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Ignorant
The fallout from the first televised leader’s debate continues, with DaveCam again the brunt of most of the criticism. After failing to connect with the voters in the debate, there are now claims that the Conservative leader misrepresented many of the stories that he regaled the public with on Thursday evening.
The Daily Mirror went as far as calling the Tory leader a ‘fraud’.
Cameron told the debate: “Our death rate from cancer is actually worse than Bulgaria’s.” However, Department of Health figures show for Bulgarian men under 65, mortality from cancer is 121 per 100,000 compared to 65 per 100,000 in England. For women, the figures are 70 per 100,000 in Bulgaria and 63 per 100,000 in England.
Mr Cameron also told a story about a new £73,000 Lexus bought by Humberside Police. However, Chief Constable Tim Hollis said it cost less than the £53,381 on-the-road price and is used for frontline policing. Mr Hollis said: “It’s used by Road Crime Section with damn good results.”
The Metropolitan Police were also angry at claims they had 400 people in HR. There are 398 - with 350 to train officers on arrests. One senior officer called Cameron’s comments “ignorant”.
’40 year old black man’
In addition, the ‘40-year-old black man’ referred to by Cameron in this week’s televised election debate has hit out at the Conservative leader for getting the story wrong.
Cameron referred to Neal Forde, who runs a business supplying kitchen worktops, while discussing immigration during Thursday’s TV debate. The Conservative leader said: “I was in Plymouth recently and a 40-year-old black man … said, ‘I came here when I was six, I’ve served in the Royal Navy for 30 years, I’m incredibly proud of my country. But I’m so ashamed that we’ve had this out-of-control system with people abusing it so badly’.”
Unfortunately, the Tory leader got the 51-year-old businessman’s age wrong by 11 years. He also told the audience of 9 million viewers that Forde had served in the Royal Navy for 30 years (which would have been interesting considering he thought the man was 40 years old), when in fact he served for six.
He said he had been teased by his friends and colleagues because of the inaccuracies in Cameron’s anecdote.
Crosby
Cameron also recounted a story of when he recently visited Crosby “and I was talking to a woman there who had been burgled by someone who had just left prison and he stole everything in her house and, as he left, he set fire to the sofa and her son died from the fumes and that burglar, that murderer, could be out in four-and-a-half years.”
He was referring to the killing, in March 2008, of Ryan Dugdale, 21, by Liam O’Brien. The crime actually took place in Anfield, causing a number of angry calls to the Crosby Herald after the debate from people who felt Cameron was unfairly branding Crosby – part of the new Lib Dem-Tory marginal seat of Sefton Central – as a dangerous place.
Jack Colbert, a local Liberal Democrat councillor said, “I don’t mind anecdotal evidence, but they’ve got to get their facts right.”
And so say all of us.