Street grooming

Summary

More or Less – "Street Grooming"

BBC Radio 4 | January 14, 2011
Host: Tim Harford
Theme: Investigating statistics used in political debate, with a particular focus on claims around ethnicity and on-street child grooming, as well as other "statistical bungles" from Radio 4.

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Episode Overview

This episode of "More or Less" centers on claims made by politicians and the press regarding the ethnic background of offenders in so-called "street grooming" cases, particularly the assertion that Pakistani men disproportionately offend against underage white girls. Tim Harford and the team dissect the evidence supporting these assertions, challenge statistical misunderstandings in news and political discourse, and investigate multiple other numerical misunderstandings aired on Radio 4 throughout the week.

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1. Claims About Street Grooming and Ethnicity

[00:38 - 08:28]

Key Points:

• Jack Straw (former Home Secretary) asserted a "specific problem" with Pakistani men street-grooming underage white girls, after the Derby grooming case.
• Straw did not provide statistics; listener Judah Smith asked what the data supports.

Newspaper Reporting:

• The Times (Andrew Norfolk) identified 17 grooming cases (over 13 years), with 56 convicted offenders, 53 of whom were Asian (mostly Pakistani) in the North and Midlands.
• Norfolk's method: systematically reviewing court cases via press reports – admits it is not rigorous academic analysis.
  • Quote: "Really this is just an attempt to collect anecdotes in a vaguely systematic fashion." – Tim Harford [04:01]

Academic Research:

• The Jill Dando Institute (Helen Braley & Ella Cobain) undertook the first academic study into on-street grooming.

  • Found: Offending groups were predominantly Pakistani, but victims described being "pimped" to clients of various ethnicities.
  • Quote: "As far as the offenders are concerned, the groups were predominantly Pakistani, but... clients had a large, large variety of ethnic mix." – Helen Braley [04:36]

• Braley disputes Straw's cultural argument:

  • Quote: "No, not at all, actually. ...It was a crime of opportunity..." – Helen Braley [05:17]
  • Offenders targeted vulnerable girls available in their area, not specifically white girls for cultural reasons.

Limits of Existing Research:

• The study only looked at two operations and is not representative.
• Helen Braley warns against drawing broad conclusions: "We shouldn't infer anything about the bigger picture from these results." [05:55]
• There is no UK offence of "on-street grooming"—data is hard to extract.

Demographics of Offenders:

• Braley challenges the narrative of young, single men offending:
  • Quote: "...most of the perpetrators were mid 20s to late 30s... older guys in relationships, married, that are committing these offences..." – Helen Braley [06:45]
• No comprehensive breakdown of ethnicities of all sexual offenders.
  • Available data (convictions, 2007-8): Per 100,000, 4 white, 6 Asian, 15 black people imprisoned for sexual offences—but major caveats on interpretation and policing biases.

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2. Correction of Statistical Errors in Other Radio 4 Programmes

[13:56 onwards]

The Bishop of Liverpool’s Debt Confusion:

• He says, "The national Debt is nearly 1,000 billion pounds, and ... a trillion pounds, which is our total personal debt." [14:18]
• Tim Harford: Actually, a thousand billion IS a trillion, not a separate larger figure.

Len McCluskey / UNITE’s Deficit Error:

• Claimed the UK deficit is not high by historical/international standards; compared debt levels instead of deficit.
  • Quote: "...the UK deficit is not high by historical or international standards. Germany, France and Japan have all got higher net debt than the UK." [15:55]
• Harford: This mixes the annual deficit (rate of borrowing) and total debt; only the former is at historic highs.
  • Deficit in 2009–10: 10.4% of GDP – highest since WWII.
  • Debt: 62% of GDP; not unprecedented (post-WWII, UK debt exceeded 250%).

Inflated Bank Bailout Costs:

• UNITE attributed an £800bn deficit to the bank bailout – Harford clarifies true direct costs were "a few billion," but the full economic impact is unclear (£1.7–9 trillion by Andy Haldane, Bank of England).

