Not Making it Up

In defiance of all indications that politics has moved on, mere experts continue to chide Her Majesty's Government as though mere facts had some sort of relevance. The latest culprit is the chair of the UK Statistics Authority, who pointed out that Tumbledown Tessie may have said the thing that is not when she boasted of an eighty-five per cent fall in rough sleeping in Southend. Since the methodology for determining the numbers had changed when the council received a fiscal sticking-plaster for the spurting social wound, the dead-eyed warden's self-congratulation might be considered premature, if only by that militant minority of pedantic pettifoggers who constitute the reality-based community. Of course, although the housing market remains as liberal as ever, it is eminently possible that the number of homeless people has in fact decreased, whether thanks to Her Majesty's Government or to the equally merciful process of natural wastage from the recent winter.