Boris, lies and statistics...

Boris, lies and statistics...

Boris Johnson is most upset. How dare the neutral statistical bureau challenge his claim. Yet if he could remember that statistics would be evidence often used to remind many that neutrality must be essential. To deny the expert, the analyst, the observer is to open the door to ignorance and to denial. Give mocked the expert, as dies Trump, and others of a Farage type replaced the considered, the methods of the social science and the value of research with the man down the pub hypothesis, the conspiracy theories and the prejudices of the right wing press.

And yet what they failed to explore was the nature of power and how it was exercised. The Boris Johnson approach would not want that at all. By rubbishing the experts they created a world where the oppressed and the other cut their own throats and alienated themselves from themselves. Johnson hates that a neutral civil servant should dare to criticise him. That comes entirely from his belief in his right to rule and in the need to create a dice electorate sit by racism and prejudice whipped up by the right wing populists. They seek to create a past that never was , to make us look back to a world that never was, where women, ethnic minorities and gay and transgender people knew their place. They take us away from how things are , how they could be and what is really happening...and they don't want us to do that...do they?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/sep/17/boris-johnson-slapped-down-statistics-chief-fresh-350m-brexit-claim