A guide to Tory Maths

Do you ever get the feeling you're being lied to?

Well you're not paranoid, you're living in a country that is ruled over by an elitist cabal who will say or do anything to fool you into keeping them in power.

Most people will be familiar with at least one element of Tory reality-reversing propaganda by now. Here are just a few examples:

• They say they're "making work pay" whilst overseeing the longest sustained collapse in workers' wages since records began [source - Evening Standard] and slashing away at in-work benefits like tax credits, housing benefit and child welfare support.

• They say "we're all in this together" whilst overseeing a 400,000 rise in child poverty [source - Child Poverty Action Group] and helping the super-rich minority literally double their wealth [source - Guardian]

• David Cameron repeatedly claimed that the Tories were "paying down the debt" whilst his government was always borrowing more, and actually ended up creating more new debt than every single Labour government in history combined [source - House of Commons Library]

• Theresa May and her government have repeatedly pretended that they care about mental health issues, but in reality they have slashed £600 million off the mental health budget [source - Independent], continue cutting mental health services at extremely short notice [source - Guardian], and have even instructed the corporate outsourcing companies carrying out their welfare assessments to actively discriminate against people with mental health conditions [source - Independent].

• The Tories claim to be "the party of law and order", but they've slashed 19,000 police jobs since 2010 [source - BBC] creating the most rapid decline in per capita police coverage ever recorded [source - Matt Ashby, Nottingham Trent University] and now crime is rising fast [source - BBC], yet the Tories are refusing to rule out even more cuts in police numbers if they win the election [source - Independent].

Using rhetoric and misdirection to completely reverse reality is one thing, but defying the laws of mathematics in order to con people into voting for them is quite another.

The image in the article header from a Tory election flyer in Stirling is far from the only example of "Tory Maths" being used to con people with completely misleading bar charts. I wrote an article about another misleading Tory bar chart on April 24th, and there are several more out there too. 

The prevelance of these misleading bar charts on Tory election flyers suggests that there is a deliberate policy of conning the public with "Tory Maths".

The only other explanation is that the Tory party is stuffed full of people who are so innumerate that they think 7.9 is almost double 19.7 and well over three times the size of 16.0, which would at least provide an explanation of how the Tories managed to miss all of their economic projections and end up creating more new debt in seven years than every single Labour government in history combined.

Whether these misleading bar charts are the result of abject numerical incompetence, a deliberate strategy aimed at misleading the public, or a combination of both, they're clearly an affront to the intelligence of everyone.

I think new rules should be brought in to fine political parties that produce such misleading flyers, and to completely ban repeat offenders from using charts and figures in their election materials at all.

Don't you?

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