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3. Misrepresented Financial Sector Tax Contribution

[18:40 - 21:02]

Lord Digby Jones’ Claim:

• Stated: "Financial services... delivers 20% of the entire tax take" [18:40]
• Real figure: PwC research (most liberal estimate) = 12% (including all financial services, not just banks), recently revised down to 11%.
• Lord Jones, when asked for source, says he heard it at a seminar but couldn’t recall details. Accepts 12% figure when presented with PwC data.

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4. The "Most Popular Baby Name" Debate

[23:41 - 25:57]

Radio 4’s Claim:

• Announced "Mohammed" (all spellings) as the most popular boys’ name in Britain.
• Tim Harford and team find that if variant spellings of "Oliver" are included (Olivier, Ollie, etc.), Oliver comes out ahead.
  • Quote: "If you're going to add up all...Muhammad, you should add up all the different spellings of Oliver...Oliver gets over 8,000." – Richard Varden [24:50]
• Insight: The diversification of names means even top names are less dominant than in previous decades.

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5. Other Notable Numerical Moments

Mini-Segments

• Bank Tax Claims (PMQs):

  • Ed Miliband: Labour’s bank bonus tax raised £3.5bn, government’s new bank tax will raise £1.2bn – thus, a tax cut.
  • David Cameron: "net" yield from bonus tax was only £2.3bn, and future levy will raise £2.5bn, higher than bonus tax.
  • Harford: All these numbers have merits; political spin exploits which data to highlight.

• Long-Wave Shipping Forecast vs. England Cricket Triumph:

  • Quirk: Shipping forecast has a 1-in-18 chance per Ashes match of overlapping an England victory; for three wins in one series, the odds are 1 in 5,832.

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6. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "This was a report for a newspaper and not an academic analysis...his aim had never been to find the definitive picture." – Wesley Stevenson on Andrew Norfolk's journalism [04:08]
• "We had no evidence from the victim statements...to indicate that the white girls were treated any different from the black girls or from the Asian girls..." – Helen Braley [05:43]
• "We don't have a breakdown of the ethnicity of those people who commit sexual offences against children...without proper research, we won't really know..." – Wesley Stevenson [07:22]
• "A thousand billion and a trillion were in fact the same number, but perhaps the Bishop has received guidance from a higher authority..." – Tim Harford, wryly [14:18]
• "You're not going to believe this. We've just had another last minute phone call. I've never known anything like." – Ruth Alexander, closing the episode [27:27]

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7. Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:38 – 08:28: Main discussion on street grooming statistics and ethnicity
• 13:56 – 17:34: Analysis of debt/deficit errors and the bank bailout figures
• 18:40 – 21:02: Financial sector’s contribution to UK tax
• 23:41 – 25:57: Popularity of the name "Mohammed"

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8. Tone and Style

The episode maintains Tim Harford’s characteristic blend of wry skepticism and clarity, favoring careful statistical analysis over moral panic or political posturing. Listeners are encouraged to question data sources and recognize the difference between anecdote and robust evidence, particularly where public policy and social tension intersect.

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Summary for New Listeners

This episode unpacks high-profile statistical claims, focusing on allegations about the ethnicity of street grooming offenders. The hosts underscore how the evidence is incomplete and often misconstrued in public debate, making firm conclusions difficult and calling for more rigorous research. Alongside, they correct other recent statistical misunderstandings on national debt, deficit, baby names, and the financial sector’s tax role—always attuned to the narrative manipulation and misunderstandings that numbers can invite in the media and politics.

Transcript

[Ruth Alexander]

Thank you for downloading this week's More or Less podcast. Here's Tim Harford.

[Tim Harford]

Hello and welcome to More Or Less, the programme which seeks truth and light in a world of nefarious numbers. This week, a day in the life of Radio 4's statistical bungles, with contributions from the trade unions, Lord Digby Jones and the Bishop of Liverpool. And we'll try to find out what really happened on the roof of Lower Loxley Hall.

