Cameron must beware factual errors, lest they look like Brownies

Thomas Widmann

Also, John Wells is complaining today that he was misquoted in Cameron's speech.

Chuck Unsworth

So Fraser, any other mistakes or was the rest of his hour long oration factually completely sound?

One might expect Cameron to make some of errors of 'the type we all make' - he is human, after all. Brown, by contrast, believes that he is superhuman and slightly more infallible than the Pope.

Miranda

You are right, it is good professional practice to check facts and honesty must start here. Journalists included.

Are you sure about the MRSA?

Miranda

Me things John Wells protests too much. He IS advocating a dumbing down. Cameron is quite right. And it is not an isolated case.

David

Miranda is correct, on both counts. The lady in the letter did indeed catch MRSA, but she died from cancer which is the reason she was in hospital in the first place. Cameron wasn't that clear about what she died from, though he actually didn't say "she died from MRSA"; he said "she caught MRSA and she died". OK, he should have been clearer. But phrase "Four ways to make a complaint but not one way for my constituent’s wife to die with dignity. We need to change all that." is telling because it actually suggests his intention wasn't to mislead about her cause of death. What this suggests is that he knows about the cancer, and is merely pointing out how wrong it is for someone, who has gone to hospital to die, gets a terrible infection in their final days - and one that can be avoided.

Steve

Are you honestly, honestly saying that when Cameron gets his facts wrong, they are ignorance rather than calculation? Is that the line?

(By the way, his constituent did contract MRSA, but she did not die of it - according to the article you cite. Cameron absolutely did know this, because the letter he quoted explicitly said so. So it's not ignorance. Is it calculation?)

Patrick

Whilst the number of helicopters in Theatre have increased the high usage rates have seriously affected availability rates and air crews are, to put it in the vernacular, "knackered" and overstretched. So Dave is probably just about right on the number of helicopters available for tasking. But your caution Fraser is both welcome and timely and it would be very foolish to fall into the rut of lies (for lies they are... not Brownies( so beloved and practised. by Mr Nasty

Edward Benson

Right, so Brown tells lies and Cameron makes factual errors. The helicopter thing is a deliberate distortion of the truth for political advantage, of exactly the kind Brown is (rightly) berated for. It's not sloppy, it's cynical and it should be criticised as such.

Fraser Nelson

Guys, I am not lambasting Cameron. It was the best speech he's made - his slips are genuine. Just like mine saying the constituent didnt have MRSA when I meant to say it was not listed on her death certificate. David makes the point that Cam could have been clearer, which is my position. In an election campaign, the smallest slips are blown up.

JonathanS

If I want to read this sort of thing, I'll go over to the New Statesman's site.

Stick to criticising Brown. Nobody else had noticed his slips, so why do Labour's job for them by picking up on them?

Jane

I do not think that Death Certificates always state hospital caught infections. I say this as the Department of Health were quoted in the newspapers this morning that the woman did not have MRSA on her death certificate.

JR

Cameroon's speech left me cold and these kind of shoddy "facts" are turn-offs as well. I think the most interesting issue the "facts" raise is what he would do about them.

Talking to my friends who work in hospital MRSA is seen a fact of life - indeed most of them think they've probably had it. MRSA can be a horrible (or indeed a very minor)thing but in their estimation it is a function of modern medicine and there is a limit to what cleaning can do limit its occurance. So what is Cameroon saying the Conservatives will do to alleviate the problem - nothing as far as I can see - he certainly doesn't want to nationalise cleaning services and offset a higher price for releasing decently paid public sector workers desire on the whole to do the right thing. Nor does he want to change the incentives (targets) system and impose more monitoring costs on private providers and the NHS beaurcracy - he wants to remove those "shackles". So he has no answer just a problem. That is the worst type of opposition politics.

In fact overall I've come out of the conferences worried that the Tories have no proper policies on the most important issues. That is depressing.

Two articles in recent days have more to say than the Tories have all week. Danial Finkelstein's column today (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/daniel_finkelstein/article4863675.ece) has plenty to say about the challenges facing public services and the Tories abject failure to get a grip on the core of the issue (scope). Promising localism is all fine and good - but actually it misses the point.

