Duking the stats, redux

A while back I had a bit of a go at Chris Grayling's claim that "under Labour violent crime had risen 70%", on the grounds that it was total nonsense. But I wasn't able to find out what the shaky basis for his claim was.

Happily Mark Easton has rather more clout with Conservative Central Office than I do* and so when he made the same challenge to David Cameron recently, they very kindly provided him with the figures they used.

They're appalling. Transparent horseshit. Do read the full analysis, but the headline version of how you turn a consistent fall in violent crime into a 70% rise is:

• Compare figures that you have been explicitly told are not comparable
• Cherry-pick your comparison years so that downward trends become upward leaps
• Have the unmitigated gall to pretend this is a meaningful contribution to political debate

It's not even sophisticated statistical bullshit. It's out and out manipulation of the figures to argue that fewer stabbings are really more stabbings, fewer shootings are actually more shootings, less crime is more crime.

I'm sure Grayling and Cameron weren't the architects of this. But you have to wonder if, when they were told that the violent crime stats were exactly what they wanted them to be, they even asked themselves whether they ought to check that their researchers hadn't been a little too helpful. Or whether they really cared - it's not very likely they're about to change their policies or rhetoric to match the evidence.

*A low bar there, to be sure.

Lawful Stupid

This is probably the geekiest analogy I'll ever make; an error compounded by the fact I'm basing it entirely on second hand knowledge. Which is a rather feeble way of saying that even though I'm about to talk about Dungeons and Dragons role-playing games, I've never actually played any.

One of the character types you can choose to play is the paladin: a knight dedicated to the service of a deity, from whom - this being D&D - he derives various mystical powers. It is a necessary characteristic of the paladin that he is both Lawful and Good (as opposed to Chaotic and/or Evil). More than that, while other characters could start off Good but find themselves slipping into Evil (by e.g. stealing useful equipmment, killing defenceless villains, lying to potential allies to get them onside etc.) the paladin is constrained always to be Lawful Good, otherwise they lose their god-granted powers. All clear so far? Awesome.

This constraint has led to the development of the term Lawful Stupid - what you get when paladins are so wrapped up in maintaining their alignment that they actively sabotage their own goals. For example, by waking up sleeping guards because it's evil to murder people in their sleep. Or by insisting on a daylight frontal assualt on the Evil Baron's fortress to recover the MacGuffin rather than just stealing it under cover of darkness. In general, Lawful Stupid means being willing to hand the forces of evil a major tactical advantage rather than sully your purity.

There's a point coming up, and I hope for all our sakes it's worth it.

Anjem Choudary's latest wheeze has stirred up all the predictable reactions, no doubt to his great consternation. Among those is the emergence of the free speech champions, reluctantly defending his right to march. They're not on his side, they know if it ever goes ahead there'll be a major shitstorm, but dammit, principles are principles. This is a position which cuts across the right/left diving lines, although the modes of expression are a little different. Longrider is clearly troubled by the dilemma raised:

So, welcome to Britain, the land of free speech. Free speech means allowing speech that you find offensive – and, let me restate it for those who are a little slow on the uptake; there is no right not to be offended...However, vile, obnoxious cunt though he is, Andrem Choudary must be allowed to voice his opinions. Out in the open, we can see him for the vile, obnoxious cunt that he is – sunshine being the best bleach. Let the world see and revile his views, let him remind us what waits for those who would find themselves living in his desired Caliphate. And, let us remind ourselves that freedom of speech means just that – freedom to speak openly, no matter how vile those opinions, no matter how upsetting, offensive or “inappropriate”.

And David Osler has his robust say-so here:

All of this leaves the principled humanist secular left with a huge headache. After all, if we do not uphold the elementary argument for freedom of speech, who will? So here we are, forced to extend our efforts in support of a manifestation of execrable religious bigotry. It is an obvious sucker punch, and we can even see it coming, but we have no alternative but to walk straight into it.

All of which leaves me asking - what's so great about free speech?

Seriously, what's the point? Why do we rate it so highly? It comes down to one of two reasons - it produces some end that we find desirable, or it's just an end in itself - it's good to have free speech because free speech is good, regardless of whether it actually benefits anybody.

I don't think anyone really believes the latter. Every proponent of free speech will tell you that there are tangible advantages to be gained (e.g. Longrider's "sunshine is the best bleach") from letting everyone have their say. And quite right - if you're going to argue that free speech is valuable, you have to show what that value consists in. Otherwise it all seems very arbitrary.

So fine - we value free speech because it creates the kind of society we want to live in. It's the cornerstone of the kind of society we want, in fact. Until it isn't. If we're supporting free speech because it produces results for us then we're entitled - required, really - to check that it's actually delivering for us. If it's not, insisting on it nevertheless is just a little Lawful Stupid.

Nor is this controversial. The well-worn example is that you don't have the freedom to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theatre, because the advantages of sticking with the principle of free speech are outweighed by the disadvantages of panicky mob death. But wait! What have we here? A situation where deliberately inflammatory speech in a particularly volatile arena is rightly banned because it creates avoidable problems. Gosh. I wonder if that has any applicability to a anti-troops march through Wooton Bassett?

