As people who commission opinion polls occasionally, a thing that puzzles us is why other people who do it ask questions and then don’t talk about the results.
Some polls are done with the intention of being for private consumption only (this is particularly true when they’re commissioned by one side or the other in a debate, rather than by a notionally-impartial newspaper or the pollster themselves), and at other times results will be kept private because the results are unfavourable to the people who commissioned them.
(For the avoidance of doubt, we’ve never withheld any results for that reason.)
But at other times, results will be published but never discussed. Which is why, whenever a poll’s just come out these days, we get ourselves straight over to the polling company’s website and see what’s been left out.
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Tags: project fear
Category
analysis, comment, psephology, scottish politics
Because this is how a state broadcaster does balanced, impartial reporting.
Now some revision notes to help you.
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Category
analysis, media, scottish politics, video
Just magnificent work from the Daily Mail today.
Really only a couple of tiny quibbles.
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Category
analysis, media, scottish politics, stats
Readership stats for April, for those interested.
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navel-gazing, stats
STV Sport has tonight broken the news that Scotland will play England in a friendly international at Hampden on November 18 this year.
Would you like to imagine, readers, the songs the visiting England support might sing if Scotland had voted to continue being ruled by them exactly two months earlier?
If you feel your strength sapping between now and September, remember that.
Category
comment, football, scottish politics
The Scottish independence debate is characterised by so many gigantic lies from the No camp and the media (no pound, international outcast, bankrupt, cataclysm, etc etc) that there’s rarely time to pick up on all the small, casual, offhand ones that also litter the news-stands and the airwaves and poison any hope of intelligent discourse.
So let’s make an effort with one, just by way of example.
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Tags: flat-out liesheadline ferret
Category
analysis, media, scottish politics
You can’t make this stuff up.
Yes Glasgow has been inviting No speakers to take part in this Thursday’s event for literally months. They’ve contacted every single MP and MSP from a Unionist party representing a Glasgow seat, asking them to participate. They offered from the very beginning to let “Better Together” co-organise and co-host the debate, which will be chaired by the neutral Electoral Reform Society Scotland.
The only reason that “everyone on the platform is a Yes supporter” is because nobody from the No side is prepared to face the Glasgow public and put their case. The opportunity is still there. We confess ourselves perplexed that they seem determined to refuse it, and then to complain bitterly that the debate is one-sided.
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Tags: debatesproject fearttallinn protocols
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comment, scottish politics
Can we please buy the Telegraph a new picture to depict “Scottish people”?
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media, pictures, scottish politics
I had no idea what to expect from the UKIP public meeting in Bath tonight. The city is genteel, wealthy and has been solidly Lib Dem for over 20 years. While there are of course some sketchier areas and it hasn’t been immune to the UK’s recent economic troubles, generally speaking it has little to complain about.
So when UKIP booked the 730 downstairs capacity of the Forum (a rather beautiful old Art Deco former cinema from the 1930s) for a public meeting, I hung onto the hope that there was at least a reasonable chance it’d be half-empty.
No luck there, then.
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analysis, comment, culture, disturbing, europe, scottish politics, uk politics
Alert readers will be familiar with a phenomenon we often like to highlight in these pages – that of the dramatic newspaper headline which rapidly turns into something completely different by the time you read the text of the story.
There’s an especially fine example in today’s Telegraph.
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Tags: headline ferretproject fear
Category
comment, media, scottish politics
