I caught the end of Question Time last night and was quite taken by one of the answers from Alex Salmond. The question had been about the publication of the crime figures, and the Labour, Tory and Lib Dem spokesperson had all split on tribal grounds about whether violent crime statistics could be believed or not. Salmond said... it just doesn't matter, no-one pays any attention to these figures at all.

And he's almost right too. There are those that do. Journalists, senior police officers, politicians, and political pundits and a few anoraks. Less than 0.01% of the population, I guess. No-one else either believes them, or cares about them. They are statistics... that's all, and the general population are indifferent to them.

When we hear banks being bailed out by being given so many billion pounds - or is it trillions these days - it means nothing to us. Whether they get 42 million quid, or 4 trillion, they are figures the government release and the media salivate over, but to ordinary working class folk they mean sod all. Like the ticking figures in the sidebar to this blog about how much the war in Iraq has cost... $565,000,000,000 or thereabouts as I write. They are meaningless sums to people. We can just about envisage the life changing notion of a lottery win of a couple of million, but beyond that... they're just figures.

So whether the violent crime statistics are up 22% or down 15% washes right over the heads of most people. They hear different politicians manipulating them to their own ends, they haven't got a clue how the figures are compiled, and they switch right off. As Salmond said, what people care about is whether they and/or their family members have got a job, are safe walking the streets, and can afford their rent or mortgage. That's how they judge how secure they feel, not whether some politician or pundit is twittering on about statistics on Newsnight.

So, as I was criticised in a previous comment for writing too much about football and not enough about poetry and the arts, I'll finish with a little contribution from Mersey poet Roger McGough, called Conservative Party Unemployment Figures:

Conservative Party....
Unemployment....
That figures!