Thank you for downloading this week's more or less podcast. Here's Tim Harford.

Hello and welcome to More or Less, the program which seeks truth and light in a world of nefarious numbers.

This week, a day in the life of radio force statistical bungles with contributions from the trade unions,

Lord Dick B. Jones and the Bishop of Liverpool.

And we'll try to find out what really happened on the roof of Lower Loxley Hall.

We didn't see this dark figure with a hood and I should hold you gone by his fingertips on the guttering

and suddenly someone stamps on it and that could have explained why the screen went on even longer.

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 under age white girls.

It followed the sentencing of the ring leaders 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 an 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 to 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 Judith Smith to ask what the statistics say

and what other factors beyond the statistics being used might be distorting the picture.

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