Christ you're bored

If you've come here looking for entertainment over the festive season, you must be having a really shitty Christmas. So you might appreciate this:



and you'll definitely appreciate this:

Class War II: XFactor Boogaloo

Once upon a time, the middle class screwed over the working class with a bit of panache. Corn Laws, child labour in t'mill, trench warfare, "the service economy" - it all had a certain zip and sting. Nowadays, we persecute the lower-orders in ways that make up in lazy contempt what they lack in aggression. Specifically, we're getting in a pissing match over the Christmas No. 1.

In the red corner, people buying music they actually like. In the blue corner, people buying music to piss on the chips of the people in the red corner. And RATM's newfound fans are signing up to the facebook group in droves, let's not forget, as part of a protest about songs being sold on the merits of marketing campaigns rather than musicality. Sweet suffering Christ, have we no decency?

I mean seriously, buying a song whose sole attribute is the refrain "Fuck you I won't do what you tell me" just because you were told to on Facebook? This is the counterculture now?

Class War, Huh, What Is It Good For?

Good God y'all.

Looks like the battlelines are being drawn. If you're not sure which side of the barricades you belong on, a short fill-in-the-blanks quiz based on the latest Mel Philips piece should help you decide. Simply replace the blank with one of the following: A - Working; B - Upper; C - Middle:

It is the ________ class whose children are discriminated against by the rigging of university admissions against candidates from high-achieving schools.

It is _______-class aspirations for their children which have been attacked by the war of attrition waged against grammar and independent schools.

It is the _______ class whose ethic of professionalism - whether in medicine, education, the law or other disciplines - has been under sustained attack by government interference in order to snuff out the independence of mind and spirit which is one of the principal sources of ________-class robustness.

How you scored:
Mostly As - don't take the piss.

Mostly Bs - well done, comrade. You gut the last banker, I'll hang the last Master of Fox Hounds.

Mostly Cs - Bad luck. If you can't already smoke a cigarette blindfold, I'd start getting some practice in.


That anyone, even Melanie Philips, can suggest with a straight face that doctors and lawyers who can afford either to pay the fees for or live in the cachement area of a high performing school are somehow "middle" class is a joke. Here's the bottom-line: if your personal income is over £50K, you are not only one of the top 10% of earners in the UK, but you are quite comfortably one of the richest tenth of one percent of people who have ever been born.* Anywhere, ever. If your response to being in this situation is to get resentful that people worse off than you are getting government support for e.g. childcare while you miss out on tax-breaks on your second home, then you are whining in a rather unattractive fashion. If you think that you or your financial situation are in any way a priority for government, you're either phenomenally ignorant about your good fortune, or you're pathetic. Good news! You're well-off, and you're going to stay well-off. Even if you have put your child into a state school, or only pay half the deposit on his first home, you're still going to be sitting pretty damn pretty. So don't keep sticking your hand out.

The language of priorities isn't just for politicians. All of us need to start wondering whether "policies that will see me right" are really the same as the policies needed to help the country.


*Probably. Don't be fooled into thinking I'm making that statement on the basis of rigorous economic and demographic analysis.

"I just want to hear the son of a bitch deny it"

As has been well-publicised just now, the HSE website includes a section on Health and Safety myths, debunking various outrageous anecdotes - including, by happy chance, those used by Cameron in yesterday's speech. A certain juvenile type of mind would find that terribly amusing, but the fact that this site is clearly struggling to make headway is symptomatic of the way we process information. Basically, we can't handle negatives.

A couple of years ago, the US's Center for Disease Control issued a leaflet which listed various "common knowledge" facts about the vaccine and labelled them as "True" or "False". Can't get much clearer than that, right?

When University of Michigan social psychologist Norbert Schwarz had volunteers read the CDC flier, however, he found that within 30 minutes, older people misremembered 28 percent of the false statements as true. Three days later, they remembered 40 percent of the myths as factual.

Younger people did better at first, but three days later they made as many errors as older people did after 30 minutes. Most troubling was that people of all ages now felt that the source of their false beliefs was the respected CDC.

These findings have been replicated in various other experiments: we just don't seem to attach negative markers to memories. You may have experienced this yourself: telling someone a story about how you e.g. went out and thought you'd left the iron on (but hadn't), and finding out later that they no longer trust you around home appliances because they remember the story but haven't filed it under "fiction". Or, for a more fun version, start introducing your friends to people they fancy with the words, "This is Geoff, who's never had chlamydia."*

The implications for this are fairly massive. For one, it goes some way to explaining why the HSE can't get a break. More seriously, it shows how easy it is to spread falsehoods even when you're trying to fight them. The more you talk about, for example, how MMR doesn't cause autism, and there are no good studies that link MMR to autism, and that studies that do link MMR to autism are flawed then the more you're linking MMR to autism in people's minds. Denying false allegations is such a natural response as to be almost reflex, but if that's all you do then you're just going cement the falsehood in some people's minds.

