Swire retweeted this:
“Gavin Barwell MP @GavinBarwellMP
New figures released today show since 2010 government schemes have helped 330,000 people buy a new home #OwnYourHome”
NO! NO! NO! It has not helped 330,000 people to buy new homes!
When you follow the link it says: 185,000 people have bought new houses BUT, when you read further, actually it only talks about 91,000 of those homes having used various government schemes.
The press release says ”
The government is committed to helping people achieve their aspiration of home ownership, through the range of Help to Buy schemes, including: ISA, Shared Ownership, Equity Loan, London Help to Buy and Mortgage Guarantee.”
Remember that some of these schemes allow wealthy people to buy homes worth up to £650,000 for their children with huge discounts, that the ISA was revealed to only be helpful AFTER you had bought a home AND paid a deposit when people thought they were signing up for help WITH deposits, and equity loans grab a share of your home as does shared ownership.
Nowhere does Mr Barwell, or Mr Swire, explain where the figure of 330,000 comes from – except to say that it is “since 2010” when ?some ?all, ?most of these schemes did not exist!
Donald Trump, eat your heart out – post-truth politics flourishes here in the UK!
East Devon Watch 
As I have said before in comments on this blog, even though I have voted Conservative for most of my adult life, I now believe that the Conservatives are completely untrustworthy.
Recent years have shown what is best a disregard for democracy and at worst frequent deliberate attempts to avoid or destroy it – you may think I am exaggerating, but I am quite happy to provide lots of verifiable examples of secret policies, lack of consultation, lies, misinformation, destruction of democracy, attempts to sneak through unpopular decisions via the back door, deliberate avoidance or prevention of open discussion and debate about the merits of a proposal etc. etc.
As we keep finding out, EVERYTHING any Conservative says needs to be:
A. tested against verifiable facts to see whether it is actually true; and
B. considered on the basis of what is NOT being said i.e. what alternatives or alternative interpretations are being kept secret; and
C. weighed in the balance of whether there has been open discussion or whether debate has been restricted or squashed in order to drive through a decision which in the cold light of day might well be shown to be a bad one.
In this instance, we have a straight forward exaggeration (or as I would call it, a lie), where the own numbers in the linked documentation have been grossly misrepresented.
However, even though we now know it is not 330,000 or 185,000, we have yet to verify where the figure of 91,000 originally came from and whether it is itself based on official government statistics, independent statistics or simply wishful thinking.
As usual the devil is in the detail, and exorcism of this devil requires independent verification that the details are actually real and correct.
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