Counting with the Daily Mail
Posted on
May 21, 2018 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
After 27 unbroken pages of royal wedding “news” (following on from a full 46 in its Sunday edition), the Scottish Daily Mail finally gets down to reporting other stuff today.
“Union support rising”, eh? Do we have any numbers on that?
And it turns out that we do.
Um, lads? If you’ve got 100 bananas, then someone gives you 20 more bananas, but then you lose 34 bananas? That’s… that’s fewer bananas than you started out with (100 reducing to 86, if you’ve run out of fingers and toes). Not more. Fewer.
Let us know if we still need to dumb that down a bit further for you.
The Mail should just stick to reporting Royal Family shenanigans.
They are not much good at anything else.
Huh?!
There’s no substitute for numbers when it comes to bamboozling folk.
It’s not the real figures that concern them, Rev. It’s the narrative that must be maintained:
“Indy is a busted flush”
Got it? Yeah?
Then welcome to Planet Yoonatakost. 🙂
Strange way of looking at it anyway. Everybody only has one vote. It doesn’t matter how strong their enthusiasm for the union is, they can only vote for it once.
Are they trying to obfuscate the outcome of a different question by presenting that odd metric (and getting it wrong)?
My naturally suspicious mind wants to know what they’re not telling us.
I must be severely jet lagged (just back from Florida) because I can’t get my head around that Daily Fail comment at all – 20% support has risen, while 40% is unchanged and 34% fallen?!? What does any of that even mean? % of what? All Scots polled? % of those who currently have or had previously had supported the union?
It seems a very peculiar way of putting it.
After a weekend of orgasmic y00n proportions, they have to be brought back down to ‘reality’.
I note that the Guardian are showing a N.I. turning away from the UK, EU support up sharply.
The mail relying on the blue rinse brigade to save the day, the trouble is they are dying off just like their paper.
Even an old fart like me gets his news on line and I didn’t even turn on the box on Saturday as I am sick of all the propaganda which is rammed down our throats at every opportunity.
£32 million wasted and there are good people in the country starving.
Reminds me when the media used to go on about increasing employment, when really what was happening was the rate of increase in unemployment was decreasing.
@Giesabreak
The latter, you have to have expressed a preference for the Union previously for any of it to make sense.
But without the corresponding Yes figures and the DK’s we cannot make sense of it. A softening of the No vote can either go to Yes or DK. This doesn’t tell us which or in which proportions.
Noes going to DK is still a good thing, DK’s tend to be interested in the debate. Last time I lived for conversations with DK’s on the doorsteps as they were genuinely interested.
They canny dae big sums…..
The problem is Rev you are doing it in bananas. If you had Yoon wisdom you would have done it in apples and pears which have no direct corrolation. Therefore it requires the simple application of a complicated equation to ultimately shown that it could be what they claimed it to be.
Then again it is a load of bovine excre—. (Bullshit)
Anything the riles the onetime Blackshirt supporting and arithmetically challenged DM is good.
This time Nicola hit them hard. Put Unionism and its subservient propagandists through the shredder….and if you gotta play ‘dirty’, just go for it! After all we’ve taken 300 years of their imperialist-colonialist bull.
Now that the House of Windsor and the House of Trump have successfully united through marriage, the way is clear for EngWaland to be inducted as the 51st State of the Imperial United States of Middle America.
Apparently a poll shows that 41% of Brit Nats support retaining the monarchy; aye, right.
They are just printing any old lie now.
Even Kevin McKenna has given up on Xavier Corbyn.
Norn Iron, Scotland, and Gibraltar will leave their precious Union over the next two or three years.
I firmly believe that the citizens of the 51st State are
resigned to that, as WoS Panelbase polls seem to indicate.
It looks like the starting gun for Indyref2 will be fired October 2018, which, ahem, I have consistently been touting since Christmas 2016, when the Brexit timetable was announced.
Now that the House of Windsor has been subsumed into the American Empire, England will ditch Scotland and Norn Irn without so much as a backward glance.
They’ll try anfd hold on to Faslane, and Jackie Baillie as the Base Mascot of course.
Eh? Mind, it’s good news if Britnats have to rely on their own lying propaganda. Is Fluffy and r*pe-clause Ruth still telling their London cronies that everything is yoon-tastic in north Britain?
Dearie dearie me.
