In just the last week or so we’ve seen Iain Duncan Smith publicly rebuked by the UK Statistics Authority for making claims about the government’s policy of capping benefits that were “unsupported by the official statistics published by the department” and Michael Gove caught using unscientific polls commissioned […]

Via the BBC I I’ve learned of a new health and safety measure that I fully expect to be doomed to be a dismal failure: “Screaming” traffic cones are to be used on motorways across England to protect road crews. The cones are fitted with an alarm that […]

Would you be surprised if I told you that, almost six months on from her all-too-public appearance on ‘I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here’, Nadine Dorries still hasn’t registered her income from appearing on the show with the House of Commons authorities? In fact, according to […]

Another week, another internet generated furore to pick over, this time in regards to a now with drawn viral advert by the Korean car company Hyundai, albeit one that puts me in the rather unusual position of having to criticise Ben Goldacre for pushing a bit of dodgy […]

According to the Crown Prosecution Service, rape convictions have hit an all -time high: The Crown Prosecution Service has today published new figures that show the conviction rate for rape and domestic violence prosecutions increased once again last year. The statistics show that the conviction rate for rape […]

Over at The Guardian, Mathilda Gregory points out that women are woefully under represented on the writing side of TV science fiction and fantasy shows: On Saturday, Doctor Who returns, kicking off the second part of the seventh series with a James-Bond inspired episode that sees the Doctor […]

Okay, so there still seems to be a lot of confusion surrounding the amendments to the Crime and Courts Bill relating to publication torts and the extent to which these may, or may not, impact on bloggers. This is a situation that hasn’t been help either by the […]

Apropos of yesterday’s lengthy article on the anti-abortion lobby’s sham ‘inquiry’ on abortion and disability, we know have a transcript of a second oral evidence session to play with and of the witnesses called one name leapt immediately off the page, that of a Daily Mail journalist, Beezy […]

It’s not at all clear who actually coined the aphorism that there are ‘lies, damned lies and statistics’ but whoever it was was wrong. Statistics are nothing more than meaningless figures until someone sits down to analyse and interpret them and it’s there that the problems arise. In, […]

Having done my fair share of politics in the last day or two I want to come back to a story which appeared on the BBC news website last week only for it to slip quietly under the radar without gaining much in the way of attention: Fears […]