[Graham Seed]

We didn't see this dark figure with a hood and Nigel's holding on by his fingertips on the guttering and suddenly someone stamps on it. And that could have explained why the scream went on even longer.

[Tim Harford]

But first, Jack Straw, a former Home Secretary and Justice Secretary under Gordon Brown, claimed this week that there was a specific problem with Pakistani men street grooming underage white girls. It followed the sentencing of the ringleaders of a predominantly Pakistani gang that groomed and abused teenage girls in Derby. This is what he said. These young men are in a Western society. In any event, they act like any other young men. They're fizzing and popping with testosterone. They want some outlet for that. But Pakistani heritage girls are off limits and they are expected to marry a Pakistani girl from Pakistan, typically. So they then seek other avenues and they see these young women, white girls, who are vulnerable, some of them in care, who for sure have not been subject to normal parental support, who they think are easy meet. It's worth mentioning that he also said that overwhelmingly the sex offender wings of prisons were full of white sex offenders. But returning to his original claim, he didn't offer any statistics to back up his ideas, which led loyal listener Judah Smith to ask what the statistics say and what other factors beyond the statistics being used might. Might be distorting the picture. Wesley Stevenson's been looking at this. Wes, where has this assertion come from?

[Wesley Stevenson]

The idea that Pakistani men are involved in this type of crime more than those from other ethnic groups in the UK has been put forward before, but with little evidence to back it up. And part of the problem is there's no specific offence of on street grooming, so you can't just go to the Home Office and ask for the numbers. Now, this recent airing of the idea has come in light of the case in Derby, but it was also the lead story in the Times last Wednesday. This article claimed to reveal a pattern of exploitation and that most convicted offenders were of Pakistani heritage. They identified 17 cases over the last 13 years where men groomed girls they met on the street. Of the 56 convicted in these cases 53 were Asian, mostly from the Pakistani community, and all of the cases were in the north of England and the Midlands. The journalist behind this story was a man called Andrew Norfolk. I asked him how he came by these figures.

[Andrew Norfolk]

What we did was to look as best we could at every single court case that had taken place in this country in which two or more men had been convicted of child sex offences, in which the victim was one or more girls aged between 11 and 16, in which the initial contact with the child had been on the street. We have a facility to look at every newspaper article that has been published. And what I was doing was putting in men the word girl or girls the word Crown Court, and a variety of words in terms of the offence, because the charges with which people were accused, of course, quite a range that produced some of the. Of the cases, others, as I say, I knew about. But some had only ever been reported in a few paragraphs in a local newspaper in one town. One case in particular in Sheffield, doesn't really ever appear to have been properly reported, but such was the concern by social workers and police that a Home Office document was produced. And that's how I found out about that one.

[Tim Harford]

Well, it sounds like Mr. Norfolk was working hard, but really this is just an attempt to collect anecdotes in a vaguely systematic fashion.

[Wesley Stevenson]

Yes, this was a report for a newspaper and not an academic analysis of all the cases. And Andrew Norfolk was happy to admit that his aim had never been to find the definitive picture.

[Tim Harford]

So is there any other evidence?

[Wesley Stevenson]

Well, the Gill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science at the University College London has also looked at this and their work was cited in the Times. Two researchers, Helen Braley and Ella Cobain, have done the first academic research into this area. And I asked Helen what they found.

[Helen Braley]

As far as the offenders are concerned, the groups were predominantly Pakistani, but there was anecdotal evidence from the victims to say that on occasion they were pimped out to clients or customers which had a large, large variety of ethnic mix with that. So all sorts of different people were involved from the client side.

[Wesley Stevenson]

Jack Straw, when he was talking about this at the weekend, was talking about the cultural aspect of this and it being men of Pakistani heritage, targeting white girls because they felt that they were easy meat. Is that a picture that you see in it, in any of this?

[Helen Braley]

No, not at all, actually. And I can see how people can jump to those conclusions if they literally just look at the very limited data that's available. But what we found was it was A crime of opportunity, that the men were just roaming around cruising for any girls that they could identify and they only found white girls because they were in a white area. We had no evidence from the victim statements that we were looking at to indicate that the white girls were treated any different from the black girls or from the Asian girls that were also victims.

