Damned stats

Last week one of those polls about public perceptions showed that we in Britain exaggerate the number of Muslims in the country by a factor of four. And we're wrong about the number of immigrants and unemployed as well. We are all, apparently, pig-ignorant and there is no hope in us.

Happily, however, this week the government has announced that we're all going to be sent a statement of what they've been buying with our income tax and national insurance tax. So we won't be quite as ignorant about one thing at least.

It feels to me that this should be a cause for mild celebration, but Frances O'Grady, general secretary of the TUC, disagrees. She thinks it's all propaganda. 'The chancellor is relying on the fact that many people think spending called welfare all goes to the unemployed,' she says. 'This is softening us up to a major cut to the welfare state safety net to which we all should contribute so that it is there if we need it.'

Obviously it's propaganda - it is, after all, information issued by the government - but I fear that the left is self-aggrandising if it thinks that this is a first shot in a post-election attack on the welfare state. That may be an added bonus; it's certainly not the primary target. Everything now is about the election, not about what happens after.

So the real issue is not the benefits section at the top of the list, but the overseas aid and EU contributions at the bottom. These latter are the two smallest items of public expenditure apparently. Which makes a nonsense of claims that that's where some real savings could be achieved. In other words, the whole exercise is aimed at UKIP, whose economic policy - such as it is - is based on cutting these two areas.

Which is not to deny that after the election the benefits bill be attacked. Of course it will be. No matter what government is elected, benefits are going to be cut.

But to return to the principle of the thing. The left is making another silly mistake if it simply attacks this idea as propaganda. Allowing people to know how their money is being spent is a perfectly reasonable exercise in democracy. If a Labour government had had the intelligence to come up with the initiative, maybe they could have determined the categories and weighted the presentation in their favour. They didn't, and it's bugger all use bleating about the Tories skewing the stats. That's what governments do; it's what Labour should have done.

Rather than complain, Labour should offer its own proposals about educating us. Maybe about the numbers of immigrants and unemployed or something. It's not a bad thing to have some information.

(Incidentally, I did rather like Clive Bull on LBC explaining to his listeners what a pie chart is. It looks like a doughnut, apparently.)

Things slightly less bitter...

The promotion for my e-book Things Can Only Get Bitter continues apace. Yesterday evening I was on LBC talking about it with Iain Dale, which was very agreeable, and this morning there's a review in the Guardian by John Harris - author of the excellent The Last Party, one of the best books about the 1990s.

'Fascinating stuff,' says Mr Harris, 'Turner's text contains plenty of astute observations.' Well, he says some other things as well, but that'll be the main bit I quote.

He does add: 'The story demands a telling that is more expansive (as in Turner's book about the 1980s, Rejoice, Rejoice!) and more methodical.'

That'll be coming next year. For now, Things Can Only Get Bitter is a taster for the big book, and is still available for the price of a Sunday newspaper.

Riotous Times

I remember one Sunday night back in October 1985 listening to LBC radio as residents of the Broadwater Farm estate in Tottenham phoned in, providing a running commentary on the riot that was exploding all around them. In a time before rolling news, let alone the Internet, this was a gripping novelty - instant reportage from the front-line, unmediated by journalists and official spokespeople.

Last night rioting again broke out in Tottenham, and I found myself tuning into not LBC but Radio Five Live. And there was Stephen Nolan, wallowing in concern whilst worrying about a caller saying 'Shit!' as a bus burst into flames. But it wasn't quite the same. Because the radio was very much the poor relation when there was also live coverage on Sky News and BBC News to be consumed. And, boy, did the television have fun - hour after hour of footage of the street with nothing much happening, while experts and commentators gave us the benefit of their opinions.

The best bit was the emollient police commander who took time off from operational matters to reassure us that everything would be okay. He baulked at the word 'riot', preferring to talk about the 'distressing scenes', and insisted that the disorder wouldn't be allowed to continue any longer than was strictly 'necessary'. Whatever the reality of policing on the streets, the PR operation has got much slicker since the 1980s.

So too have the politicians. The MP for Tottenham is David Lammy, who now thunders against the rioting last night: 'This is a disgrace. This must stop. This is an attack on Tottenham, on ordinary people.'

And one can't help remembering the late Bernie Grant, leader of Haringey Council at the time of the Broadwater Farm riots. He it was who pointed out the obvious truths: 'The youths around here believe that the police were to blame for what happened on Sunday night and what they got was a bloody good hiding.' And, he added, sometimes violence was an effective shortcut to attracting the attention of national politicians: 'Had it not been for the disturbances, they would never have heard of the estate and never have visited Tottenham.'

Those comments were enough to turn him into a media hate figure, perhaps best summed up a few years later by Richard Littlejohn, who was by then a presenter on LBC whilst Grant himself had become an MP: 'I don't hate Bernie Grant because he's black. I hate him because he's a cunt.'

That was in 1993, as opinion began to take over from news. The media's changed as well, then.