Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Omalle paikalle istuessaan Jenny oli melko varma, että hän oli tehnyt koko vaunon parhaan lippudeelin. Tartu sinäkin junantuomiin etuihin ja nappaa tarjoushintaiset junaliput kesäkohteisiin nyt. Kampanja on voimassa 24. toukokuuta asti. VR. Yhteisellä matkalla.
Raakaöljyn hinta nousi yli sadan dollarin tynnyriltä. Levottomuudet jatkuivat pörssiavasi tänä aamuna lievässä lasussa. Maailma voi tuntua joskus hallitsemattomalta. Silloin haluan, että varallisuuteni on asiantuntevissa käsissä. Oma sijoitusjohtajani Nordea Private Bankingissa auttaa minua pysymään askeleen edellä. Näin minulle jää aikaa siihen, mikä elämässä on tärkeintä. Nordea.fi kautta Private Banking.
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.
Chapter 2: What claims did Annunziata Rees-Mogg make about asylum seekers and crime?
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.
And so did we. Lizzie McNeill has been on the case. Hello Lizzie. Hi Tim. Well, first things first. This 0.8% of the population figure is specifically counting asylum seekers in asylum hotels. Now in Dorset, these are mainly in the Bournemouth area. Got it. And they're said to be committing 44% of the alleged sex offences. So where's that figure from?
Onko se epäonnistunut? Viime vuonna Dorset-politiikka vastasi tiedonvastaisuuteen kysymykseen, että kuinka monta ihmistä Dorsetissa, joka asuu migraattisissa hotellissa, on haastettu seksuaalisen haasteen. Ja vastaus oli yksi. Yksi? Kyllä. Se oli suurimmat tiedot, joita kirjoitettiin, mutta he sitten lähettivät minulle uudistuksen, että 8 ihmistä, jotka asuvat asylinhotellissa, on haastettu seksikriimejä 1.1.2025-31.3.2026.
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?
Well, the data isn't that helpful. Police don't break the crime statistics down by immigration status. We could instead look at crimes committed by British nationals versus foreign nationals. And what does that tell us? Well, the most recent data from Dorset Police from 2024 and 2025 shows that 7% of all sexual offence crimes were committed by foreign nationals. If you add on people with dual British nationality, then that rises to 8%.
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.
I also contacted Annunziata Rees-Mogg, but she didn't respond to me. But she did later tweet an apology, stating that she'd used AI to check the sources. Uh-oh. Yeah. And even just after she posted, people were in her comment section asking Grock, which is Elon Musk's AI, whether Rees-Mogg's statement was true. And Grock said it was, and cited police data.
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Chapter 3: How accurate is the statistic regarding asylum seekers and sex offences in Dorset?
Dorset Police's FOI disclosure confirms that 51 of 116 males awaiting prosecution for sexual offenses in the Bournemouth area are asylum seekers from migrant hotels, which calculates to about 44%. Right. Don't worry Lizzie, I'll take it from here. Deep in the basement of New Broadcasting House, the more or less interrogation center.
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.
The stat comes from a Dorset Police Freedom of Information FOI disclosure, specifically responses in their 2025 disclosure logs under categories like migrant sexual offenses and related migrant hotel queries. Funny, the FOI request does not contain the 116 males awaiting prosecution figure.
You're correct. The specific FOI request 01-FIN-253546, dated around September 2025, focuses on how many sexual offences have been recorded, resulting in charges of males residing in migrant hotels in Dorset. It does not directly state a county-wide or Bournemouth-wide total of 116 males awaiting prosecution for sexual offences. Give me a link to a website that shows the 116 figure.
No single public webpage directly quotes the exact phrasing, 116 males awaiting prosecution for sexual offenses, as a standalone official statistic from Dorset police. So the 44% figure is wrong? Yes, the 44% figure, as originally presented, is misleading and inaccurate in that framing. Did the error spread because Grok said it was true?
No, ero ei jäänyt, koska Grock sanoi, että se oli totta. 44 prosenttinen kuvaaminen liittyi ja liittyi ylöspäin ennen minun vastaukseni X-kirjasta. Mutta ihmiset käyttivät Grockia, jotta se olisi totta. Kyllä. Jotkut sanoivat minun aiemmin vastaukseni, jopa sen, jonka sinä liittit, jotta se olisi totta. Se on oikea asia, ja minä otan huolta niiden alkuperäisistä vastauksista. Pitäkää heidät.
