Blissfully blather-free, a report was released by Home Office statisticians on May 13th before any spin-doctor had been given a chance to fiddle with it. The bulletin tracked the outcomes of the 1,471 arrests of suspected terrorists made in Britain between September 2001, when fighting terrorism became a big part of police work, and April 2008, providing for the first time an overview of what is happening to those detained. Published under a new code of practice for official statistics, drawn up last year after ministers were caught massaging figures on knife crime, the report was pure, sober joy: long may the rule of the nerds continue.
展开▼
