Counting With The Scottish Media #2 386
Posted on
February 13, 2019 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Archive for the ‘scottish politics’
An uncertain future 185
Posted on
February 12, 2019 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Another slow news day, so here’s one from the archives:
Don’t worry, we’re not going to make you try to read it that size.
The outstanding balance 591
Posted on
February 10, 2019 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We had an interesting exchange with Scottish Labour MP Paul Sweeney this week on the deathless lie that is the “fiscal transfer” – the £10bn or so that Unionists rather startlingly insist the rest of the UK generously donates to Scotland every year out of the goodness of its heart, just for the pleasure of our company.
As you can see, the debate was of a high intellectual standard.
Counting With The Scottish Media 111
Posted on
February 08, 2019 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Auntie’s Favourite 188
Posted on
February 08, 2019 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Last night we observed the considerable statistical difficulty involved in getting to speak on the BBC’s flagship political debate show Question Time not just once, or even twice, but THREE times, and the remarkable ease with which shouty sectarian UKIP and Loyalist bigot Billy Mitchell has achieved it.
But readers, we’re afraid we must acknowledge a rare factual inaccuracy on Wings Over Scotland. Because he’s actually been on it at least FOUR times.
And the odds against that happening by chance are really quite something.
We see you 201
Posted on
February 08, 2019 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
This tweet, from a little over a year ago, remarks on the second consecutive speaking appearance on the BBC’s flagship Question Time of Billy Mitchell, a flute-band Loyalist and former UKIP candidate (an impressive 34 votes in Coatbridge, Chryston & Bellshill in 2013) whose standard contribution to the national debate is an incoherent shouted rant against the SNP and all they stand for.
It was comment-worthy because it’s actually quite a feat to get on Question Time twice. The audience is vetted on numerous grounds and the show deliberately discriminates against people who’ve previously come through the heavily-oversubscribed ballot, so that the widest possible range of voices get a chance to be heard.
So the odds of not only getting on twice but then being selected to speak twice are extremely long – an absolute minimum of 1,000 to 1 depending on the size of the venue. The chances of managing it three times are astronomical.
So we tip our hats to Eileen from Glasgow tonight.
Standard Wales Check 514
Posted on
February 05, 2019 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Alert readers will recall that earlier today we conducted one of our regular context checks for statistics misleadingly-incompletely reported in the Scottish press. But while those are like shooting fish in a barrel, there’s one thing that’s an even more reliable open goal for the website editor looking for content in a slow news week.
Ladies and gentlemen, once again we give you… Scottish Labour.
There’s absolutely nothing that happens in Scotland that Scottish Labour are happy with. Day in and day out they can be found putting the bleakest possible spin on any statistic for a dwindling audience of diehard supporters and Scottish journalists.
Something bad happened? SCOTLAND IS TERRIBLE AND IT’S ALL THE SNP’S FAULT. Something good happened? IT WASN’T GOOD ENOUGH AND IT’S ALL THE SNP’S FAULT. And the solution is always the same: let Labour run things.
Context in numbers 79
Posted on
February 05, 2019 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
From the Scottish Daily Mail today:
As readers will have come to expect, the article is entirely free of any figures by which readers could gauge whether 1000 was a high number or not. So as usual, we’ll have to do it for them.
Doing walking away 488
Posted on
February 03, 2019 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
This is Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald on today’s Andrew Marr show:
While she doesn’t say so explicitly, McDonald appears to strongly imply that the SNP’s MPs would be as well to boycott the UK Parliament, as Sinn Fein’s have always done.
And that’s an interesting idea.
Another unfortunate oversight 484
Posted on
January 30, 2019 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Earlier on today we reported on a case of a Scottish Labour MP being inadvertently unacquainted with some quite pertinent facts regarding a public pronouncement they’d made. While we’d assumed this to be an isolated incident, it’s in fact our sad duty to report another example within the Northern Branch Office.
That’s the pro-Brexit former Labour minister Tom Harris, there, making just the sort of statement that this site like to fact-check. So let’s see the most recent data.
An innocent misunderstanding 126
Posted on
January 30, 2019 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
We had a brief exchange with Scottish Labour MP Paul Sweeney last night.
But the thing is, he’s exactly, diametrically wrong about that.
