Hello and welcome to the first of More Less's election-themed podcasts.

I'm Charlotte McDonald and I've invited Ruth Alexander in here today to introduce some

extra pieces of work that she's been doing along with Tim Harford.

Yeah, Tim and I, we've been going regularly onto the PM programme on Radio 4,

chatting to Eddie Mer about the election campaign.

And we've basically been looking at various claims made by the parties,

putting them under the spotlight and seeing what light we can shed and how's that been going?

It's been going well, I think. You know, the politicians, they create a lot of heat, don't they?

They throw a lot of statistics around. They make lots of bold claims and it's just hard to

make your head or tail of it really, I think when you're just listening. So we take the time

to look at these claims, look at these numbers and think, what do they really mean?

Thanks very much. So we've brought together a collection of some of the different things you've

been talking about. We've got seven in total. We're going to go through them one by one.

So let's start with claim one.

Conservatives say living standards are higher.

Yeah, the Conservatives have made the improving economy a central part of their

election campaign. Here's George Osborne explaining how things have improved.

Our economy is growing more strongly than people expected.

Consumer confidence is at a 12 year high. The living standards are higher than when we came

to office and rising strongly. Here's Eddie Mayor asking Wreath about that.

Ruth, let's go through what George Osborne had to say, line by line. He said,

the UK economy is growing more strongly than people expected. Is that true?

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