[Tim Harford]

Okay, but they only looked at two operations, so is that really representative?

[Wesley Stevenson]

Well, no, it's not. And Helen says while the findings are interesting, we shouldn't infer anything about the bigger picture from their results.

[Tim Harford]

So does this mean there is no problem specifically related to Pakistani men?

[Wesley Stevenson]

Well, no, I mean, the truth is we just don't know because we don't have access to the numbers. Without access to the original records and good contact with the police, it would be just about impossible for a journalist like me or anyone else to get an accurate picture. However, it has recently been announced that the police's Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre are to do research into this area and we're reporting around six months, so perhaps we'll have a better idea then. Helen Braley also takes issue with another point that Jack Straw makes about this being a crime committed by young men looking for a release. She says the limited figures don't bear this out.

[Helen Braley]

The two main ringleaders in the Derby case were both late 20s and both married. Most of the perpetrators were mid 20s to late 30s. I think we had an average age of 29, the youngest being, I think he was 23. So we're certainly not seeing the 17, 18, 19 year olds that aren't married, that aren't in relationships, perpetrating this crime as some kind of mail release. We're seeing it as older guys in relationships, married, that are committing these offences against girls.

[Tim Harford]

Ok, so do we have any indication about who commits the most offences?

[Wesley Stevenson]

We don't have a breakdown of the ethnicity of those people who commit sexual offences against children. I looked at this quite hard and the closest that we've been able to get to this is to look at those convicted for sexual offences in the last year. We have figures for which is 2007, 2008. Now, if we look at those given a custodial sentence, so those convicted are the most serious offences. There are far more white offenders than Asian or black. However, if you compare this with the demographic data, you find that there were four white people sent to prison for these types of offences for every 100,000 whites, six Asians for every 100,000 Asian people and 15 black people for every 100,000 black people. But there could be many reasons why these figures aren't an accurate reflection of the underlying crimes committed to some. For example, say the police are racist and this affects the way that they arrest people and who they arrest. Whereas there are others who say, well, they're far too politically correct and aren't willing to tackle the problem properly. In truth, without proper research, we won't really know what the figures are.

[Tim Harford]

Well, thank you, Wes. If you'd like to get in touch about that story, please send your comments to more or lessbc.co.uk. if you were listening to More or less last week, you'll know that we calculated the height of Lower Loxley hall, the ancestral home of the late Nigel Pargetta and the Archers, by timing the length of Nigel's scream as he plunged from its roof. It was 3.5 seconds. We calculated that in 3.5 seconds, Nigel's flailing form would have fallen just over 60 metres. That's the height of York Minster, and it suggests that Lower Loxley hall is as much as 20 storeys high. But within seconds of the item's transmission, something rather strange started to happen. An email arrived from Richard Gillett in Sheffield, who wrote, I'd just like to throw a spanner into the works by suggesting that Nigel began to scream while he was sliding down the roof and before he began falling. Then another making the same point arrived from Andrew McPherson in Hertfordshire. Then Moore, Richard Statham, Eric Dudley, Anne Hillerton all argued the same thing and within minutes we were deluged.

[Ruth Alexander]

Your calculation didn't take into account any

[Helen Braley]

screaming that took place before he actually

[Tim Harford]

likely Nigel started to scream when he realized he was, did he remain stoically silent until he was.

[Wesley Stevenson]

Calculations are wrong, as you have not.

[Andrew Norfolk]

Enough.

[Tim Harford]

We assumed Nigel screamed only while he was in free fall. We did so because we felt that had Nigel bumped down the roof before falling off, we would have heard him do so. And we reasoned if he had slid down the roof, Nigel would have had better things to do than issue a blood curdling death yodel. Like trying not to fall off the roof at all. Clearly, there's only one way to settle this. We must ask Nigel what really happened on that cold, unhappy night. Nigel's dead, of course, but we have the next best thing. The actor who played Nigel, Graham Seed. So I asked Graham to tell us what was going through his mind as he prepared to play this final scene.