The second article was on Jamie Oliver's new programme (http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/oct/01/foodanddrink.oliver). Except it wasn't about that at all. It was on the decisions people make and why they make them. The Tories position on nudging and personal responsibility says something about this but in my view not nearly enough and it presents a confused picture. One moment Cameroon says he trusts us to make the right decisions, but the underlying position of the party is that the underclass scum very rarely make the right decision - and the policy response is confused - do they nudge or reduce benefit payments or do what. In that respect Cameroon reminds me of Jamie Oliver before he actually tried to solve the problem - that there were simple solutions and if offered people a way out/helping hand they should take it, and abandon the people who don't. Well actually you can't abandon those people because they are broken Britain, and whether it is their fault or not is irrelevant - if we abandon them we don't fix the problem and we all suffer.

There is a huge poverty of solutions in what has been said so far. Localism, personal responsibility and nudging are all fine and good but they seem completely shallow to me in dealing with the scale of the problems of a "broken society".

TrevorsDen

The point Cameron makes about helicopters is quite true. You can quibble about exact numbers but the availability of helicopters in Afghanistan is a disgrace and costing troops lives.

This is a real problem not least because the number of helicopter we need is very significant and very costly.

As for the MRSA/Cancer care - the point is not MRSA - its the way in which the patient was treated when she died. And making the point about the Health Secretary not caring and giving a typical trade unionist answer. And Cameron pointed out the details were too disturbing to detail. I can understand this.

My brother had a stroke ,went to hospital and eventually it was discovered he had brain cancer from which he died. At different times it was clear the hospital was clueless if not incompetent in its actions and not really interested.

Be warned - apparently its not uncommon for cancer lesions to develop after a stroke - so 'not uncommon' that the hospital did not bother to check. So be aware - these things happen.

In short Mr Nelson your story is approached from all the wrong angles.

Tiberius

You make a fair point, Fraser. I said the other day that I don't expect the Tories always to be able to be completely honest (which of us are?) but Cameron has enough going for him not to have to use poorly researched or dodgy lines. Please, no "thin end of the wedge" Brownies.

Chuck Unsworth

'Deliberate', Mr Benson? Evidence to support the allegation?

Dirty Euro

OK so he made a few mistakes I mean it is ok for a novice. LOL. It is not like he wants an important job or anything is it? LOL LOL LOL.

JR

JonathanS - so there should be no analysis or criticism of Cameroon or Conservatives here? What an amazingly selfish attitude - the country is facing up to a set of huge challenges but we don't need to worry whether Cameroon's analysis of those problems and the solutions is right? Your view presumably is that the only thing that matters is the Conservatives win and everything will be right as rain? My view as you can see is that actually what we risk is a Government as half baked and vacuous as the current lot.

strapworld

But this very week we had the Government announce (again) that they had ordered the special men carriers which afford them greater protection! That to me suggests that the previous announcement, some months ago, either did not happen or this is regurgitated news from this government.

Whatever the niceties, the fact remains that far too many of our brave men and women have been killed through lack of proper equipment. The people responsible are the Government and they are guilty.

I couldn't care less if there are one two or twenty more helicopters there now.

As regards the patient dying. Whatever the poor lady was in hospital for - the fact was she died from MRSA - the story was the cold, almost soviet, letter received from the Sec of State for Health.

Stop, for goodness sake, trying to suggest that these are 'brownies' for the record Brownies are L I E S! pure and simple untruths. You are making light of such lies.

In a speech you make points. Cameron did effectively. I am sure the family, friends and colleagues of all the dead armed service personnel killed because of lack of equipment will be applauding Mr Cameron, as I, a father of a son in the army, do.

Dirty Euro.

I suggest the leader of the spelling society may be offended by his mocking at the tory party conference. LOL.
Will he say it is now OK to spell the tory leaders' name as Camoron. LOL. The tories should realise do not make enemies of those who can decide how your name is spelled. I bet he will be all over the tory leader's speeches with a tooth comb trying to mock him back. :

Dirty Euro

The tories and terrorists want to break the moral of our soldiers.

Edward Benson

Well, it's funny how these 'misspeaks' always work in the right direction politically. Cameron didn't mistakenly say helicopter numbers had doubled. Inadvertently or not, he knew what point he wanted to make and fitted the 'facts' accordingly. I say it was deliberate because it at least credits him with some intelligence.

