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southcoasting

Listed below are comments made by southcoasting between Tuesday, 16th December 2008 and Tuesday, 19th May 2009.

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Time to do our duty 10:15am on 19 May 2009 Bear grylls? Is it April 1st?

And what's wrong with the woodcraft folk? I think we need the full market analysis before we jump to conclusions Mark ;-)
Cold facts and hot blood 4:23pm on 08 Jan 2009 Excellent and fascinating article.

Of course, one might wonder why crime rates appear to be falling across the globe, given that we're told global warming is such a problem!

Obviously, it's about more than just the weather... and that's likely to be more the case for murders than the more common crimes.
More statistical fury 11:32am on 07 Jan 2009 Mark,

your points about the homicide statistics are spot on! The initially reported figure is almost always reduced, so you cannot compare those currently on police books with the final audited figure that will enter the history books.

Home Office statisticians have always made this clear, and table 1.01 in the last Homicde statistics bulletin (2006-07) ([Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]) contains two columns, one for number of offences initially recorded as a homicide, and one for the number currently recorded (e.g. a more final figure). The difference in 2006-7 was 23, which was the lowest difference between these two figures ever recorded. We might assume therefore that the difference this year will be higher when the new 2007-8 stats are published (later this month I think) but even if it were as little as 23 offences, this would still be enough to turn James Brokenshire's figure from a "soaring" increase into a real reduction.

Something to celebrate, maybe?
Map of the Week - Murder UK 3:11pm on 16 Dec 2008 This is a good start, but the picture is misleading on a couple of key fronts:

1. in world comparisons, Britain is not a high murder county but relatively safe. As others have said, equating numbers to land mass is deeply misleading. The USA has always had a much higher murder rate, due to the high availability of guns - but then it has lower rates of property crime on average.

2. Again, stopping at 2001 is daft. We've seen falling murder rates since then in this country, and for enough years to believe this is a definite good, not a statistical blip. If the rise is mainly amongst young men, it would be interesting to ask why the fall.

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