Tag Archives: the wire

Stephen Tall

Julia Goldsworthy condemns Grayling’s ‘The Wire’ comparison

By Stephen Tall | Wed 26th August 2009 - 9:45 am

In the absence of much real political news, Tory shadow home secretary Chris Grayling’s rather bumbling attempt to drink the kool-ade – by referencing cult US crime TV show ‘The Wire’ in a speech echoing his party’s tired ‘Broken Britain’ theme – has backfired.

As The Indpendent caustically notes today, not only has Mr Grayling shown himself to be guilty of ludicrous hyperbole, but he’s also been forced to admit his Wire knowledge is a little on the scant side:

… his comments are not backed up by facts. With 234 murders in 2008 Baltimore had nearly twice the number of London, despite having less than one tenth of the population. In fact the chance of being murdered in Baltimore, a city with a population of about 650,000, is one in 2,700. In Britain the chances are one in 85,000.

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