Stu is displaying a more coherent view of this data on WoS Twitter.
Also, this gem….
Identifying more with home nation (than 5-10 years ago) …
England 44%
Scotland 60%
Identifying more with the UK as a whole …
England 23%
Scotland 15%
The Union is dying, and not just in Scotland.
Katy Perry frothing at the mouth on talkRadio, hoping to have NS on the show, maybe today, maybe later in the week. “That woman gets on my wick”…
“Really drives English people made, do you know what, go away…”
Then some tory from Kincardine talking pish. “Respect the result of the referendum, shut up about independence…”
Oh lordy, it was Douglas Ross, hence the pish. But they’re still at it…
Is it time to tell Scotland to get lost? Phone in now. Yes Please, that’ll do fine.
England is riding on a tsunami of media generated monarchist nationalism. It is also becoming even less tolerant of those who see through the hype. The Daily Mail mindset is normative.
Soon there must be a face to face with the Brit state establishment and its various intelligence services.
No compromise, no prisoners should be the order of our battle.
Statistically, a density hitherto unseen in the world of facts.
O/T
Regarding whether to hold an indyref:
The SNP Scot Govt have been given a triple mandate from the electorate AND the backing of the Scottish Parliament. They MUST use it, win or lose.
If an indyref is not held or indy by election manifesto mandate by 2021, then Mr Sillars, Mr Sheppard and others can talk all they want about delaying. That’s “entitlement” politics just like “Scottish” Labour. They will lose by default.
The sovereign people made it clear at the 2017 GE: when the SNP avoided making independence the core issue, half a million SNP voters “disappeared”.
If no indyref or no indy election by 2021 then many people just won’t bother voting SNP. I am one of those.
Some people will preach: “Vote SNP forever” but, many will no longer listen to that.
SNP: you have been warned in a friendly way.
Greens and other pro-indy supporters: if the SNP chicken out, you can take up the lead in the campaign for independence. Leave the SNP to peck at the devolution crumbs from the master’s table.
Rattled. Really beginning to show. 🙂
Add the numbers the gither take away the number yi first thought of add an Indy March minus twenty yoons at Argyle street and you have independence. Easy peasy.
@colin Alexander
…still trying. You must be on a bonus in resorting to that old crap.
…if they believ d their own crap on polling why don’t they say “…bring it on”
What are they afraid of in testing the support in a referendum.
@galamcennalath
More evidence their narrative has achieved a momentum outwith their control. They want people to rally round a concept and identity their own practice of short-termist politics has spent the past several decades dismantling.
Well, no. No, mainly I don’t feel like supporting their concept or identity. It’s not attractive to me in the slightest, so why would I? I’m not big on a state running isolationist policy, which uses press narratives to divide its own population through runaway xenophobia, imperialism and generally shitting on people less fortunate. Nor am I even the teensiest bit happy about a partnership which is defined by its democratic deficit and where its largest component uses its influence, privilege and media access to daily insult, and abuse the smaller.
Were Scotland an independent nation state today, in the same mould as RoI? Would any of our population, looking at the actions/practices of Westminster government politics and the state of Eng/Wal/NI society and economy, want any part of a union with it?
Looking at the table with the actual figures on Rev’s Twitter should the Net Fallen figure not be 35% rather than the 34% quoted?
Fallen a little 14%, fallen a lot 21%. Add those to get net fall of 35% or have I missed some weird statistical device that sums those two numbers to 34%?
Erm, whit! That doesn’t make a lot of sense. Did Jackie Bailley help them wi their sums.
Union support rising Ha Ha, aye right.
It must be exhausting for them spinning all these numbers.
Proves your often quoted point though that the lie is always in the headline. Those that don’t read any further have got the info required to pass on to other mushrooms. Job done.
Q9. Would you say that your own level of SUPPORT* for the
continued existence of the Union of United
Kingdom has risen or fallen in recent years?
What if you have never supported the union and remain resolved in your opposition of it? It can’t rise or fall or even remain the same if it never existed in the first place.
My lack of support for the union has not and will not change, but it is worded that my support has not changed which looks as if I am still for it. Probably in the same way as the Brexit bill interprets opposition of the bill as support for it.
The whole poll is badly written and very leading, which is the way, imho, MSM derived polling is designed to be.
