Witterings from Witney puts it well:
FactCheck with Cathy Newman on Channel 4 does a good job ‘fisking’ the manifestos of the Lib/Lab/Con and all three have been shown to have ‘twisted’ statistics – so they have, in effect, lied to the electorate.
Quelle Surprise!
Check out her findings on the Conservatives here, Labour here and the LibDems here.
Why do the political parties attempt to hoodwink the electorate? Do they not realize that someone will take the time and trouble to validate the claims they make?
So why do what they do and ‘spin’ the statistics?
To be blunt – why lie?
Speaking of lying, The Mail gets stuck into Gordon Brown:
Gordon Brown has shamelessly defended signing the despised Lisbon Treaty – by claiming he has protected British sovereignty. He claimed it was not a power transfer to the European Union and that it had not led to ‘major constitutional changes’.
Instead, the Prime Minister boasted that Labour had actually ‘watered down’ the controversial EU Constitution which surrendered a raft of laws to Brussels. But at a question-and-answer session in Leeds, voters told Mr Brown that his failure to keep a manifesto pledge to hold a referendum meant he could not be trusted.
Good.
Good that he made such easily rebutted statements so that people can see a man who is either so unprincipled he’ll lie, barefaced, to the electorate or else he’s away in a cloud cuckoo land of his own dreaming.
This is now so far beyond a joke that we’d like to suggest to you patient, long-suffering citizens that you take this url [one page pdf]:
http://tinyurl.com/y6pgeb6
… print out the page, a pledge form to support a referendum on the issue of EU membership and present it to the first politician who comes-a-calling on your doorstep. Perhaps you could print off more than one copy and have them in your bag in case you meet any politicos in the street or at a public meeting.
Remember, as The Englishman noted:
More voters are now hoping for a hung Parliament than either a Tory or a Labour outright victory. A mere 4 per cent think that the parties are being completely honest with voters about their tax plans and only 6 per cent about their approaches to cutting the deficit. 43 per cent were unconvinced by any party.
[James Higham - h/t IPJ]