[Graham Seed]

It's a stately home indeed. If you want to see what it looks like, listeners, I recommend a little film on YouTube that's called Nigel Pargetta RIP that a very clever man called Richard Lewis Dray has made. And, well, then you'll see this wonderful building, which is a stately home and it's very high. It's got about four floors, I should think, with this flat roof and then another little roof and there are little turrets. And we imagined that it was a windy night and Nigel and David were climbing even higher and the banner was on a flag thing, so you've got to stretch and climb even higher. So there's quite a lot of slipping down, which maybe the radio didn't quite capture, but there's quite a lot slipping down before you hit free fall.

[Tim Harford]

We heard no sound effect of slipping on flagpoles or downstairs. The archer's budget didn't.

[Graham Seed]

There were three tiles. We had three tiles that I slipped on. And before I screamed with enormous passion and venom, as I knew I was going to my slippery death, unless, heavens. There was a third person on that roof.

[Tim Harford]

The story editor of the Archers, perhaps?

[Graham Seed]

Well, I mean, who knows? Or the writer or something. We didn't see this dark figure with a hood and Nigel's holding on by his fingertips on the guttering and suddenly someone stamps on it. And that could have explained why the scream went on even longer.

[Tim Harford]

That would explain everything. It does all make sense now. We've had a number of very inventive suggestions from our listeners as to what actually happened. One was very simple. It was that more or less failed to take into account the dramatic coefficient of falling. And that basically, Graham, you were entitled to scream as long and as loud as you like.

[Graham Seed]

Fair point.

[Tim Harford]

I guess it is fair. The other, it was a slow motion scream.

[Graham Seed]

Oh, that's clever. That's rather artistic, though, isn't it? It was a bit creative for the Archers and Slow Mo and the Archers. No, it's sort of. We thought it probably worked better because in film you might not hear any scream at all. Just a quick, ah. You know. And you'd have the visual thing of this poor man.

[Tim Harford]

Yeah. You probably wouldn't hear anything. How does it feel that this. This has been the talking point of a nation that many, many people very upset. Other people think the whole thing's just a bit of fun. I mean, how does it feel to be. To be Graham, the former Nigel, at

[Graham Seed]

this point, it's unique because as an actor, you don't normally look back and read your own obituaries. And in a funny way, that's happened, hasn't it? Because everyone has been so kind and I don't know if they're being in their mourning for Nigel, which they are. But also I'm getting some really sweet sympathy from listeners and at the end of the day, I'm so thrilled that Nigel and my performances meant so much to them.

[Tim Harford]

I should reveal to listeners that while we were chatting, before we came into the studio, you referred to yourself as a dead actor. I had to remind you you're not actually dead.

[Graham Seed]

And I'm appearing in a wonderful play that Emily Williams wrote called Accolade at the Finborough that opens on the 1st of February. Got that plug in?

[Tim Harford]

You did indeed, Graham. You did indeed, Graham Seed, the actor formerly known as Nigel Pargetta. Loyal listeners will know that the more or less team looks far and wide for rogue numbers, but sometimes they crop up right under our noses. And right here on Radio 4 Tuesday. This week was a particularly fruitful day. The fun began in a place we don't normally have cause to scrutinise thought for the day. Here's the Bishop of Liverpool, the Right Reverend James Jones.

[Graham Seed]

Good morning. The Prime Minister this week is marshalling his forces against the bankers and their bonuses, but it's not yet clear if they'll heed his advice. The problem is we're drowning in debt. The national Debt is nearly 1,000 billion pounds, and if it's difficult getting your head around that figure, try a trillion pounds, which is our total personal debt.