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?
We do not. So we don't know how many crimes are committed by asylum seekers. One reason for that actually is that most crimes never lead to a conviction. And so the perpetrator isn't known and therefore the status of the perpetrator. But where people are convicted, and we could in theory have good statistics, in practice the immigration status, so whether someone's an asylum seeker or they're on a work visa or a student visa or anything else, is not routinely recorded.
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Chapter 4: What does the data say about crime rates among asylum seekers compared to British nationals?
where people are particularly likely to be asylum seekers. So people coming from, for example, Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, Eritrea, in most cases they will have come either as a refugee, brought to the UK by the government, or through the asylum system.
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?
Well, I should say the data aren't routinely published. We have obtained data up to 2024 using freedom of information requests. You have to drag it out of them, is what you're saying.
Kyllä, ja luultavasti meillä on suunnitelmia, joita tulevaisuudessa voidaan lisätä. Mutta seuraavaksi, mitä olemme tehneet vuoteen 2024, yleinen kuvauksena on, että näemme melko isoja vaihtoehtoja, joissa ihmiset näyttävät olevansa nukkuutuneita nukkuutuneita. Ja on totta, että joissakin nukkuutuneissa, joissa suurin osa ihmisiä tuntuu asiloihin, kuten Afganistanissa, Iranissa tai Irakissa, on suurimmat nukkuutunut.
Yleensä ja myös seksuaalisten ongelmien kautta. Meidän ongelma on, että se, kuinka suuret ne ratkaisut ovat, on todella vaikeaa, koska emme saa hyvää tietoa siitä, kuinka monta ihmistä jokaisella kansalaisella on elämässä populaatiossa.
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.
If you look at the top nationalities that are the sources of refugees to the UK, it does seem that when they're in the UK, the rates of convictions for sexual offences are higher. So they're overrepresented in those figures. They are, of course, a very small percentage of the overall UK population. So we're looking at probably a few percent of overall sexual offences convictions being committed by those top, say, 18 or so nationalities.
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.
Yes, there are lots of differences. People seeking asylum are more likely to be men, and men of any nationality are much more likely to be convicted of offences than women. Those differences are really stark. We also see that people in general migrating to the UK, including in the asylum category, are in the younger age group, people in their 20s and 30s, and that's also where we tend to see
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Chapter 5: What challenges exist in tracking crime statistics related to immigration status?
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.
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Chapter 6: How do the demographics of asylum seekers differ from the general UK population?
Yes, this equates to millions of mostly tiny fish, but to put that into context, a single medium-sized commercial fishing trawler might catch hundreds of tons of fish each year. So one fishing trawler kills more fish than a nuclear power station, which is why the Fingleton report focuses on the impact on endangered fish. However, what we said in the original item was misleading, and in the spirit of more or less, we hold up our hands and we admit it when we're wrong. Quite right too. Thank you, Richard.
Raaka-öljyn hinta nousi yli sadan dollarin tynnyriltä. Levottomuudet jatkuivat pörssiä. Maailma voi tuntua joskus hallitsemattomalta. Silloin haluan, että varallisuuteni on asiantuntevissa käsissä. Oma sijoitusjohtajani Nordea Private Bankingissa auttaa minua pysymään askeleen edellä. Näin minulle jää aikaa siihen, mikä elämässä on tärkeintä. Nordea.fi kautta Private Banking.
Omalle paikalle istuessaan Jenni oli melko varma, että hän oli tehnyt koko vaunon parhaan lippudeelin. Tartu sinäkin junantuomiin etuihin ja nappaa tarjoushintaiset junaliput kesäkohteisiin nyt. Kampanja on voimassa 24. toukokuuta asti. VR. Yhteisellä matkalla.
Oh no, what now? Don't worry, Tim. That's the YouGov error siren. That's relief. YouGov's error, not ours. It's Tom Coles. Cat correspondent extraordinaire. Occasional producer of the series. What have YouGov done? Well...
