BRITAIN is every bit as violent and terrifying as you thought it was, the government confirmed last night.
Home secretary Jacqui Smith said the police must take full responsibility for misinterpreting government guidelines in exactly the way she told them to.
Home Office officials admitted that since 1997 gun crime had been defined as 'offences involving Howitzers and other heavy artillery', while the majority of knife incidents had been dismissed as 'pirate fun'.
But Smith insisted it was very easy to interpret a 22% rise in violent crime as a 15% fall, especially if you were willing to lie about it.
Members of the public welcomed the revised figures saying it helped to explain why they kept coming home from work covered in blood.
Roy Hobbs, an accountant from Ashford, said: "Every time the government said violent crime was going down I thought 'well, if that's the case then why do I, my wife and many of our close friends have a knife sticking out of our chest?'.
"That said, this year I have noticed a slight reduction in the number of bodies I have to step over on my way to the station."
Meanwhile local authorities have reported an increase in the use of noise abatement orders to deal with complaints about chainsaws and desperate, horrifying screams.