[Tim Harford]

I always thought that a thousand billion and a trillion were in fact the same number, but perhaps the Bishop has received guidance from a higher authority in his defence. Back in the day, a thousand billion used to be called a billiard, and it referred to a number with 15 zeros, what we'd now call a quadrillion. And a trillion used to be something different, a number with 18 zeros, what we'd now call a quintillion. Fortunately, the debt figures that the Bishop finds it difficult to get his head around are a thousand or a million times smaller than that. Twenty minutes later, Evan Davies found himself embroiled in a slightly surreal exchange with Len McCluskey, the general secretary designate of the Unite Union. Evan began by challenging Mr. McClusky on a claim he'd made in the Guardian that the deficit simply wasn't that high by historical or international standards. I can't understand how you write that, because all the documentation one finds on the deficit is that it's extremely high

[Graham Seed]

by both historical and contemporary standards.

[Richard Varden]

No, the death that we've had within the UK from 1945, right the way through to 1997 was higher than we've currently got, and indeed the contemporary standards within France and Germany are higher than ours. What we're saying is that of course there's a deficit. I'm not a deficit denier by any.

[Tim Harford]

And there was more of that. The exchange finished with Len McCluskey telling Evan Davis that he was obviously looking at a different set of numbers. So which numbers was Len McCluskey looking at? We asked Unite, and they sent us a briefing document with a section titled the Economy in Numbers, the first paragraph

[Ruth Alexander]

of which reads, the UK deficit is not high by historical or international standards. Germany, France and Japan have all got higher net debt than the uk.

[Tim Harford]

Oh, dear. Unite, it seems, have confused debt, which is the total amount of money owed by the government, with the deficit, which is the amount of money the government needs to borrow each new year. At the beginning of the crisis, debt was on the low side, but with a large deficit, debt has been rising quickly. We've looked at data from the Office for National Statistics going back to 1974-75, and from the Institute for Fiscal Studies going back much further. As a percentage of gross domestic product, the deficit in the most recent tax year was 10.4%. It hasn't otherwise been above 8% at any time since the end of the Second World War, which is when the data series we looked at began. So it's hard to see how anyone can claim that the deficit is, by historical standards, not high. Debt, on the other hand, is only the highest it's been since the early 1970s. That's not exactly low, but there have been tougher times. Debt is expected to be almost 62% of GDP this tax year. It was over 250% shortly after the Second World War. We asked UNITE if they wanted to retract their statement that the deficit is not high by historical standards. They sent us a new briefing document

[Ruth Alexander]

which the deficit has grown. This is a result of the global economic downturn which hit these shores hard. Taxpayers spent 800 billion pounds propping up the banks. And as unemployment grew, the government's tax tape dropped while spending on benefits rose.

[Tim Harford]

The 800 billion pounds figure is also intriguing. In some ways, it's far too high. Loyal listeners will recall that when we looked at this during the general election campaign, the estimated cost of the bailout was just a few billion pounds, possibly nothing, depending on the price at which the government is able to sell its shares in the banks. But loyal listeners will also recall the more or less Christmas carol available to Download from our website BBC.co.uk More or less in which Andy Haldane, Executive Director of the bank of England, told us that the total cost of the banking crisis to the economy could range from about 1700 billion pounds to 9000 billion pounds. So while Unite are wrong to blame the deficit on the banking bailouts or debt, I'm sure they'll make up their minds. The economic damage wreaked by the banking crisis is certainly to blame. Later that morning, Lord Digby Jones, the former Trade Minister and one time head of the cbi, appeared on the World at One to make the following assertion about the amount of tax the banks pay.

[Graham Seed]

If we get a reputation around the world that this is the place where you don't earn a bonus and that will be the way it's seen, then you will lose the most enormous amount of talent here. And the fact of the matter is, the financial services community of the United Kingdom delivers 20% of the entire tax take of the country.

[Tim Harford]

Hmm. Well, Lord Jones made a similar claim last May when he said that the banks contributed 24% of all UK tax at the time. Ruth Alexander took a good look at that number and happily, she's back now. Ruth, welcome back. Tell us what you found back then.

