Present dangers?

 

Statistics.

 

It’s now 71 yeas since I took my mathematics ‘O’ level (as it was then called) and over 20 years since I taught any maths, so I presume the curriculum has moved on a bit.  I certainly hope so.  In my day we spent a lot of time messing about  solving  simultaneous and quadratic equations, to “find x;” using trigonometry ratios discover the dimensions of figures and other such erudite activities; and spent very little time on statistics.

As a teacher of economics I spent a lot of time  explaining yet again  that a fall in the rate of inflation did not mean that prices had stopped rising.

Recently there have been some interesting revelations regarding statistics relating to immigration and race.  A week or so ago  a Reform spokesperson raised the alarm because apparently no fewer than one in eight of the inmates of our prisons were born overseas. Presumably this was meant to imply that people from abroad are disproportionately wicked and should either be stopped from coming here or be sent away asap.  

 Better informed heads gleefully pointed out that people born abroad constitute one in six of the UK’s population, so if  they make up only one in eight of the prison population they  are relatively more law-abiding than we natives.

In other words, Robert Jenrick’s daughters have more to fear from the native population that from immigrants.

In this week’s “New World” newspaper (formerly “The New European”)  an article by a  Sonia Sodha reminds us that “”Under international law anyone has the right to apply for refugee status  having reached another country  if they have  a ’well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of  race, religion, nationality , membership of a particular social group, or political opinion’”  

She points out that a relatively small proportion of the world’s refugees  set out to reach Europe.  73%  are “hosted” by low and middle-income countries. Of those who do come to Europe most are “hosted” by other countries.   The UK  comes 17^th  in the Europe for asylum applications per population head, far behind countries like Greece, Germany, Austria and Switzer]and.

 So why on earth do we make such a fuss?  Really we ought to be a bit jealous: why don’t more want to come here and help raise the standard, quality and variety of our lives, instead of giving all these advantages  to others, mostly better off then we are

 Finally a letter in yesterday’s “Guardian” (15/08/25) from a Dr Bernard Gallagher examines the danger to “our women and girls” played by men of Pakistani origin or heritage in “Grooming Gangs.” 

 Of the 115,489 cases of child sexual abuse recorded by the Home Office in 2023, only 3.7% involved “group based contact offences” of which those with majority Pakistani-heritage would have been just a part.  (Child-abuse is overwhelmingly a family affair.)  

Persons of Pakistani heritage  account for 5% of cases, whereas this group form 9% of our population over the age of 16.  So once again this group  is more virtuous than we natives. 

Sadly, more attention to statistics in the school curriculum will not stop right-wing publicists jumping on to individual incidents and, amplified by their sportive press,  exploiting them in the apparent hope of igniting the “tinderbox” they seemingly hope to explode into public disorder.  But it might help.

What would help even more is politicians of other parties (and especially Sir Keir Starmer) boldly amplifying the truth rather than cosying up to those who distort it.