"What's so wrong with 'creative statistics"" asks a bewildered Grant Shapps

"Picky Picky Picky Bureaucrats once again making everything unnecessarily difficult and complicated by this insistence on factual facts as opposed to propagandist fiction" says Conservative Party Chairman, adding "no wonder this country is in such a mess, when a respected government Minister gets upbraided for putting his name to a SpAd generated fairy tale designed to reinforce the shirkers, skivers, scroungers and cheats message the party has never peddled".

(Ha ha ha ha, it's that man again Update) The BBC are now running a piece about Grant's number-juggling which is drawn to your attention largely because it contains a marvellous quote from Iain Duncan Smith clone Liam Byrne:

Shadow work and pensions secretary Liam Byrne said: "This is a government that doesn't like to let the facts get in the way of a good story... but it really is outrageous that the Tories have been caught yet again misusing statistics for their own ends."

Yes, it truly is outrageous when governments get caught fabricating evidence. Thankfully, the Labour administration 1997 - 2010 was never guilty of such a thing, and certainly never got caught out doing it, then or since.

Update Update - Some even better Liam Byrne on the official One Nation: The Labour Party site.