Tory Porkies
Over the past few weeks the Tories have been trying to grab headlines by telling us all we live in a broken society riven by crime.
It turns out these 'dire warnings' were just cheap political scaremongering.
The truth was revealed by new figures which show crime has fallen a massive 23% in Hastings over the last five years.
The Tories have said there has been a big rise in violent crime during Labour's time in government. Statistics can always be manipulated to suit a particular argument but the Tory spinning was so bad that the independent UK Statistics Authority felt compelled to intervene to question the Tory statistics. Sir Michael Scholar, chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, has written to Chris Grayling, Tory Home Affairs spokesman, saying: "I do not wish to become involved in political controversy, but I must take issue with what you said yesterday about violent crime statistics, which seems to me likely to damage public trust in official statistics."
New crime figures for Hastings show total recorded crimes falling from 11,543 in 2004/5 to 8,913 in 2008/9. A reduction of 23%. Statistics for violent crime are even more impressive, showing a reduction of nearly 31% over the same period.
The British Crime Survey shows the same downward trend with overall crime down by nearly half since 1997. The survey is deemed the most reliable indicator of crime as it is based on public surveys rather than recorded crime which can be skewed by changes to recording methods.
It is clear crime has fallen dramatically in Hastings thanks to new investment from the Government and the hard work of the local Police and the Safer Hastings Partnership. It's scare mongering on the part of the Tories to try and suggest otherwise.
They have plenty of form on this. In order to justify talking Britain down they have quoted dodgy statistics about schools and hospitals. Now it has been confirmed officially that they have continually mislead the public about crime. They must stop doing this immediately and stop using misleading statistics to drum up fear of crime. That completely undermines all the hard work being done to tackle crime and the fear of crime.
David Cameron and Chris Grayling should apologise for continually misleading the British people about crime.
When it comes to crime there always remains more to be done. If you are a victim you are 100% the victim. But that is no excuse for trying to scare people as the Tories have done.
To keep up to date on what I'm doing stop by my website http://www.michaelfoster.org.uk/ .
You can also receive a monthly update on my activities by sending an email to mp@1066.net with 'MPFree' in the subject line.
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Weather for Hastings
Sunday 12 February 2012
Today
Light rain
Temperature: 2 C to 5 C
Wind Speed: 10 mph
Wind direction: North west
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: 3 C to 6 C
Wind Speed: 16 mph
Wind direction: North west
