I now have the 3 election flyers for Bournemouth West. Every election I get frustrated by the deceit and disinformation in them. So I’ve decided to take a look in detail at the numbers and claims. @ConorBurnsUK @CllrSimonBull @JonNicholas2017 @dave4bmthwest Thread: 1/13
First up @ConorBurnsUK and his claims about how great we have had it for the last 9 years. Lots of big, impressive sounding numbers but no sources, methodology or details.
The economy is 19% bigger than in May 2010.
19% sounds quite large but when you consider that is less than 2% growth per year the Conservatives really shouldn’t be saying this is good. For reference, world GDP growth is at about 3%.
19% sounds quite large but when you consider that is less than 2% growth per year the Conservatives really shouldn’t be saying this is good. For reference, world GDP growth is at about 3%.
Possible big statistical trick here. Is this figure adjusted for inflation? The key words are “real terms”. Conor doesn’t say. The UK average inflation over the last 9 years has been about 2.3% we may really have an economy shrinking smaller by 0.3% per year.
Unemployment is now at its lowest rate since 1974 – 3.8%. A favourite headline figure from the Conservatives but doesn’t tell the whole truth. Many are staying in work because they cannot afford to retire. Especially since the retirement age for women has gone up.
Changes in the calc method mean you are now classed as employed for working an hour or two a week or staying to run a home. Also wages have stagnated during this time. The increase in employment has been by self-employed or zero-hours workers. Its statistical cherry picking.
3.7 mn jobs created looks great but its just a ratio of employment rate to population. But why is this their achievement? Anyone remember any specific Conservative job creation policies. Their main policy has been to force unemployed into unsuitable, poorly paid, part time work.
We all know debt is bad and can agree that more of it is harder to manage. So here we have 35.5 bn of interest paid. This isn’t a reduction in deficit (balance of payments), or a reduction in the size of the debt. Just the interest payment. Why is this a figure to be proud of?
For reference since the Conservatives came to power in 2010 they have added £800 billion to the national debt; nearly doubling it to £1.8 trillion. The last time we had this much debt (inflation adjusted) was in the 60’s. Most of this debt increase occurred in the last 10 years.
Doctors and teachers. I am going to take these two together because they use the same statistical tricks. Firstly, are the numbers adjusted for population? Its no point talking about an increase in a figure if the consumers of the service have grown by a greater margin.
For example, the UK population grew by 6% between 2010 and 2018 (worldbank.org). Without the starting figure we can’t see the grown rate to see if this is even a positive figure.
The second trick that is often used is headcount vs whole-time-equivalent. Numbers from 2016 show the FTE figure for doctors is about 6% lower than the headcount.
We also don’t know if they have done the same "new but existing" staff trick that #Raab is trying with new nurses or 40 fake hospitals (metro.co.uk/2019/11/25/tru…). As usual the lack of detail, references or methods leads me to believe this is more lying just with statistics. /end
Addeddum: there are also a number of promises on police, health and school funding which I'm ignoring because past behaviour is a good guide to future performance. Do read this on previous manifesto promises and the reality: mirror.co.uk/news/politics/…
Its also worth pointing out that in Bournemouth the unemployment rate is higher than the national average at 4.2%.