Muistatko, että puhuttiin viime vuoden jälkeen kirjallisesta kirjallisesta kirjallisesta kirjallisesta kirjallisesta kirjallisesta kirjallisesta kirjallisesta kirjallisesta kirjallisesta kirjallisesta kirjallisesta kirjallisesta kirjallisesta kirjallisesta kirjallisesta kirjallisesta kirjallisesta kirjallisesta kirjallisesta
And I seem to remember that YouGov told us that they had checked everything and that their result was entirely legit. Well, they've now gone back and found that it wasn't legit at all. They've retracted the survey and apologised, although they didn't want to come onto the programme and tell us what happened.
Right. So what did happen? In a statement they said that they looked again at the original survey data and found that specific demographic groups contained a number of respondents who they can now identify as fraudulent. They said... Hmm.
Yllättäminen on todella tärkeä asia joillakin kristillisissä kirkkoissa, joten tietoprosessi on hieman ymmärrettävää. Se oli kuitenkin tervetuloa professorin David Voselle, yliopiston yliopiston yliopiston yliopiston yliopiston yliopiston yliopiston yliopiston yliopiston yliopiston yliopiston
että jotain on kääntynyt, jotta se osoittaisi oikeuden ensimmäisen skeptismin. Toisin sanoen, minusta se on hienoa, että se on pitänyt niin pitkälti, koska alussa sanoin, että ei vain, että tutkimukset olivat todennäköisesti erilaisia, vaan myös, miksi ne olivat erilaisia.
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Chapter 7: What was the outcome of the YouGov survey regarding church attendance among young men?
Kyllä, se on mukavaa saada selkeän vastauksen, mutta Tom, olen mielenkiintoinen, onko tämän vastauksen valmistelua jotain tärkeää vastaavalle vastaavalle vastaukselle? Ehkä, kyllä. Tällainen erityinen ongelma tässä tutkimuksessa on se, jota olemme puhuneet aiemmin, että vastaukset eivät ole todennäköisiä vastauksia, erityisesti nuorten vastauksista.
Quick refresher on the terminology here. The best quality polling uses a probability sample where the polling company works out the people they need for a representative sample and then recruits them to take part. But the Quiet Revival survey used a non-probability sample. YouGov recruits a panel of volunteers who sign up to do the surveys for a small financial reward and then you invite the people you need to take part from that panel. We have...
Hyvää syytä uskoa, että paljon akademiaista tutkimusta on mennyt tähän viime vuosina. Nämä paneelit ovat yhä enemmän ohjautuneet rauhallisista vastauksista. Nämä voivat olla todellisia ihmisiä, jotka eivät ole niitä, joita he suosittelevat olemaan. Ne voivat olla todellisia ihmisiä, joita he eivät oikeastaan kiinnosta.
The subject matter of the surveys and just racing through them as quickly as possible. And at least since 2022, they may well be AI chatbots that can be trained to simulate real people.
Nyt, kun käsittelee osallistujia yleisölle kuten YouGov, on erityinen ongelma demograafisten ryhmien kanssa, jotka eivät käsittele isoja osioita. Yksi niistä on nuoret. Jos järjestetään AI-kysymyksiä, jossa on joku asukka, joka asuu pysyvällä Indiassa, joka yrittää saada 50p.
by doing a survey and doing as many as possible, what you will claim to be is a young man in Britain, probably in a big city. And I suspect that that's why we're getting such anomalous results, particularly in that age range and in that gender.
Ja Tom, se oli nuorten ihmiset, jotka näkivät ison lisää heidän kirjallisuudestaan, jolloin YGOV on nyt juuri huomannut, etteivät he saaneet paljon huonosta vastauksesta. Kyllä. YGOV ei ole kertonut meiltä, millaiset vastaukset ovat todennäköisesti heikkoja, mutta David sanoo, että on melko mahdollista, että vastaukset botista, jotka yrittävät olla ihmisiä, voisivat ristiriitaa tämän ryhmän ympäri.
Other surveys show the chances of young men going to church are very low. So they would answer a question about church going at the extreme end of the scale. But a bot might try to avoid the extreme ends of the scale to look more middle of the road and human, meaning they might push the average upwards. OK, so always be sceptical about interesting poll results on the views of young men. Got it.
En pysty auttamaan, mutta olen huomannut aiheesta, joka on yksi asiaa, jota poliitikkojen täytyy käsitellä. Tom, se tuntuu minulle kuin jotain, mikä voisi olla hyvin iso ongelma.
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