*My uppercase highlight
Rev before ah get the calculator oot ur they banana’s the straight wans or the bent wans as ah need tae factor in all variations as U do .
@ColinAlexander
Any independence referendum,strategically, must take place before the UK quits the EU.
After that event we will simply be prey to any Westminster whim.
All rests, of course, on the SNP and the wider national movement using their expertise to secure a resounding yes. It’s in the way you ‘sell’ the idea after all. Waiting for opinion polls to shift or drift substantially in our favour might entail a very long wait.
A long campaign should also be avoided. Short, sharp, focussed and relentlessly hard hitting.
Clootie says:
21 May, 2018 at 11:02 am
@colin Alexander
…still trying. You must be on a bonus in resorting to that old crap.
Aye, he is trying really hard this morning. Ho Ho.
No doubt Rock will be on later for the evening shift and continue his ridiculous narrative about how Nicola blew it by not going for a silly snap referendum just after BREXIT that would have been an absolute disaster for the independence movement. Between that and “Don’t buy the National”.
Their amateurish efforts reek of sheer desperation. 🙂
Ok so the usual Pavlovian dog stuff has started on social media regarding a new Scottish currency.
I have listed some of the claims and a suggested response after each.
Claim: Scotland will be like Greece
Response: Scotland has more in common with Greece just now in that it has no control over the issuance of the currency it uses. Moreover the currency issuer (U.K. government) buys into the neoliberal idea of austerity. Compare us with currency issuing states which float their currency and come back when you have a better argument.
Claim: The currency will devalue.
Response: Devalue from what? It will have to be issued first and it will likely find a value which will be below other currencies. However, we have a very strong export base. The lower valued currency will increase the competitiveness of our exports. As exports increase so will the value of the currency. It is likely Scotland will run a trade surplus, something which rUK simply cant do.
Claim: no one will want the currency
Repose: firstly, we will HAVE to use the currency domestically, creating a demand for it simply because we will be taxed in it.
So how about investors? Well what would you do if you want to make money on currency foreign exchange. Think of a currency at issuance which is undervalued. Look at the export potential of the country. Ask yourself what is likely to happen to the value of that currency as exports increase?
(Investors don’t get caught up in ideological crap. They want to make money)
Claim: No one will want to buy Scottish Bonds.
Response: firstly bonds are just interest bearing accounts at the central bank. People buy bonds with EXISTING money. In other words the money HAS TO EXIST before you can buy a bond with it. Bonds are only a form of borrowing IF the government is USING a foreign currency. In other words Scot £ would have to exist or be created in exchange for foreign currency for someone to buy a bond from the Scottish central bank. The term ‘borrowing’ is a throw back to when currencies were convertible into gold.
So what happens if on the sale of the bonds no one wants to buy them? Well the central bank can buy them if it wants. Note the Bank of England owns one quarter of U.K. government bonds to a value of £445Bn.
Have a look round the internet to see if you can’t find examples of bond issuance which haven’t been fully subscribed. You won’t find any for countries which issue their own floating currency. Why? Because government bonds are the safest place to store money. The money in your commercial back account is actually legally the bank’s and can (and has in the past) be used to capitalise the bank.
Claim: who will underwrite the currency? And where will they get the reserves?
Response: The central bank underwrites the currency and can always pay out. If you have premium bonds through NS&I, have a look at the Ts&Cs. It states that your money is “100% backed by the U.K. treasury”. In other words you will ALWAYS get your money back (including prizes) since the central bank is the treasury’s bank and can always issue the requaired amonunt of £s. ALWAYS!.
The reserves question comes from the days of fixed exchange rates. Money used to be convertible to gold (pre 1971) and over the decades countries have tied their currencies to other currencies such as the dollar. This means the central bank has to be able to hold reserves in these currencies in order to convert from one to the other.
To issue more Scottish £ requaires ZERO foreign reserves (providing the currency is floating)
Claim: We will have massive inflation like Zimbabwe.
Response. Zimbabwe destroyed its productive capacity overnight. Scotland will be spending money to grow its productive economy. Hyper inflation could only result if the treasury starts spending money exceeding the max productive capacity of the nation. I would add that we have seen similar inflation in the U.K. where banks were deregulated and allowed to CREATE bank credit which far outstripped housing stock, resulting in considerable house price inflation and eventually a financial crisis. THAT type of inflation created by private companies destroyed lives.
