Set the record straight, Nigel Adams

Normally that headline would be followed by a fervent plea to right some perceived wrong, but, as with Nigel Adams, my headlines can often be deceptive.

I don't know much about Nigel Adams MP, but I'm sure he's a fine, upstanding chap, like the rest of our public servants. He's the MP for Selby and Ainsty, and has a nice friendly picture on his website. He's not wearing a tie, so he's no stick-in-the-mud. However, a recent post on his website is simply not good enough. (Somehow it's very difficult to write about MPs without using an Angry From Tunbridge Wells voice, but I'll keep trying.)

Record small businesses set up in Selby, runs a headline on Nigel's website, which doesn't make sense. Taken literally, he's calling for covert bugging of small businesses, but I'm pretty sure that's not what he intends it to mean. We could assume that it's shorthand for "(A) record (number of) small business (have been) set up in Selby". So let's read on, and see if that helps. 

Data from 2011 has shown that Selby recorded the second biggest increase of small business set-ups in Yorkshire with an 11.2 per cent increase in new businesses in 2011 than 2010.

So, not really. This isn't claiming a record number of anything, although Selby has managed the second-best increase in the number of small business set-ups in Yorkshire. Heady days. Well, there may be some more facts coming up.

York was third with 9.9 per cent, or 1,661 new businesses being created in 2011, from 2010’s 1,511.

OK, so that's nice to know, but still no claims of a record for anything. Any more facts in the rest of the story? Well, no, then it's mainly everyone patting themselves on the back.

Does it matter? We're all used to politicians putting the best spin they can on statistics, but this just seems a bit slapdash. Perhaps a genuine record has been set, but we've no way of knowing. I've no particular political axe to grind, but it just seems a bit sloppy. I'm sure he has more important things to do than making sure he's communicating clearly with his constituency, although I would prefer that MPs were reasonably good at communicating, otherwise how would we know what they were up to.

A few stories away, Nigel is berating The Times for making a mistake over the numbers of benefit claimants. Now I realise that one is a mistake in The Thunderer, the leading record of note, and one is just an MP's website, but... see what I did there, "just an MP's website"? Sad, isn't it, that we're happy to expect so little of our MPs?

Incidentally, in the interests of political balance, I've spotted something on a Labour website, that I might cover in a future post...