As the Lib-Dem manifesto is published, it is clear that either (a) their policy research employees are particularly poor, or (b) they deliberately use disproved memes to connect with various ‘focus group’ touch points they think will strike a chord with their target electorate regardless of their veracity. Grumpy is particularly astonished that they have trotted out the tarnished ‘sock in pants’ theme as a headline to bolster their female focused agenda.

A motion at Conference will note that “Approximately 40 per cent of girls in the UK have used toilet roll because they couldn’t afford sanitary products.”.

The topic of ‘period poverty’ was brought into wider focus by labour MP Danielle Rowley who announced to the Commons that she was having a period (urggghhh, TMI), and made an assertion about costs of sanitary products, thus pointing to the ‘rolled up newspaper / toilet paper / socks in pants’ stories as part of a push to to make such products ‘free’ (or in reality, paid for by taxpayers) . (See link here ) Her idiotic assertions (for example implying she changed a tampon as frequently as every 5 minutes of every waking hour) was testament the the lack of validity of argument so prevalent in today’s politicians.

The ’40 percent of girls’ meme quoted as a headline for the conference probably came from an article by Guardian writer Amika George (see link ), who merely regurgitated dumb statistics which were patently unsupportable. Grumpy did a reasonably comprehensive analysis of the assertions, which he summarised here ). The backing data for these various stories was statistically naive in the extreme.

It’s a pity to see that the Lib-Dems are so seemingly poorly researched in checking facts which underline their policy themes; alternatively, if they have deliberately chosen to promote unsupportable figures for political purposes, it destroys their claims to hold the moral high ground (low as that may be) in British politics.

[Grumpy cheerfully admits to re-touching what the Daily Mail would call Ms Swinson’s ‘ample assets’ to effect a disgracefully sexist example of manipulation. We can all do it.]