MISLEADING THE WITNESS: inverted markets and understated crime figures.

Further to yesterday’s post about Chinese markets being invertible, here’s today’s result at the close…

…..and also arse over tit, aka upside down:

You see, these are the kind of Slog market insights you simply can’t find anywhere else. The bottom line as always is, IABATO!…..Its all bollocks and that’s official.

As my West Country correspondent Arnold Turnip has been saying of late, “Avoidz you any tradin’ dayee that arrz one o’ they y’s in it, an’ you’ll be foine my son, luvverly job, oi loikes me zider but it makes I fart”.

“Regardless of rumours to the contrary,” said Igor Osbornovich last night, “there is no writing on the wall. All the 2008 writing has now faded and thus everything is alright. But if any more writing appears then Theresa will introduce a law to ban NVE graffiti. This was an idea we picked up during tongue-in-cheek negotiations in Beijing, and I am sure we can make good use of longstanding Chinese expertise in this area”.

Writing on other walls, meanwhile, has been there for ten years in relation to crime. The use of anti-cleaning, dayglo paint and 12 foot lettering means that today it is as good as new. It still says, “Of course crime is not falling, it’s just not being being measured properly – or recorded inclusively”.  Three years ago, The Slog posted this piece, and here’s an extract from it:

‘ I can’t bring to mind any set of figures quite so meaningless, bent, massaged and misleading as UK crime statistics. Target setting, promotion ambitions, time starvation, and a sense of utter hopelessness together mean that any system based on police reporting of crime is doomed to fail as an even vague measurement of what’s actually happening on the ground.’

For about a year before running the piece, I had been working with CPOs in the police, local councillors, and people suffering assaults or computer crime* to try and establish how far out the stats were. It was impossible to calculate in the end: careerist senior cops, protection of minorities by local Labour Parties, suppression of new measurement criteria by ambitious Home Secretaries, the normal level of cover-up we’ve come to expect in Whitehall, and overwhelmed junior officers on the ground….all these factors were in play.

It is well worth noting that three elections in a row have seen the Party of Government insisting that crime had been falling from 2003 to 2015. It was of course all lies – indeed, it is a measure of how safe the Conservative Government feels that the real figures have now been collected by the simple measures of (a) recognising cyber crime and financial crime and (b) ensuring that cops stop talking complainants out of pressing assault charges.

The results are “shocking” say the media, but why anyone is shocked defeats me – viz, a 107% increase in Anglo-Welsh crime, and a 25% increase in violent crime.

The results won’t shock anyone living in majority Britain; but they are disgraceful because they represent a conspiracy between politicians and police to pervert not only the course of justice….but also democracy by the suppression of objective measurement, and application of umpteen blind eyes to elephants in rooms.

In that sense, the misleading reportage of crime is no different to that of the global econo-fiscal crisis.

Yesterday at The Slog: The Norman Bates syndrome in MSM economic and financial ‘news’

*One of the more unpleasant – and mystifying – comments made by a reader just before the threading portcullis came down was this one:

‘….The point about Ward’s narcissism in particular, viz:“I had phone calls from here …“I had phone calls from there …“I had sekrit information known only to most important people and me, John Ward! …“I received important messages from [blah … blah … blah … neverending blah ..’

He had in fact been making the same comment over and over for years….and yet, right to the bitter end, he continued to visit the site, and had to be banned over and over again. Why do they do it: why do they assume mendacity, and above all, why do they keep coming back for more? Bizarre.