When you read the Sun, Daily Mail and the Express over a long-enough period of time, you start to notice a few things.

One thing that crops up regularly are hysterical ranting posts over a few small topics, including the following:

• It’s Political Correctness/‘Elf-and-Safety gawn maaaddd!!!;
• Scandal as the NHS refuses treatment!!!!!/New miracle cure for [insert scary medical condition here] – this is a particular favourite of the Mail which appears to be on a quest to categorise everything into either causing or curing cancer;
• Eurocrats are trying to control our way of life!!!!;
• Immigrants taking over and guess who’s paying?!!!!

We’ve noticed that a lot of these scare stories could be stopped by a little research, which we accept that pressed-for-time tabloid journalists, for whatever reason, are unable to do.

Therefore, in the spirit of co-operation, we’ve decided to help them out by listing great sources of information, thereby saving them valuable time:

• Health and Safety Executive – “Myth of the Month” – a useful site for any claims which are made about bizarre actions taken or prevented in the name of preventing accident;
• NHS Choices – Behind the Headlines – a very good site for any “miracle cure” stories;
• National Institute of Clinical Excellence – evidence-based guidelines on various health topics, which go a long way to help the NHS what medicines and treatments should and shouldn’t be funded by the taxpayer;
• News from the European Commission in the UK – news on how the Eurocrats aren’t necessarily trying to dictate how we live;

There are also a variety of websites which can be used for any “Bloody Foreigners! Coming over ‘ere! Takin’ our jobs! Takin’ our wimmin!” stories*:

• The Refugee Council – The Truth About Asylum;
• National Assembly Against Racism – Mythbusting Guide (PDF); and also
• Mediawise’s guide to the use of correct terminology.

There are also more general fact-checking sites**:

• Fullfact.org; and
• Channel 4’s FactCheck Blog

Of course, any and all of these lists could also be used by anyone else who wants to know more about the articles which the Sun, Daily Mail and/or the Express publish.

If anyone has any other suggestions as what other sources our tabloid journalists could use, just leave them in the comments.

* Thanks to Tabloid Watch for these particular links
** Thanks to Bloggerheads for these suggestions

This story is based on figures provided by the House of Commons Library, taken from the Office for National Statistics (here and here) and Eurostat (here). (They’re also mentioned in an answer to a parliamentary question in July, supplied by the ONS). They show that England’s population density in 2010 was projected to be 401 people per square kilometre by the ONS.

The Mail reports this as being 402.1 per square km, just under 4 people higher than the Netherlands, which it reports as being 398.5 people per square km.

The parliamentary answer says:

Eurostat publishes estimates of population densities for all EU countries up to 2007 (see table tps00003 under main demographic indicators at [this link]

Table tps00003 – the table that the Office for National Statistics suggests we use to find out the population density of European countries – shows that in 2007, the Netherlands’ density was 485.3 people per square km.  The Mail said that in 2010 it was 398.5.

Official stats from the Dutch equivalent of the ONS show that the Netherlands’ projected population density for 2010 is 491 people per square km. Over 90 people higher than the Daily Mail reports.

According to the ONS figures, England won’t reach that level until some time between 2031 and 2056. So how has the Mail been suggesting for years that England is the most overcrowded country in Europe?

Nearly a fifth of the Netherlands is covered by water. The Dutch government takes account of that by measuring population density by land area only. Eurostat includes this measurement in its own figures, and the ONS advises we use Eurostat figures to measure population density. But for some reason, the Mail ignores this.

This needn’t be deliberate. It could be that the Mail or whoever provided the paper with these figures never actually noticed the Eurostat numbers, and made their own calculations that didn’t take account of water in the Netherlands.

Whatever the reason for the omission, it’s clear that England is only the most overcrowded country in Europe if you ignore official Dutch figures, ignore the figures the ONS suggest and decide that Dutch people can live underwater.