parties were criticised – most often by one another – for their inaccurate use of statistics. The public was given contradictory information on crime levels, transport fares and house building in the capital, with few channels to sort the accurate claims from the inaccurate.”

They are absolutely right. The current situation is risible. Here’s the Guardian’s Dave Hill’s intro to a post trying to make sense of competing claims about the number of policemen in the Met:

“I’d sooner watch a Hadrian’s Wall’s worth of emulsion dry and a layer of moss form on top than join the interminable City Hall “police numbers” trench war. It is, nonetheless, my grim responsibility to salvage a few respectable facts from the fog of rhetoric and spin.”

Amen to that. Without accurate data, it’s impossible to make fair judgements.

The Mayor should want accurate statistics so that he can measure the success of his policies. But then this is a Mayor who gave misleading crime statistics to a Commons committee and then accused the scrupulously independent public servant Sir Michael Scholar of being a “Labour stooge” when he was called out on it.

Fullfact make the following heartfelt plea:

“It is within your power to provide Londoners with trustworthy statistics.”

The problem is, it’s not in his interests.

*Quoting from this open letter does not mean I am relenting in my continuing war against open letters. But this one at least makes a good point.

Fullfact – Londoners deserve better data: an open letter to Boris Johnson
Dave Hill at the Guardian – Boris Johnson and his falling police numbers
The Guardian – Boris Johnson says UK Statistics Authority chair is ‘Labour stooge’
Snipe – An open letter to the writers of open letters

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