Initial import inflation (higher relative costs of buying from abroad when the currency is weaker) is countered by import substitution (where possible) where things, where possible, are bought at home rather than abroad. For example folk might decide on summer stacation whilst the currency is lower in value but they will be competing with the large influx of foereigners who want to come here for a cheap holiday whilst the exchange rate is so good!
Think of the foreign resorts who would lose out on business that year. It is likely they will want to reprice their holiday for the current Scottish market to lure us abroad. Why wouldn’t they?
Claim: Mortgage payments would go up
Response. Common weal have done work on this in their book “How to start a new country” and also on their blogs.
If I was the Scottish government I would Be looking to guarantee that debt and offer people the one time chance to redenominate it into Scottish £, Protecting people from fluctuations between the two currencies.
I’m sure there will be many more project fear stories, but the bottom line, and the thing London fears the most is that Scotland will become energy independent and rUK will end u with a much bigger trade defcit. New nuclear power stations maybe their insurance policy but they will have to import rare materials.
It’s a cracker right enough,
Q7. Are you in favour or against the ‘Union’ of the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales and
Northern Ireland in broadly in its current form?
What the hell does that really mean?
It’s not actually about independence. It might also be about anything from federalism to abolishing devolution.
Ottomanboi says:
21 May, 2018 at 11:23 am
@ColinAlexander
“Any independence referendum,strategically, must take place before the UK quits the EU”.
How? Please explain that assertion.
Independence MUST be a question in itself, NOT tied to any other issue that could muddy the issue and split opinion.
AFTER independence Scotland’s people can consider the EU, EFTA, new trading bloc with rUK etc, NATO, nuclear weapons and all the other issues that a sovereign state is empowered to consider.
Clootie
What “old crap”? The Triple mandate?
Everybody knows the only mandate that was needed was the 2016 Scottish election, when the sovereign people of Scotland gave the electoral mandate and it was respected and upheld by the Scottish Parliament vote.
I supported that vote by voting for the Green Party in the list.
Anything after that was: “double, triple, with knobs on” mandate nonsense from the SNP and it came as no surprise that it lost them seats.
Hopefully lesson learned and the SNP will at last come out leading the debate and campaign on ending the Union / Scottish independence.
@Clootie says: 21 May, 2018 at 11:02 am:
“@colin Alexander
…still trying. You must be on a bonus in resorting to that old crap.”
Thing is, Clootie, I just couldn’t be bothered answering CA. It is the usual, unsubstantiated, claptrap.
Colin has no idea how lame his line of thinking really is. He states a fact – then puts a Colin Alexander interpretation on it based on only his own opinion.
For example, this little gem:-
I can think of several other interpretations based upon that statement. One being that people didn’t bother to vote because every party, other than the SNP, made the election about independence. It was a general election and thus those interested in actually electing an MP to Westminster had nothing to go on as to who would be the best candidate to be an MP. So they had no one to vote for.
So, obviously, these who didn’t vote would be those who really had no interest either way about independence and were being bombarded with independence when the purpose of the election was to elect MPs.
Trouble wi CA is he thinks everyone else is as illogical as he is, projection much.
Seems they have a real issue again, pity they know nothing about sums as you so aptly point out Stuart.
Clootie 11.05am. Aye they keep telling everyone there’s no support for independence . AND in the second breath tell us to shut up about it and respect the 2014 result. They are absolutely sh***ing themselves, And Glasgow on the 5th may brought it home to them. This union is dead.
Robert Peffers
You are old enough to remember when a General Election vote for the SNP DID mean something in the campaign for independence.
At the 2017 GE, indy supporters had nobody to vote for, as the SNP just wanted to blow hot air at WM.
Let’s hope that’s the past and that now the SNP go all out for indy and get our MPs OUT of Westminster forever.
Worse than the Sunday Herald.
By the way, on the subject of polls, one of my sons answered a telephone poll by Survation a few days ago. They wanted someone in the 18-34 age group and the questions were mainly Scottish-based – opinions of Scottish politicians eg NS, Ruth Davidson & Richard Leonard and attitudes to fracking, nuclear energy etc.
Does anyone have any information on this poll?
The SNP’s role at Westminster is to help guide the direction in which the UK heads. If it ever gets to a vote on S30 then, and only then, will independence really matter.