Fraser Nelson

JR, informative post as ever. Please keep coming by. JonathanS, we're not a Cameron cheerleading website. There will be plenty more of this, I have to warn you. Jane, The way MRSA deaths are countes is whether or not it is mentioned on the death certificate. It can be mentioned as a primary or secondary cause - so there is a material difference between dying from MRSA and dying with it. Most incidences are secondary.

The difference between Brown and Cameron is simple. Cameron, I believe, will be mortified at screwing up like this. "That's what I get for rewriting my speech in a hurry" he'll say - and he'll never repeat his claim about helicopters again. Brown's Brownies are premeditated and done with a deliberate intent to mislead - but knowing he can get away with it because the print and broadcast media don't question statistics. I know enough of the Tory machine to believe that screwup trumps conspiracy there every time.

nancyT

The John Wells thing is the most serious. Thats a bad misquoting which has done damage to his career i suspect.

In that sense, if pushes, it would probably be libelous

Tim Carpenter LPUK

Fraser,

Cameron's attack on Libertarians was not a matter of interpretation - it was intentionally misleading. Fundamental to Libertarianism is self-responsibility. We need to be responsible for our actions AND our inaction towards our fellow human beings, not abdicate, as people do now, because of an all-pervasive State that Cameron will only dress, not cut back at the root. His kind of pruning is the kind Maggie did when she created QANGOs - all it did was promote new growth.

Fraser Nelson

Edward, Cameron would rely on his staff to get this right and most likely some CCHQ staffer is getting a roasting for this right now. In an 80 min speech with no autocue rewritten about seven times in three days, I'm inclined to believe it slipped unnoticed to into what should be the "bulletproof facts" section. Joe Biden said the other day that in 1929 "when the stock market crashed, Roosevelt went on TV" - that's a gaffe. My verdict is factual slip, the sort we're all capable of and the sort Cameron should know better to let happen in a speech as high profile as that. If he repeats the chopper line, it will be an attempt to mislead. But on the premise that Cameron is one of the good guys, I'm fairly sure he won't.

TGF UKIP

Fraser, thank you for your generous acknowledgement. I think, though, you are, as usual, being very kind to your mate Dave.

As you are aware one of my constant criticisms of Dave & Co is that they are a very sloppy and unprofessional opposition and this was inexcusable sloppiness.

Chuck Unsworth

Mr Benson:

"Inadvertently or not, he knew what point he wanted to make and fitted the 'facts' accordingly."

So, no evidence of deliberate deception, mere reiteration of your no doubt genuinely held opinion.

TGF UKIP

BTW Fraser, as a professional reader of the political chicken's entrails (and no,I'm not talking abour Gordon's guts) what is your forecast of the Tory lead over Labour in the weekend polls?

ST

As we're now picking up errors from both parties, Channel 4 Fact Check looked at the spelling and some other points in Cameron's speech.

Travis Bickle

John Wells never said he was misquoted, he said his comments were "taken out of context", and he seemed quite relaxed and amused about the whole matter when interviewed on radio.

Personally I think if he considers it perfectly alright to spell light as "lite" and through as "thru" then he deserves all the criticism he gets, and as to anyone who thinks this is libellous on Cameron's behalf they really ought to look up the difference between libel and slander.......

Daniel1979

Frasier, Thanks for the clarifications on the speech. I think that part of the reason Labour is so unpopular is because the media have not fully analysed and pulled them up on their many dubious claims. This has contributed to a culture where exaggeration is the norm, even when the truth would suffice, or be more warmly received. The least trusted person in the country is the Downing Street Spokesperson.
In the event of a large conservative victory at the next election, the best friends David Cameron and the Conservatives will have are their friends that will keep them honest. The BBC and the Guardian are reluctant even now to analyse Gordon Brown and Labour. It is an unacceptable situation that the Spectator, The DT, Times et al should not repeat.

oldtimer

May I suggest a rule of thumb - borrowed and adopted from Goldfinger`s immortal words to James Bond after a third unfortunate encounter. "Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action".

For the Fraserfinger I suggest:
"Once is a slip of the tongue, twice is trying it on, three times is full on Goebbels mode".

Using this rule of thumb, David cameron needs the same treatment you have handed out to Gordon Brown. How about DCeits to match up against Brownies for three repeated offences?