You don't count if you're awake

You see, these days, in order to be counted as a homeless person or a rough sleeper you have to be lying face down in a shop doorway and snoring your head off because that's the Government's definition of homeless.

Let me explain. Over the past three years the Government has pledged to cut down on the number of people taking their duvets into shop doorways for a spot of shuteye.

To achieve this objective, the Prime Minister has set up something called the Rough Sleepers' Unit. To be perfectly honest, I had thought about applying for a job there since I don't sleep too well myself.

Anyway, the people running the Rough Sleepers' Unit were supposed to pop round city centres and herd the homeless into some sort of night shelter so that the Prime Minister could claim that he'd personally managed to get all the homeless off the streets of Britain and safely tucked up at night with a mug of cocoa and a ginger nut.

However, there was a slight flaw in Mr Blair's bedtime plans. You see, basically there is a real shortage of suitable and affordable accommodation to put the homeless in. Night shelters such as Bath's Julian House rely on piecemeal grants plus a lot of fundraising by tapping businesses and individuals for donations. Running a night shelter is expensive and the charities that run them don't get very much help from the Government.

Because there aren't enough places for everyone to have a bed of their own, there are still plenty of people who are sleeping rough at night in all weathers. Okay, so the number of rough sleepers in Bath doesn't reach into the hundreds, but the people who run Julian House will tell you it's still hovering around 25 to 30 each night.

Really? Not according to the Government. If you believe their statistics, a year ago Bath had 12 people sleeping rough but now that figure has been melted away to a mere four.

From over a dozen to less than four rough sleepers in just one year? That's good news.

Er not quite. You see, like any set of figures that are in need of fiddling, someone decided to change the way the numbers were calculated.

Just like the inflation rates in the 1970s, the jobless figures of the 1980s, and the NHS waiting lists of the 1990s, yet another set of Government numbers has been massaged into oblivion.

And how did the Government manage to do this? Simply by telling the people who survey the homeless only to count the people who are actually lying down and asleep without any cover. What a stroke of genius. Now why didn't I think of that?

Presumably, all those people who are huddled in shop doorways late at night but who are sitting up instead of lying down because it's too cold to sleep are, in fact, merely taking the night air before sauntering back to a warm semi in Newbridge.

But what about the people who set themselves up in a temporary camp and sleep out under the cover of a tarpaulin or a blanket? Surely those sorts of people are homeless even by the Government's standards?

No, I'm afraid not. The fact that they have a nice cosy tarpaulin to snuggle under when the temperature dips below zero means they at least have some sort of "permanency of shelter". Therefore, in Tony's eyes, they're not rough sleepers.

And just in case there's any chance that the Government counters might come across more homeless people than their masters would like them to, the survey is only done on one night each quarter... probably before 6pm. What's the betting that the inspectors wait until the coldest night when even the hardiest tramp has managed to find a tarpaulin to crawl under? Perhaps they even poke the rough sleepers with a stick to make them sit up so that they aren't counted.

Still, let's look on the bright side. At least the figures now show that the number of rough sleepers in Bath has fallen by 71 per cent in just three years.

Aren't statistics wonderful?

And finally...

DON FOSTER is a very brave man. A week or so ago he went for a ride on the brand new bobsleigh run that's been built at Bath University's new sporting centre.

I say that Don is brave because if I were Bath's MP I would be very wary of endorsing a £300,000 bobsleigh run when there are so many Bath residents clamouring for an indoor bowling centre.

I mean to say, there can't really be that many votes in bobsleighing, can there? On the other hand, there must be hundreds of pensioners in Bath who would happily put their cross next to the name of anyone willing to help them get an indoor bowls centre. Still, Don obviously knows what he's doing.

Apparently, the athletes who will be using the bobsleigh run at Bath University are ranked 15th in the world. So what! I'm sure I could be ranked third in the world for synchronised bog snorkling if I tried, but I don't suppose anyone's going to build me a luxury training facility using public funds.

I'm all in favour of the university promoting itself as a centre for sporting excellence, but let's see a few more facilities for local residents before they start building bobsleigh runs for a handful of students.