Wrong, David

There's one claim David Davis made in this speech which is just plain incorrect. He said:

Productivity is now growing at its lowest rate since present records began.

It's not. I presume he's referring to these recent figures on output per worker in the whole economy, which show productivity growth of just 0.5% in the last 12 months. Records on these go back to 1959 in National Statistics' database. (code identifier A4YM.)  They show that productivity grew less than 0.5% in 1962, 1974, 1979-80, 1984 and 1989-90.
Granted, the press release (pdf) only reports data back to 2001. But no-one would be stupid enough to think they were the complete record, would they?
I don't mention this out of mere pedantry. Do we want a leader of the opposition who is so careless about basic facts?
Whilst I'm here, I'll quibble with another claim he made - the reference to Marx "writing his acres of unreadable prose."
Personally, I find lots of Marx very readable, especially when he writes about the brutality of "primitive accumulation", for example here.
But then, I wouldn't expect the Stupid Party to draw attention to how Britain's inequalities of wealth emerged.
Another thing: David Aaronovitch doesn't like Davis  either:

Mr Davis, for all his weekend warnings to the almost non-existent Religious Right, is a hanger, has voted against ending discrimination against gay people and has admitted that, though the father of three, he never changed a nappy. Individually these preferences would be only mildly disturbing. Together they almost amount to a persona.

Comments

[dearieme]

"how Britain's inequalities of wealth emerged": I'd guess that they first emerged when Pfllt proved to be a better hunter than Bllr and Mrhta a better gatherer than Chra. Or perhaps that's inequality of income, until they learned to store stuff?

[EU Serf]

On hanging and law and order in General I am sure that Mr Davis is closer to the average Brit than the root causes brigade at the Guardian.