[Ruth Alexander]

Well, the most convincing research we could find came from the accountants PricewaterhouseCoopers, who looked at the total tax contributed not just by the banks, but by the entire financial sector. So that includes things like asset managers and insurance companies too. Now, the author of the study told me at the time that they'd cast their net pretty wide, not just in terms of what they call a financial institution, but also in terms of the tax they counted.

[Tim Harford]

OK, so PwC have been fairly generous in their assumptions. So what do they conclude?

[Ruth Alexander]

Well, they think the total tax contribution of the entire financial sector is about 12% of all UK tax.

[Tim Harford]

So that's about half what Lord Jones said it was in May. Now, I seem to recall that you had trouble getting hold of Digby Jones back then.

[Ruth Alexander]

Yes, I wanted to know if he had another source for his number, but he didn't call me back.

[Tim Harford]

He might have been listening. After all, you do seem to have haggled him down from 24% to 20%. It's a start.

[Ruth Alexander]

Well, I suppose. But we did get in touch with Lord Jones secretary again this week to find out whether he has a source for the new 20% claim. And then I waited by my phone.

[Tim Harford]

And what happened?

[Ruth Alexander]

This. But then with just two hours to go before our deadline, Lord Jones called up he told us he'd heard the number at a seminar from someone at one of the big four accountancy firms, but he couldn't remember which one. We told him about the PwC research and he accepted their number, although he thinks it should have included VAT paid by bank employees, which it doesn't, because that would be very hard to measure. Even if it did, though, we don't think PwC's 12%, which they've recently revised down to about 11%, by the way, we don't think that would get even remotely near to Lord Jones's figure.

[Tim Harford]

I see. Ruth Alexander, thank you. You're listening to More or Less with me, Tim Harford, in association with the Open University. Our website is BBC.co.ukmoreorless our email more or lessbc.co.uk, and my Twitter name is simply Tim Harford. While we're on the subject of banks, there was a bit of a tussle between the Prime Minister, David Cameron, and the Leader of the Opposition, Ed Miliband, at Prime Minister's questions on Wednesday. First, here's Mr. Miliband.

[Wesley Stevenson]

He just needs to look at page 91 of the Office of Budget Responsibility book published in November. Labour's payroll tax on the banks raised 3.5 billion pounds. In addition to the corporation tax that they pay, his banking levy is raising just £1.2 billion. In anyone's language, that is a tax cut.

[Tim Harford]

Well, the Prime Minister had some different figures.

[Wesley Stevenson]

The bank bonus tax raised net 2.3 billion pounds. And the author of that tax, who's sitting over there, the former Chancellor, says, you cannot go on introducing this tax year after year. Very sensible, Marius. The bank Levy will raise 2.5 billion pounds each year once it's fully up and running. Yes, yes, 2.5 billion is. Even the shadow chancellor can tell him 2.5 billion is more than 2.3 billion.

[Tim Harford]

Gosh, what a lot of numbers. And we think that pretty much all of them were accurate. Which just goes to show that politicians are very good at co opting the facts to fit the story they want to tell. Here's our. On Ed Miliband's central claim, he's correct. The new bank tax levied on bank balance sheets will raise £1.2 billion this year. Alistair Darling's old bank bonus tax raised £3.5 billion. But of course, the point about the bank bonus tax was that it was, as Mr. Darling repeatedly insisted, a one off. Mr. Cameron's riposte was technically accurate, but involved some statistical sleight of hand. By using the word net, he lopped over a third off Labour's bank bonus tax. This is the Treasury's adjustment for the income tax and national insurance. They lost because the bonus tax discouraged bonus payments. The adjustment isn't necessarily wrong, but it is rather speculative. And Mr. Cameron was much keener to talk about future years. The bank balance sheet tax is being phased in. It will raise more money later, but right now it is raising less than the bonus tax did last year. And from Ed and Dave to Mohamed, Mohammed, Mohammed, Mohammed and Mohammed.