The other point is that the SNP’s official stand seems to be that the choice on whether to hold an independence referendum or not is and should be with the people of Scotland and Holyrood.
Bear in mind though that the near wipe out of unionist MPs in Scotland was on the back of the Vow and a suggestion that Westminster’s feet be held to the fire. It was also on the near immediate introduction of EVEL.
@orri
Yes, the 2015 GE was a one-off, and the proof of that is that while support for a YES vote was a little less than 45%, support for the SNP was nearly bang on 50% – hence there were a lot of NO voters voted SNP purely persumably for the extra powers. But we now have the extra powers, and 2017 didn’t have the same effect unifying Pro-Indy and pro-Devomax voters. 2017 GE needed a different message, and didn’t really get one.
Ah, back to the old ‘lies, damned lies and twisted statistics’. Never, ever forget by twisting the Question/s you can get whatever answer you want. I well remember an old boss of mine claiming that he could get people to agree that ‘1 = 0’!!!
Proof that 1 = 0 (it proves 1 = 2 but just subtract 1 from each side)
Let x= y = 1
x^2 – y^2 = x^ – xy
Factorise both sides
(x+y) * (x-y) = x(x-y)
Since you have x-y on both sides of the equation you can remove it
x+y = x
Substituting in the original values
2 = 1
I’ll explain what the trick is, if anyone is interested
@ColinAlexander
After the UK exit Scotland would be outside the EU making reapplication subject to delay.
Within the EU Scotland would have the support of sympathetic EU states.
Scotland as a EU state is the only reasonable choice. The other options you cite are marginal.
Ending up in the same mess as England is surely not a good idea.
@Tom
Let x= y = 1
x^2 – y^2 = x^2 – xy = 0 (for x = y = 1)
(x+y) * (x-y) = x(x-y) = 0
Since x always equals y it doesn’t matter what the numbers are for x and y as then you can’t cancel out the same equation on both sides since that means dividing by zero which equals infinity on both sides.
So 2 doesn’t = 1 your equation proves that infinity = infinity.
Good puzzle though and had me stumped for a bit 🙂
@Thepnr – Yep a division by zero. Always one to watch out for.
Arlene Foster of the DUP not everyone’s cup of tea, but you have to admit she is hilarious, loved the unionists are inclusive and all that.
I used to think Gordon Brown and Jim Murphy were the true comedians Arlene beats them hands down.
Johnston’s looking for his Meghan. Johnston is a lying criminal.
The Tories unionists are just ridiculous. Foster is just a crook. Bribery and corruption. Doesn’t even follow UK rule, All in it together. Tax evaders united. Committing electoral fraud. Gove is a criminal. Still covering up the illegal DUP £1/2Billion ‘donation’. £3/4Billion overspend on EU Ref. The Mail non Dom tax evader. pays his wife.
They even illegally changed the electoral system in Scotland.
How long will this farce continue. They can’t get Brexit through the Commons. What a mess. They have to have another election they can lose. Who wants the poison chalice? Labour are useless.
On BBC bullshit this morning we are told that Trumph will come to Scotland for a round of golf after his main issue, discussions with Mayhem.
I imagine that one of the many issues to be discussed will be a request from Mayhem for the US to help stop Scottish Independence, just as Cameron did with Obama.
Of course the US does have all the means to do this, as they have proved with interference in more countries than I care to count.
The US, who wants a great trade deal with the UK, so there is definitely a good chance they would agree. However Mayhem will be with cap in hand and with little power to negotiate a deal that is really beneficial to the UK, it will undoubtedly be in
America’s favour. It will be painted a great success, but you will hear the yanks laughing.
However, the danger to Scotland’s future lays there, some great strategies will need to be employed, by the cleverest among us.
We really need to win, as the next chance will be far in the future, the bondage of Scotland will be continued until the point we have nothing to offer. Now is our time, survival depends on us winning.
Again, reported on BBC Bullshit this morning, Carney of the “Bank of England has said a currency option with rUK would be perfectly possible and could in fact work, despite the Osborne statements in 2014.
I said at the time that if we had won in 2014, they would have been beating a path to sign us up to a currency deal.
This time around, I really hope we do not go near doing that, a really Independent country, needs it’s own currency.
We do not need tied to a failing pound, which will go into free fall when Scotland goes it’s own way.