Friday, May 04, 2007

Return Of An Old Classic.

ideology drives out common humanity alongside common sense.

One example is locking ever more people up in prison, despite falling crime
-Polly Toynbee.

2 comments:

Elliott said...

Good old Pol.

Crime figures in this country are, at best, ambiguous (see here). At worst, the British Crime Survey (a glorified telephone poll) enables those with an agenda to pretend that we shouldn't be worried about violent crime (which the BCS doesn't even cover).

Pol is always propagandising in this vein.

Ross said...

I've been intending to write about the limitations of the BCS and its misuse by the government and the media, for some time, although I haven't gotten round to it. There is one minor point where I disagree with your entry on the survey but I'll add that at your site.

It is a useful tool for measuring what it measures but as you point out it isn't the comprehensive survey that it's portrayed as.