A WARM welcome to Gordon Brown's announcement that the Office for National Statistics (ONS) is to be made independent.

This is because only 17 per cent of people say that official statistics are not politically manipulated by the Government-run ONS. You might, of course, wonder whether that statistic has been manipulated because it does seem a tad on the high side.

Moving on from cheap jokes, what should we really make of Gordon Brown's announcement?

Mr Brown says that he made the Bank of England independent in 1997 to take the politics out of economics and it has been a great success. Now he wants to take the politics out of statistics.

This may well be the case. But if the Government had treated statistics in a genuine and impartial fashion, there wouldn't have been any need for yesterday's announcement.

People have become thoroughly confused by headline statistics that measure the health of the economy. Ways of counting inflation and unemployment seem to vary enormously - does inflation include mortgage repayment costs or not; should petrol prices be in there or not? - and the figure that best fits the Government's case is the one the Government trumpets.

And how can an economic cycle have suddenly found itself mysteriously extended, so producing an avalanche of statistics to show that Mr Brown hadn't broken his "golden rule" of balancing borrowing?

Yesterday's move is welcome, but the need to make it tells us much about the workings of this Government.

The Best gesture

A FINAL thought on the observation of the minute's remembrance of George Best at football matches.

How refreshing that in many places the silence was broken by thousands of people spontaneously applauding.

Most people never met Mr Best. They never knew him. They had little to feel personally saddened by, other, perhaps, than the manner of his passing.

But they had all, either in the flesh or on the video, seen the wonder of his skill. Quite right that, for the last time, they applauded that skill.

Surely it was far better than them standing glumly with head bowed in a silence that was guaranteed to be broken by a bore with a loud voice while their thoughts idly drifted to whatever was for tea later on. This was the sound of their appreciation.