See a number, don’t believe it

We came to expect under New Labour that every statistic the government offered would be a lie. But you kind of expect the police, the guardians of law & order, to be an exception. But they have been corrupted thoroughly too, and the UK Statistics Authority is now refusing to accept their crime figures because the data can’t be trusted. Too many top coppers are downgrading, ignoring and reclassifying crimes to create an illusion of meeting targets and falling crime rates. Maybe they should make issuing falsified official statistics a criminal offence and start arresting the blighters and sending them to gaol.