[Wesley Stevenson]

Now on Radio 4, the last program in the series, five guys named Mohammed

[Tim Harford]

as Mohammed in all its spellings becomes

[Wesley Stevenson]

the most popular name given to boys born in Britain, Five men from across the country have been reflecting on their

[Tim Harford]

lives and what it's like to be

[Wesley Stevenson]

a Mohammed here today.

[Tim Harford]

Interesting. And that claim caught the attention of one of our loyal listeners. Claire Pace, more or less is masterminded by two guys named Richard. And one of them is here, Richard Varden. So, Richard, is it true that Mohammed is now the most popular baby name?

[Richard Varden]

Well, there was a lot of excitement about this at the end of last year when the most recent figures came out which told us about all the boys named in 2009. Now, if you just added it up in a very straightforward manner, Oliver actually came top with 7,364. But when you add up all the different versions of Muhammad, it came top with 7549.

[Tim Harford]

OK, so fairly straightforward. Mohammed in its various spellings. As the continuity announcer said in that clip, Mohammed is the most popular baby name.

[Richard Varden]

Oh, but surely if you're going to add up all the different spellings of Muhammad, you should add up all the different spellings of Oliver.

[Tim Harford]

Surely there's only one way to spell Oliver.

[Richard Varden]

No, there's Oliver, Olivier, there's Ollie in various different spellings. And when you add up all those different spellings, Oliver gets over 8,000. So it's clearly the most popular name.

[Tim Harford]

Okay, but Muhammad is still there in a solid second place.

[Richard Varden]

Yes, Muhammad's second at the moment, but there are good reasons to think it'll come top soon. It's been steadily increasing over the last few years. It's becoming more and more popular. But there's also another trend that's more important. Although we have more Babies now than 10 years ago, the number needed to get to the top of the baby chart is falling. In 1998, there were five names that beat today's top name.

[Tim Harford]

So this is people choosing Dave and Paul and Ollie and these Names are right at the top. And now people are choosing rather less conventional names. Foreign names, celebrity names.

[Richard Varden]

What's happened in the last 10 years is that the number of different names given to babies has jumped massively. The number of boys born has risen by 13%, but the number of names used has jumped by 54%. Basically, a lot of people are turning away from the old staples to choose celebrity names or foreign names. It unfortunately has got to the point where there are more boys named Brooklyn than Tim.

[Tim Harford]

I hope you've also counted Timothy.

[Richard Varden]

I have. And I've also counted the different spellings of Brooklyn.

[Tim Harford]

Good grief. Richard Varden, thank you very much. You may remember that in our New Year's Eve special, the sports statistician Bill Edgar from the Times calculated the chance of key football moments being wiped out by advertisements on itv. As indeed they were. How we chuckled smugly in our advertising free zone. But while Radio 4 has no commercial breaks, it does have a break for the shipping forecast. As Jack the Not so Psychic Monkey predicted, England beat Australia three times in the recent Ashes Test series. So what are the chances of all three Radio 4 long wave broadcasts being interrupted by the shipping forecast right at the moment of English triumph, as, alas, happened, the shipping forecast is broadcast twice a night with a total length of 20 minutes. The Test match day is six hours long, overlapping both of those broadcasts. Bill Edgar reckons that this means that any randomly chosen moment in a test match has a 1 in 18 chance of being obscured by the shipping forecast. For this to happen three times is a 1 in 18 chance cubed or a 1 in 5832 chance. There are various possible complicating factors, but we and Bill reckon that unlike Mitchell Johnson's bowling, it's fairly accurate. That's nearly all we have time for this week. We'll be back for the last programme in the series next week and until then, please frolic on our website, BBC.co.uk more or less. Hi, Ruth.

[Ruth Alexander]

Tim, hi. You're not going to believe this. We've just had another last minute phone call. I've never known anything like.

[Graham Seed]

There are warnings of gales in Irish

[Wesley Stevenson]

Sea, Shannon, Rockall, Malin, Hebrides, Baillie and

[Ruth Alexander]

Southeast More or Less was presented by Tim Harford, the FT's undercover economist. The producer was Richard Knight and the editor was Richard Varden. It was made in association with the Open University.