My goodness, the correlation-causation fallacy is awfully handy for politics!

Five people every week are stabbed to death as knife crime has risen by a fifth since Labour came to power, new figures show.

Stabbings have risen about 20% in Britain since 1997 trumpeted David Ruffley, a Conservative MP whose name belongs in a JK Rowlings novel.

It’s pretty handy to keep stats like this in your back pocket, and it’s an easy thing to pull out to get a rise out of folks. What’s missing: How many people were stabbed all together?  Stabbing rates could be steady.  How about the other crime statistics—both violent and non-violent? “Knife deaths” sounds awfully cherry-picked to me. Also, classically, they aren’t mentioning any of the other changes in the past decade: demographic shifts, increased marginalization of the poor, daily reporting of state-sanctioned violence (Iraq & Afghanistan).  As usual there are “maybe but gotta look at” changes too: Has health care delivery changed in a way which would cause more stabbing victims to die (since the MP cites deaths, not stabbings)?   Has weapon availability changed?

Slow news day to put such a rather meaningless story in, I hope?

Telegraph.co.uk: Knife deaths up by a fifth since Labour came to power