4/minute for all the minutes the schools are OPEN works out on the back of my envelope as 430,000 (admittedly I’m not very familiar with the length of a school day).

I think you can jsutify this stat if you define carefully what constitutes a “minute” in this context. Every minute of every day, or every minute the schools are open. Of course people rarely define precisely what they mean by a statistic, hence their use to mislead.

It just goes to show how people can warp perfectly meaningful stats to their own ends…

“There are different ways of calculating the figures that would result in different conclusions.”

It is spin, pure and simple – a rival ‘truth’ to Labour’s own misinformation.

I have no data, but would suggest that Tory figures on job losses are probably – possibly? – based on actual jobs lost, rather than a simple subtraction of “currently employed” and “previously employed”.

E.g. if three people lose their job and one finds work elsewhere, your method suggests only two job losses. Whereas the reality is three.

Incidentally, I hope all politicians and spinners are sucked into a void (where they choke on their own intestines) and that nobody is elected.

Well, no: http://viva-freemania.blogspot.com/2010/03/green-budget-economys-carbon-efficiency.html