WOULD Hervey Gibson (To improve Scottish economic statistics, November 6) care to hazard a guess as to who gets closer to the truth on Scottish unemployment? The Tory leader David Cameron - or apologists for New Labour?

In trying to find an answer to that rather basic statistical question for any self-respecting nation, I followed the advice tendered by Mr Gibson, wearing his "hat" as our rep on Scotstat, the executive's advisory board; but almost immediately fell foul of "Error 404: The requested page could not be found within the Scottish Executive website."

As Hervey and colleagues apparently discussed such basic access issues at their first meeting of the "new statistical body" back in 2002, this did not really inspire much confidence in the brave new world of Scottish statistics that he assures the SNP and The Herald is up and running.

I then tried to find out who else was on the committee - and got Error 404 again, and again.

Neil Robertson, 4 Glamis Terrace, Dundee.