”As I said in my previous post governments of ALL persuasions have manipulated the figures.”

Errrmmm...no, you didn’t say that - read your post again!

But you’re correct, numbers are ‘massaged’ by governments no matter whether Left or Right, and the goalposts for measuring these stats are changed from time to time, which makes comparisons of different time-frames difficult, if not impossible, for mere mortals like us.