Statistics - Lies, Damned Lies & Complete B******s

Below is a copy of the Nottingham City Council & Notts Police response to the utter crap Reform crime report. Including suicides in murder statistics is a fantastic piece of statistical analysis, and that's before discussions on population size.

Andrew Haldenbury (Reform, the slap-head pictured on the left, looks like his head isn't screwed on properly) claims that his report is 99% accurate. I can do better than that; 100% of the replies I have seen dismiss the report as rubbish and label the Reform group as a bunch of right-wing failed southern journalists.

Maybe Mr Haldenbury didn't get the right grades to come to Nottingham University and has held a grudge ever since. Maybe one of his mates did and got him up for the weekend on the Nottingham promise of 3 women for every bloke, but he went home unloved & unwanted (obviously, see photo above). Maybe, we'll never know.

If you want to mail him and teach him how to add up, be my guest, this is his e-mail address: andrew.haldenby@reform.co.uk

He has offered to work with the council on a different, hopefully more accurate, way of compiling figures. If he does, can he let me know when he's coming, and I'll help him off the train.

Nottingham City Council and Notts Police say some of the figures used in the report are inaccurate.

Disputed figures

The authorities say the population figure of 249,584 is too low, thereby making every per 1,000 of the population calculation higher than it should be.

And they claim there were nine murders in the city in 2005, not 13 - despite the police having provided the figures themselves. The higher figure included manslaughter and suicide cases.

A revised population figure of 275,100 reduces the crime rate to 104.8 per 1,000 population putting it second below Leeds. Over the past five years, all crime has reduced by 21,404 offences (13% drop) across Notts and by 10,864 offences (14.7% drop) in the city.

Authorities also claim using the higher population figures would mean Nottingham drops from first to sixth for car crime, people would be significantly more likely to be a victim of robbery in London than in Nottingham, and the city drops from third to fifth for burglary.

The figure for gun crime would also drop. Gun crime in the city is at its lowest since 1999, with a reduction of 16.5% in Notts (62% in the City of Nottingham) in 2005.

Other errors cited by the council are the report's claim that Leicester is larger than Nottingham and that Derby is almost as big as Nottingham. The area described as Derby includes south Derbyshire - containing huge areas of rural countryside.

Statistics for Nottingham are based on the City Division of Notts Police. To be more accurate in comparison with places like Manchester, authorities say the figures for Greater Nottingham - with a population of 632,100 - should be used.

City council leader Jon Collins said: "The comparisons made don't stack up."

But Reform director Andrew Haldenby stood by the report.

He said: "In compiling this report we have used statistics from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) and given to us by the police.

"Our population data was taken from a document outlining urban areas, published in 2004 by the ONS, which was based on the 2001 census, not the census itself.

"Those urban areas may not be the same as authority boundaries, but were compiled by the ONS.

"We used the same data for all of the areas we looked at and the statistics we have compiled - even if they are only 99% accurate - are the best available."

He would, he said, be willing to work with the council and police on a different way of compiling figures.