• Welcome
  • Conservation
  • Facilitation
  • PME
  • Books
    • The Big Book of EMFs
  • Blog
  • Testimonials
  • Contact Me
InSpiral Pathways
Aligning passion & process to facilitate positive change 
in international, organisational, & personal development

Lies, Damn Lies and (Dubious) Statistics: Parliamentary candidates provide dodgy data massages in Weston-super-Mare

3/5/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
The title of this blog posting is a variation of one of my least favourite quotes – there are lies, damned lies, and statistics. I passionately believe that statistics, used honestly, help us understand the world, thus enabling us to change it for the better. The “lies” quote, in its various guises, is often trotted out by two kinds of people - those with a poor grasp of the power of statistics, and those who seek to cause confusion among those with a poor grasp of the power of statistics. Members of the second group include the tobacco apologists of yesteryear and the so-called climate change sceptics of today. And of course, we cannot forget that much maligned group, the politicians.

Politicians are often accused of manipulating statistics for their own ends; an accusation few of them would deny if they were being really honest. But in many cases, the “lies” that people refer to are lies of omission rather than flagrant falsehoods. Unlike a lot of people, I have quite a lot of respect for most politicians in Britain. This could be because I work in many of countries where the politics is a lot dirtier than it is over here, at least on the surface. So, perhaps naively, I trust British politicians to be, at worst, somewhat economical with the truth.

But en route to the recycling bin the other day, I was struck by what appeared to be blatant lies in the election leaflets of the Conservative and Labour Parties for our constituency of Weston-super-Mare. Both parties produced bar charts based on the results of local and European elections in the constituency since 2010 to justify voting for them - the charts are reproduced in the above infographic. The Tories and Labour used the charts to portray it as a two horse race between the major parties. In other words, a vote for any of the other parties would be wasted – “Only John Penrose can stop Ed Miliband and Ed Balls in Weston” proclaimed the Conservatives, with Labour firmly stating “If you want the Tories out of power locally and nationally, Labour is the only choice for you.” Both assertions may well turn out to be true but that is not the issue I am writing about in this blog.

At first glance I took the bar charts as being authentic reflections of the percentage voting figures they were meant to portray; but then I did a double-take when I realised that, in both cases, the size of the bars was way out of line with the percentages. Either the charts had been produced by somebody who was incapable of pre-GCSE maths, or they had been deliberately manipulated to suit the agendas of the respective parties.

The Tory leaflet portrayed Labour as being clear in second place with the LibDems a distant third and UKIP hard on their heels in fourth. But in fact the LibDems were only 2% behind Labour and UKIP were 13% behind the LibDems. The charts from the Labour leaflet portrayed a similar picture. In the Labour chart the LibDem vote was 18% and in the Conservative chart it was 20% but, to be charitable, this could be because different methods were used to calculate the figures because of confounding factors such as boundary changes.

So what conclusions can I draw from this? If it was a cock-up then it does not reflect well on the competence of these people who seek to lead the country in this information age. But we all make mistakes. So it should just be a question of the candidates - John Penrose for the Conservatives and Tim Taylor for Labour - holding up their hands and apologising for the human errors that were made. If the charts were deliberately exaggerated then it is a much more serious matter. I’m not an expert but surely that kind of behaviour is illegal. If it is not, then there is a loophole that is in urgent need of closing. 

We keep hearing that trust for politicians in this country is at an all-time low. If facts are being routinely falsified then I am ready to reluctantly agree that this impression is well founded.

0 Comments

    John Mauremootoo

    John Mauremootoo is a consultant with over 20 years of experience in diverse aspects of international development.

    Archives

    February 2024
    October 2017
    September 2017
    September 2015
    August 2015
    May 2015
    January 2015
    August 2014
    January 2014
    August 2013
    July 2013

    Categories

    All
    Aliens
    ALS
    Appreciative Inquiry
    Appreciative Interviews
    Appreciative Living
    Biological Invasions
    Bounded Rationality
    Centre For Pollination Studies
    Certainty
    Chris Anderson
    Christopher Makau
    Cognitive Biases
    Communication
    Complexity
    Connection
    Conservation
    Contribution
    Data Visualisation
    Decision Making
    EFT
    Emotional Freedom Techniques
    Empowering Questions
    End-timers
    Facilitation
    Gratitude
    Growth
    Hans Rosling
    Hedonic Treadmill
    Heroes
    Hesitation
    Hope
    Humble Project Management Toolkit
    Ias
    Ice Bucket Challenge
    Inspirational Stories
    Introduced Species
    Invasive Alien Species
    Invasive Species
    Kenya
    Kibera Tv
    Learning
    Love
    Meditation
    Misanthropy
    Mision
    Mission
    Motor Neurone Disease
    Nazism
    Optimism
    Organisational Development
    Outcome Mapping
    Parkinson’s Disease
    Perfectionism
    Personal Development
    Planning Fallacy
    Politics
    Procrastination
    Project Management
    Racism
    Red Herring
    Significance
    Six Human Needs
    Stakeholder Consultation
    Statistics
    Sustainable Land Management
    Systems Approaches
    Tapping
    TED Talk
    The Complement Sandwich
    The Secret
    TIDEWID
    Training
    UK General Election 2015
    Uncertainty
    Vision
    Win-Wins
    WOOP
    Xenophobia

    RSS Feed

Picture
www.inspiralpathways.com
Welcome
Conservation
Blog
Books
Facilitation, Training & Communication
PME (Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation)
Testimonials
Contact me