Interesting article on the BBC about how the police lie about crowd sizes on demos. Prompted by the 60,000 / 10,000 disparity between organisers and police estimates for the size of the Stop the War demo in Feb, the beeb asked the Met how they came up with their figure.
Turns out their "10,000" was actually 12,000 and was actually an estimate of the maximum number of people in Trafalgar Square at any one time, not the size of the demo at all. And it was estimated by one person, based on the licencing capacity of the square. No sampling. No computer analysis of aerial photos. No thought that the licencing capacity might be based on health and safety rules, number of exits, not the number of people who will actually fit in the square.
The story is at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/opensecrets/2007/08/how_many_there.html
The story is at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/opensecrets/2007/08/how_many_there.html
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