Instead, if you've got a point to make, make that point. Don't say "MMR doesn't cause autism," say, "MMR is safe". Instead of "Immigrants don't steal your job" try "Immigration makes us better off". As LBJ pointed out, there's no weaker position to be in than denying something that's not true.


*NB, this works better if your friend is actually called Geoff.

Placebo politics

With the emergency budget safely pencilled in for after the election, there's clearly no need for the Tories to discuss economic policy any more. Moving down the list of key priorities, the next giant to slay is, naturally enough, Health and Safety legislation. Cameron's speech comes as a timely reminder of how tired we all are of a government that's obsessed with cheap, populist initiatives rather than addressing the big issues facing Britain today.

And they don't come much bigger than this: bureaucracy is killing the village fete. I'm going to repeat that so the full horror can sink in: bureaucracy is killing the village fete. Or in other words, the people in charge of organising village fetes are such gullible, lazy, pigshit-thick inbreds that not only do they believe they'll have to fill in reams of forms to get a tombola permit, but they are so scared by the prospect of reading, understanding and completing said mythical forms that, like the selfish bastards they are, they'd rather see the whole village go without the much-anticipated, long-remembered once-a-year thrill of winning a bottle of Tizer at a coconut shy than crease their illiterate brows in thought, or sweat over a row of tick-boxes.

It hasn't occured to them that the popular conception of Health & Safety as bureacracy's war on common sense is outrage porn peddled by right-wing tabloids who are still institutionally aghast at the Factory Act. It might have occured to Cameron, but if it has he's doing his best to hide it. For example, if you're going to kick off your speech with dramatic anecdotes about kids being forced to wear goggles to play conkers, you could have the decency to point out that this nonsense has been debunked by the HSE:

This is one of the oldest chestnuts around, a truly classic myth. A well-meaning head teacher decided children should wear safety goggles to play conkers. Subsequently some schools appear to have banned conkers on ‘health & safety’ grounds or made children wear goggles, or even padded gloves!

Realistically the risk from playing conkers is incredibly low and just not worth bothering about. If kids deliberately hit each other over the head with conkers, that’s a discipline issue, not health and safety.

Cameron does, eventually, admit that the problem lies not with the HSE, but with employers and councils who are a) wilfully ignorant of the regulations and b) terrified of being sued. In fact, he's even prepared to admit that maybe we're all a bit to blame for being so keen to sue over accidents. But that doesn't mean he won't blame the HSE, or commission a report on how quickly workplace safety regulations can be overturned. As Boots recently admitted in a different context, just because what you're selling doesn't work doesn't mean people won't queue up to buy it.

Not as exciting as I first thought

Probably for the best, but the headline: "Hunt for Scottish sharks officer" refers to a recruitment drive, and not a tragically ironic tale of a man feared to have made the ultimate sacrifice in his quest to protect an endangered but lethal species.

Similarly, "Shuttle astronaut becomes father in space" isn't quite as groundbreaking as you might have expected. It's almost like they're doing it deliberately.

Tom Swifties

By way of light relief (and because Tom Freeman seems to have the franchise for Uxbridge English Dictionary):

"I'm off angling," said Tom acutely

"I'm going to swim to the Isle of Wight," said Tom insolently

"Sergeant, take the prisoner downstairs", said Tom condescendingly

"I'm determined to air-cool this small biting insect," said Tom fanatically

"Sorry, but I've got to let you go," said Tom discerningly

...and, by way of variation:

"But I don't want to eat whale meat," Tom blubbered.

Winds of change

As a follow up to the below, I've come across a more directly applicable study on people's susceptibility to be swayed by the "local" majority. This study from the LSE shows what happens if you feed people slanted news on an issue (in this case, the EU). Astonishingly enough, being presented with consistently biased information does change the way you think about an issue. But it does it gradually:

Michael Bruter, a senior lecturer in European politics at the school, fed a steady diet of slanted newsletters about Europe and the European Union — either all good news or all bad — to 1,200 citizens of six countries over two years.

Over time, Bruter found, and without exception, the readers subconsciously adopted the bias to varying degrees and changed their view of the EU and of themselves as Europeans, a few of them in the extreme. Surprisingly, they didn't register any change right after the newsletters stopped — not until full six months later, when they had obviously let down their guard.

This, then, is why it matters that, (e.g.) the Sun is supporting the Tories. Not because it can order its readers to vote accordingly, but because it can decide the story it wants to tell them. Then they'll make up their own minds accordingly. But of course, this has to be a somewhat subtle process. Step over the line between impartial judgement and naked character assassination, and people quickly start to question the quality of the information your feeding them. And in the present case, it seems the Sun has made people think better of Gordon Brown, which is no mean feat nowadays. But only, I suspect, as far as that one story goes. In one month's time, this incident will be firmly in the past but the one-sided narrative, and its effect on voters, will remain. The best way to destroy reputations is erosion, not demolition.