Tim Harford

Hello and welcome to More or Less. We're your guide to the numbers all around us in the news and in life, and I'm Tim Harford. This week, we fight misinformation wherever we find it, even if it does require us to take on the national treasure of all national treasures. And we examine further rather extraordinary developments on the story of the quiet revival in Christianity.

But first, the columnist and former politician Annunziata Rees-Mogg took to the social media platform formerly known as Twitter to post a claim about the proportion of sex offences in Dorset that are committed by asylum seekers. Asylum seekers make up 0.8% of Dorset's population and 44% of alleged sex offences. So unbelievable I had to check.

So investigated for crimes is not the same as committing crimes, but hopefully there is some kind of connection. So how many sex crimes were reported in Bournemouth in that time? 808. Yikes. So really not 44%, more like 1%. Yeah. Now, so far we've been talking about asylum seekers living in migrant hotels. So what about asylum seekers who don't live in hotels?

Ja nämä ihmiset eivät ole välttämättä asiointikyskyjä, ne ovat vain ihmisiä, jotka eivät ole brittisiä. Kyllä, nämä kuvat sisältävät ihmisiä Yemenista, Afganistanista ja Iranista, sekä niistä maista kuin New Zealandista, Italiasta, Suomesta ja Kanadasta. Onko meillä jokainen idea, missä 44 prosenttinen kuvan tuli? Dorset-politiikka ei. Kysyin heiltä, onko heillä jokin rakennus tästä kuvasta, ja he vastasivat... Nämä eivät ole Dorset-politiikka-statistikkoja, ja tieto on väärin.

Bring in the suspect. The date is the 20th of May and the time is just after 9am. I'm Tim Harford. With me in the room is the Grok AI. All answers are spoken by Grok in its own voice. Where did you get this stat? Out of 116 males awaiting prosecution for sexual offences in the Bournemouth area, 51, that's 44%, were asylum seekers from migrant hotels.

Tämä koko tarina laittaa toisen kysymyksen. Tiedämme, että Dorsetin asyltyöntekijöiden 44 prosenttia seurannut seksuaalit on väärä. Meillä on toinen kuvio, jossa seurannut seksuaalit on 7-8 prosenttia. Mutta ennen kaikkea tietoa emme tiedä, mitä siitä on tehty.

Mitä voidaanko sanoa yleisestä sentimentistä? Ajatuksesta, että asioiden tutkijoilla on parempi liittyä asioihin kuin muissa ryhmissä. Mitä parempi kysyä, mutta ystävä programin ystävä ja Oksfordin yliopiston Migration Observatoryin puheenjohtaja Madeline Sumption. Onko meillä hyviä asioiden tutkimuksia asioiden tutkijoille?

Joten meillä on jonkinlaista tunnetta siitä, kuinka monta syrjäntä on tekemässä rikkoja, kuinka monta Eritreanista on tekemässä rikkoja, kuinka monta saksaista on tekemässä rikkoja. Ja meidän täytyy vain tehdä opettelua, onko nämä ihmiset rikkoja tai ei. Sitä on oikeastaan. Sanoit, että se oli hyödyllistä tietoa. Mitä se kertoo meille?

So we don't know exact numbers, but we can estimate ballpark crime rates for different nationalities using data from the 2021 census and compare against the crime rate for the overall UK population, and that gives us a rough idea.

It's a small share of a rule, but they're overrepresented because there aren't that many of them in the UK. Right, okay. So you have a fairly small number of people responsible for a fairly small number of offences, but nevertheless it's not outrageous to say that some of them are overrepresented. That's correct. Another question that arises is whether the demographic profile of people seeking asylum is different from the demographic profile of British residents. I'm thinking in terms of the gender and the age.

Our thanks to Madeleine Sumption, and thanks also to Lizzie McNeill. Oh no, the more or less error siren. I can't believe we're only ten minutes into the new series, and already we've made a mistake. Actually, Tim, the error was in the last series. Richard Varden, editor of More or Less. Does your appearance in the studio mean...

It was your mistake? Oh no. Or more or less, we are like the cabinet, we take collective responsibility. Well really? Well, let's hear the grisly details. In our numbers of the year programme at the end of last year, one of the numbers involved the spiralling costs of infrastructure projects in the UK.

In that section we said that the Hinkley C nuclear power station involved hundreds of millions of pounds being spent on measures to protect fish. And is that wrong? No, that bit is correct. The problem is the next bit, when we say that the cost is something like a quarter of a million pounds per fish saved. So what should we have said? We should have said that if you look at the cost over 25 years, according to the highest estimates, it would cost something like a quarter of a million pounds per endangered fish saved.

But actually it's a bit more complicated than that. Well, that's already quite complicated. So go on then. Remind us all where these numbers come from. The figures come from a government commissioned report on the regulation of the nuclear industry known as the Fingleton Review. In a case study in that report, they say that EDF, the company building the nuclear power plant, are going to spend 700 million pounds on fish protection measures.

The report also lists the number of different kinds of fish that would be saved by the protection measures every year. These numbers are very small. Things like 0.028 sea trout, 6 river lamprey, 18 alice shad. If you add them all up, assume a 25-year lifespan for the project and divide by the total cost, you get about a quarter of a million pounds per endangered fish. Right, so a few things to figure out there.

First of all, is 700 million pounds definitely the cost of the fish protection measures? That's disputed. The nuclear power station is water-cooled, which involves sucking in a lot of water from the Bristol Channel and then spitting it out again, killing lots of fish in the process.

To lower the number killed, they are building three things. One of which has had a lot of media attention. An acoustic fish deterrent, known of course as the fish disco. That's only going to cost 50 million pounds, according to the Fingleton review. Then there's a system of pipes, so some of the fish that get sucked in can escape, another 150 million. And then 500 million for low velocity intake heads, which are basically like the nozzle on a vacuum cleaner, sucking in the water.

These are specially designed so they have lower suction and more fish can escape. But there's an argument about this last component, because you'd need to build intake heads anyway, and it's unclear what proportion of the costs should be classified as fish protection. There's also an argument about whether all of this is enough, and it's entirely possible the costs and the timescale will change. What about the 25-year timescale? Well, that sounds like a good long-term perspective, but in nuclear power station terms it isn't.

Järjestelmä varoittaa, kuinka monta energiaa EDF tarjoaa Hinkley Seain 35 vuotta. EDF kertoo, että 700 miljoonaa sisältää toimintakohdat yli 60 vuoden liikennettä. Mitä sanotaan, kuinka monta kalaa on saavutettu? Onko Fingletonin tutkimuksessa koko kalaa, joka ei toimi? Ei. Fingleton keskittyy vaikeisiin kaloihin, kuten kalat, Lamprey ja Alice Shad.

If you look at all fish, you would get a much bigger number. Such as? There are lots of different estimates flying around, but it seems like Hinkley Sea might kill more than 100 tonnes of fish per year without any safety measures. And two of the protection measures without the fish disco might save more than half of them. That's quite a lot of fish.