You have give Iain Dale a bit of credit – whatever Frank Field can do, Iain can not only match it but top it for asinine political stupidity.

Its only a matter of three days since I comprehensive picked apart Frank Field’s claim that the government’s New Deal for Young People Programme has been a failure – (See Frankonomics) – in a post that, encouragingly from my point, got a sidebar link from Chris Dillow, a good write-up (and some fair criticism of my writing style) from Fisking Central and an ‘attaboy’ in comments and positive write-up from D-Squared.

To pick up on one remark by D-Squared – “I don’t think Unity is an economist by trade” – I am long way from being an economist, although with a solid educational background in both the empirical science and psychology (which was my major at University) I’m a fair navigator of statistics. Nevertheless, my rare forays in economics are one’s I approach with a fair bit of trepdation, in the knowledge that with bloggers like Chris, D-Squared, Wat Tyler and Tim Worstall out there, any errors in understanding will get picked up pretty quickly should one of them happen by, which makes it all the more gratifying (and a matter of considerable relief) to be told by any of them that I’ve got things pretty well on the money.

That said, it was with great amusement that I found that Iain Dale has ploughed into the debate with this gem of a post:

The New Deal: Not a Success

The New Deal was set up a decade ago with the intention of alleviating youth unemployment, which stood at 14.4%. Since then the government has poured billions into the scheme and trumpeted its success. Youth unemployment now stands at 14.5%. A success indeed.

Field, at least, had a 29 page report to try and back up his arguments – Dale is happy to go with one, completely unrevealing, headline statistic.

To my even greater amusement, Dale’s been called on lack of evidence by Chris Paul, thus:

If your unattributed statistic is true Iain are you going to consider what the rate would have been WITHOUT the interventions?

Provide a reliable source for your stats first. And no, CCHQ will not do.

And on noticing an attiribution, this:

Ah, Fraser Nelson. Who is that? Where’s the link?

Only to come back at this with…

Chris Paul, as usual, you display your political ignorance. Fraser Nelson is political editor of the Spectator. The figures are in his column this week.

Well that settles it then – if its in the Spectator then it must be so – even if one suspects that Nelson is doing no more than selectively parroting Field.

[sigh]

Oh, couldn’t let this pass without noting the stellar contribution of Praguetory, a little further down the comments…

As I’ve said elsewhere, Chris Paul is a village idiot and a national joke.

Is that good enough Iain? Lol.

Ah yes. PT’s projecting again – and this from someone who thinks George Osborne is an economic illiterate.

Fuck me, if this is any indication of the economic literacy of the right-wing of the Tory Party these days, then I wouldn’t entrust them with the petty cash, never mind the economy of the United Kingdom.

I understand that UKIP may have an interesting economic policy announcement in the pipeline, might be worth some of you Tories waiting to see what they have to say.