A story from Reuters tonight:
“A majority of FTSE 100 chairmen oppose Scottish independence as they fear splitting up would be bad for British business and dilute the UK’s economic influence”
Ooft. How big is this majority of the chairmen of the 100 leading companies, then?
“The poll by executive search firm Korn Ferry found 65 percent of chairmen of 32 FTSE 100 companies said it would be bad for business if – “
Woah there! 65% of 32? Isn’t that, um, 21? That’s not really a “majority” of 100, is it? And while we’re here, how many of the chairmen of FTSE 100 companies have a vote in the Scottish independence referendum anyway? We have a strong suspicion that the effective sample in this survey might actually have been zero.
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comment, media, uk politics
By an old pal of ours.
Let’s just walk through that one for a moment.
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comment, scottish politics
We’ve written often about the contempt with which both the No campaign and the media regards voters, particularly in respect of their willingness to tell them even the most insultingly transparent lies in the assumption they’ll be swallowed anyway.
Allan Massie in today’s Telegraph may have set a new all-time record, though.
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Tags: arithmetic fail
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comment, disturbing, media, scottish politics
A Radio 4 “Point Of View” programme by the writer and philosopher Roger Scruton on Friday evening attracted quite a lot of social-media ire from nationalists. We can only assume they were so angered by a few crass factual errors (“The Scottish economy is subsidised by the English”) and Dr Scruton’s rather patrician manner that they didn’t bother to listen all the way to the end.
“Suppose then we English were finally allowed a say in the matter, which way would I vote? I have no doubt about it. I would vote for English independence, as a step towards strengthening the friendship between our countries.
It was thanks to independence that the Americans were able at last to confess to their attachment to the old country, and to come to our aid in two world wars. Independence is what real friendship requires. And the same is true for those, like the Scots and the English, who live side by side.”
We can’t say we find anything there to disagree with. After some of the cross-border ugliness and bad feeling that’s been whipped up by the actions of Unionists lately, the only outcome of the referendum that will allow the people of Scotland and England to regard each other with dignity and mutual respect in the future is a Yes vote. Crawling pathetically back to London with our tail between our legs won’t do it.
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comment, scottish politics, uk politics
To save time, just take everything we said last week and repeat.
Perhaps the most telling thing, though, about this week’s edition of what now appears to be the BBC’s official late-night No-campaign propaganda slot is that Iain Martin used to be the editor of the Scotsman. Readers can draw their own conclusions.
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comment, media, scottish politics
SATIRE:
REALITY:
At least, we THINK we’ve got those the right way round.
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Tags: project fear
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comment, culture, music, scottish politics, video
It takes a startling amount of arrogance to try and impose your morality on someone else. We no longer send our privileged white men to the dusty, dirty parts of the globe to educate the natives, to show them how to speak and eat and dress and worship. British toffs don’t hack their way through jungles any more, subduing spear-wielding tribes with Browning machine-guns and renaming their rivers after tubby queens.
The map is no longer Empire pink, and the British zeal for moral crusades has largely faded with it. But in the Telegraph yesterday, the charming David Cameron took us on a nostalgic trip back to glorious, Union-Jack-fluttering Victoriana.
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Tags: Julie McDowall
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comment, scottish politics, uk politics
Let’s all agree: from now on, anyone who says “An independent Scotland would have to join the Euro!” is either deliberately lying or a dribbling slack-jawed imbecile without the faintest idea of what they’re talking about.
As such their views should be dismissed with contempt, and ideally they should be chased out of town by an angry mob with pitchforks and flaming torches. We’d say Dr Zuleeg was pretty unequivocal and definitive on the subject here.
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comment, europe, scottish politics, video
We wouldn’t like to suggest Unionists are clutching at straws this week, but:
Number of words actually spoken by David Bowie about independence: 4
Number of words written about it so far by major news outlets: 3,916
To be honest we stopped counting after that.
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comment, culture, media, scottish politics
Recently discovered by an alert reader, another gem revealing the sort of razor-sharp attention to statistical detail that led the UK into the most disastrous recession of all time, from a man who thinks the population of Scotland is six million:
“Asked if he fancied another crack at being chancellor in the future, Darling said: ‘At the moment I am totally focused on the [Scottish] referendum in October 2014, after that I will see where I stand.'”
Might want to work a little more on that focus, Cap’n.
(Quote from May 2013, two months after the referendum date was announced.)
Tags: arithmetic failcaptain darling
Category
comment, scottish politics, stats
