Over recent weeks, on multiple dates, Johnson has claimed "There are more people in work now than there were before the pandemic began". The numbers claimed were variously around 400,000 and 500,000. The latter figure of 500,000 was used the day after Johnson received a letter from the Office for Statistics Regulation advising him his numbers were incorrect. Obviously the letter was ignored. It seems there had been a rise in the number of employees in work, based on numbers derived from PAYE statistics. This data covers only people appearing on PAYE figures as "Employees". Totally ignored was the number of those declaring themselves as "Self-employed". Before the pandemic, there was approximately 700,000-800,000 in the number of self-employed. The actual total, while Johnson was making his empty boasts, had decreased by 600,000.
Never mind, what about a recent claim that crime in the UK had decreased by 14%? The chair of the UK Statistics Authority pointed out that crime had actually increased by 14%. How did this huge discrepancy come about? The government explained that the Johnson figures didn't include fraud. Fraud is not just someone selling an American tourist London Bridge. It goes to the thousands of people being ripped off by cold callers, conning people into moving money out of their account, into another "for security" reasons. It goes to the gullible who receive calls from bogus call centres  in India, claiming to be from Microsoft and saying that the victim's computer has been hacked and for a sum of money, "Microsoft" can fix that. (Note: Microsoft have nothing whatsoever to do with this scam). When that dynamic brain box, Kwasi Kwarteng was challenged on this inaccurate crime stat, he claimed it was quite normal to exclude fraud from the crime statistics and Johnson was therefore right with his claim that crime had decreased. So fraud is no longer a crime then? Well, there you go Mr. con man; fill your boots. Scotland Yard will not be knocking on your door as there is "no crime to investigate here".
That ridiculous idea seems to come from the same school of idiocy governing the Met Police. You know, the organisation that until recently was steadfast in its refusal to investigate Downing St piss-ups. The first excuse was that they have not seen any evidence of a crime. Isn't that part of the job of the police? To investigate allegations and determine if there was any evidence and to then examine that evidence to see if it bears scrutiny? Then they started along the track of "Well, we won't prosecute because these incidents happened a long time ago". Less than 2 years is considered by them as "long time ago"? Mr. Jack the Ripper; you can come out now. If you give yourself up, there will be no prosecution as the events of which you are accused happened a "long time ago".
And, tying together Johnson and the Met Police's abject failure to police, we have the arguments in Parliament during which Johnson repeatedly claimed there were no parties at No. 10. Then he said there may have been but no Covid rules were broken. (I seem to remember he referred not to Covid rules but guidelines. They were quite definitely rules when members of the public were prosecuted!) Johnson eventually progressed to referring to cheese and wine knees-ups as "work meetings".
He went on to tell us that all will be revealed in the outcome of Sue Gray's report. Full and unredacted, he said. A clever shyster lawyer must have spotted a wizard wheeze (couldn't have been Johnson as he is demonstrably not clever enough). The wheeze being to shake the Met into reversing their earlier decisions re investigating/not investigating any Downing St party allegations. A clever move as they could then use the involvement of the Met as an excuse to effectively torpedo the Sue Gray report. Claims of "possibly bias inferred from her report impeding the investigation if the report was published, as promised, in full" to the invocation of sub-judice rules. Despite numerous legal sources rubbishing these excuses, the government allowed the Met to get away with this interference. Doesn't the law re "sub-judice" cover crimes? And hasn't the government and the Met repeatedly assured there were no crimes? If there were no crimes, there is nothing to be sub-judice.
Like I said; a wizard wheeze.
STOP PRESS: While writing this, we have had the latest PMQ in Parliament and Johnson has doubled down on his earlier mis-statement on crime figures. Today (9th Feb) he said at the dispatch box that crime figures are down by 17%. He also threw in some random numbers concerning current staffing in the NHS and the police. These are crying out to be fact checked. In the meantime, I would pose this question: Isn't it time we stopped using euphemisms such as "mis-spoke, taken out of context etc" and reverted to the old fashioned "He's lying"? As I remember from my upbringing, to state something as fact, when you know it is not true, it is called a lie. And the person making such statements is to be called a liar. And punished for it.