As veteran readers will know, there’s little this site enjoys more than investigating the Comical Ali-style claims made by the No campaign about the attendance figures at its events, which it typically likes to exaggerate by between 100% and 150%.
Disturbingly, though, the contagion which robs victims of basic counting powers seems to be infectious, and taking hold even beyond the bounds of “Better Together”.
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Tags: arithmetic fai
Category
analysis, media, pictures, scottish politics, stats
Ruth Davidson triumphantly exits the hall to a standing ovation after her keynote speech to the Scottish Conservatives conference yesterday.
The Sunday Herald today gives the total number of delegates attending the conference at just 200 or so (although more on that later). We can count almost 40 empty seats in the picture above, taken from the BBC coverage, which shows one half of the hall, and we presume the other side must have looked pretty similar.
We estimate the the leader’s speech – which is the centrepiece of any political party’s conference – was therefore attended by between 120 and 140 people. Readers might wish to keep that figure in mind the next time Scottish Tories mock an unofficial independence rally for “only” attracting between 6000 and 7000.
Category
comment, pictures, scottish politics
It’s going to be tough to hold our heads up abroad if Scotland actually democratically votes not to take responsibility for its own affairs like any normal grown-up country.
In any vaguely self-respecting world, a No vote would be accompanied by the immediate disbandment of the Scottish national football and rugby teams, because we’d have declared ourselves not to be a nation. But either way, hopefully we won’t have to face scenes of opposing fans telling us to man up again after 2014.
Category
football, pictures, scottish politics
From the excellent Part 1 of STV’s new documentary “Road To Referendum” (based on the book by Iain Macwhirter, out this week), Labour PM Harold Wilson and Scottish Secretary Willie Ross punt a rather familiar line four decades before Ed Miliband.
We’re sure there’s nothing at all sinister in the fact that the show was unavailable to most viewers due to an unprecedented cross-media technical failure, which also wiped out the STV news at 6pm and this evening’s Scotland Tonight, incidentally.
Tags: and finally
Category
culture, pictures, uk politics
Following our visit to the Netherlands and Belgium a couple of days ago, and today’s examination of the (non-existent) threat of border controls between an independent Scotland and the rUK, we thought it’d be nice to finish the week with a whistlestop tour of some more of our favourite international borders.
It’s perhaps worth noting that several of these are between EU and non-EU countries, or even between two non-EU countries. The one above, though, is Denmark/Germany.
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Category
europe, pictures
We were hunting through a load of 1980s issues of 2000AD earlier today, looking for something else altogether, when we stumbled across this. It seemed somehow timely.
We can’t think why.
Tags: and finallycartoons
Category
pictures, uk politics
No, honestly, they’re just dancing.
Tags: and finally
Category
pictures
(And Finally… #36)
Five points if you get the joke.
(Tilt o’the topper to Dr. Morag Kerr.)
Tags: and finally
Category
pictures
If there’s one area where you really have to hand it to “Better Together”, it’s sheer shamelessness. Despite having been humiliatingly exposed for inflating attendance figures at their events by at least 100% twice on this site alone, to the great merriment of Yes campaigners, they just keep right on going without a hint of embarrassment.
We can’t help starting to wonder if this might all be one of those sort of “When I was going to St Ives…” trick riddle things. How many Darling Youth kids make 70?
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Tags: arithmetic failflat-out liesmisinformation
Category
analysis, pictures
