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Data mining #3 23

Posted on August 10, 2013 by

A series of super-short snippets from our splendid survey.

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VOTERS WHO THINK ALISTAIR DARLING ALWAYS TELLS THE TRUTH

Lib Dems: 9%
Conservatives: 6%
Labour: 4%
SNP: <1%

Age 45-54: <1%
Age 55-64: 1%
Age 65+: 8%

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Data mining #2 14

Posted on August 10, 2013 by

A series of super-short snippets from our splendid survey.

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VOTERS MOST AFRAID OF TERRORIST ATTACKS

Conservative: 55%
Lib Dem: 42%
Labour: 32%
SNP: 26%

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VOTERS MOST AFRAID OF SPACE MONSTERS

Conservative: 6%
Labour: 5%
SNP: 4%
Lib Dem: <1%

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Data mining #1 45

Posted on August 10, 2013 by

A series of super-short snippets from our splendid survey.

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UNDECIDED WHICH WAY THEY’LL VOTE IN THE REFERENDUM

Men: 22%
Women: 38%

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The fifth column 107

Posted on August 10, 2013 by

Earlier this week, mad Labour activist Ian Smart posted a tweet – now deleted – in which he referred to Labour For Independence as “fifth-columnists”. (Which caught our eye as Labour types unfailingly leap on any renegade cybernat types intemperately denouncing Unionists as “traitors” or “Quislings”.)

hawhaw

But the phrase reminded us of something Labour like to keep pretty quiet. Their own camp is divided into not just supporters of devolution and independence (and undecideds), but also contains a sizeable faction of prominent voices who don’t just want to freeze devolution in its current position, but demolish it entirely.

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Talent borrows, genius steals 90

Posted on August 09, 2013 by

Viewers who are still awake after all today’s excitement will doubtless recall an article from this morning in which we reported the fact that hapless “Better Together” director Blair McDougall had issued an extraordinary petted-lip complaint about the Yes camp daring to use the phrase “best of both worlds”, as if it was copyrighted.

copy

(The even more remarkable news being that the Scotsman considered this a story.)

Still, it’s a fair point, right? You shouldn’t just pinch stuff from people, should you?

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The war of the worlds 162

Posted on August 09, 2013 by

This is the last of the political data from our Panelbase survey of Scottish opinion. The full data tables should now be available to the media from the pollster.

(But a quick word to all the Scottish journalists who we know read this site – had a single one of you had the courtesy, wit or basic journalistic initiative to actually contact us and ask us for the tables directly, we’d gladly have given them to you 24 hours before your competitors. Just a wee tip there.)

amisinvaders

We know our chums at “Better Together” have been looking forward to this one for days, so we won’t keep them waiting any longer.

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Looking ahead 62

Posted on August 09, 2013 by

We didn’t just go for big blockbuster revelations with our Panelbase poll. We thought it’d also be interesting to delve a little deeper into voters’ party affiliations, since the referendum isn’t a party political issue (despite the determined attempts of the No camp to make it all about the SNP rather than independence).

rosettes

Given the gulf between how Scotland votes in Westminster elections and Holyrood ones, we were particularly curious to find out to what degree the constitution was colouring party loyalties, one way or another. Here’s what we discovered.

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The fourth and fifth estates 80

Posted on August 09, 2013 by

We learned yesterday, in perhaps not the most groundbreaking journalistic scoop of all time, that people don’t much trust politicians. While Scots were much more inclined to believe what they were told by the Yes campaign than the No one, the majority still thought they were being told more fibs than truth by everyone concerned.

networkpoint

What, then, of those whose job it is to scrutinise our politicians, dig down through all the spin and evasion for the facts and tell the public what they need to know?

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The very bottom of the barrel 107

Posted on August 09, 2013 by

We thought we might as well take advantage of an excellent new facility revealed to us by an alert reader last night, whereby we can now link you to permanent full copies of web pages without directing traffic to the website in question or faffing around with awkward and flaky things like Google Cache.

Unsurprisingly totally ignoring yesterday’s dramatic poll revelations, the Scotsman’s big political story this morning is “Better Together” campaign director Blair McDougall throwing a barely-believable playground tantrum about Alex Salmond saying some words that Mr McDougall likes to say.

blairmcdougall1

You can read it, without earning the Scotsman any undeserved ad revenue, here.

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Quoted for truth #26 90

Posted on August 08, 2013 by

David Aaronovitch, The Times, 8 August 2013:

“Next year is the centenary of the start of the Great War and some nationalists in Scotland think Mr Cameron is pulling a Salmond. Coming as it does in August between Bannockburn and the referendum vote, they believe the commemoration has been planned as an artificial booster to Britishness. ‘There’s no conceivable justification or precedent in British history’, complained a Reverend Stuart Campbell, ‘for celebrating the start of a war.’

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Looking for someone to trust 84

Posted on August 08, 2013 by

Our poll has already established that the Scottish public is deeply sceptical of the No camp’s vague, equivocal dangling of unspecified new powers as an incentive to reject independence. But we also wanted to find out how much they believed the output of the two official campaign groups in general.

biggestliar

As mainly politicians are involved, you can probably guess the results.

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In, out, and shaking it all about 253

Posted on August 08, 2013 by

Let’s start with a bang, then.

Since nobody wants to define devo-max and the parties of the Union won’t let anyone vote for it anyway (preferring the “Oh, we’ll sort it out for you later, just trust us” argument they so often berate the SNP for), the independence referendum has a great big hole in it where a very substantial proportion of the population would like to be.

pbwingslogo

So while the press constantly talks about “more powers” (and repeats the falsehood that the London parties are committed to them) without ever saying what the phrase means, and as Labour, the Tories and the Lib Dems frantically evade even making solid promises to think about them in the event of a No vote, we thought we’d cut straight to the chase and ask the Scottish people what they wanted.

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    • Captain Caveman on Vibecoding A Better World: “@Alf In that case, why don’t you actually “seek the remedy” (in any meaningful, pragmatic, instructive and substantive sense) instead…” Nov 7, 11:00
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    • James Che on Vibecoding A Better World: “The Treaty of union between Scotland and England parliaments never concluded to its end date, the progression being halted by…” Nov 7, 09:43
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